Jan 20, 2001
Ohayo! *glomps ML* Hey guys!
Sorry about taking so long - had plenty of ideas, but no clear way to fuse 'em together. But thanks to a brainstorming session with the ever talented - and sensible - Blue Lemmings, I finally got a path figured out. ^_^
We're nearing the end of the first HOD story arc but have no fear - there will be a sequel, and lotsa one-shots in my little GWX AU - which anyone's invited to partake in, BTW - before our boys manage to find a way home. *muses thoughtfully* ya know - the one big attraction to this AU is the fact there's no Relena....
*ahem* Anyway - here ya go!
'And here I thought this day couldn't possibly get any weirder.'
It could have been the fact that he had been ungraciously uprooted from his own mental stability and unceremoniously dropped into someone else's. It also could have been the fact that the featured mind in his own one-sided discussion, was his partners. That was kind of freaky too. However, Heero couldn't decide if it was his own ethereal presence in the American's mind that was giving him the heebie-jeebies or the fact that he was staring at two Duo's, both appearing to be at opposite ends of the personality spectrum.
' As if one wasn't enough.'
Heero immediately berated himself mentally for such fickle thoughts when there was a snarling, demon-like creature wearing his partner's face, standing only a few feet away.
" Let me guess," he said sarcastically, body automatically shifting into a defensive stance as it always did when confronted by an unknown. Though oft-times the bane of his existence, there were instances that he did thank Doctor J for drilling such reactions into him. " Shinigami, I presume."
A dark chuckle answered his words, and Heero watched, face devoid of any outer emotion, as the black-clad killer slowly straightened, licking his lips with a gruesome sort of anticipation. His eyes burned with a cold fire, flickering from Heero to Duo and back, a predatory light glowing in their depths. Thin lips pulled back in a semblance of a smile as his voice hissed out at them.
" So clever...." he rasped, not bothering to hide his amusement. " Maybe I'll keep you around after I dispose of *him*."
Heero started at the sound of Duo's voice laced with such venom, and he quickly looked down at his hapless partner who was watching Shinigami with a kind of resigned terror. Duo mutely stared at his doppleganger as though waiting for some kind of sign, a hint to when he was going to disappear. Heero didn't like the idea much. Call it a quirk, but he'd been through the emotional wringer a bit too often lately - ' a novel thing for me, I'm *sure*,' he thought dryly - and he was getting damn sick and tired of being threatened. His own cobalt eyes narrowed into angry slits.
" Dispose of him," he echoed, listening to the sound of his voice bounce off the walls - if there were even walls there to begin with. Heero was beginning to regret keeping Jean out - she might have been able to explain the complexities of determining what was real and what was not; a difficult task to do when in your own mind, let alone someone else's.
" How can you dispose of him? You're not even real."
" I'm not?" The jocosity of his tone was wearing thin on Heero's last nerve. Shinigami hefted what Heero now saw to be a smaller version of the scythe that was a part of Duo's Gundam. " Then this won't hurt a bit!"
Shinigami's slim frame unfurled completely as he launched himself through the air with lightening quickness, his raised arms swinging in a downwards arc, bringing bladed death with them. Heero's own reflexes were on autopilot; when Shinigami's body hurtled towards him, he was vaguely aware of himself gripping Duo by the (theoretical) collar of his priests outfit and throwing him hard to one side. His own hands came back up just in time to catch Shinigami's wrists, his body twisting out of range of the metal blade's bite. His maneuver gave him the leverage he needed to pull and propel Shinigami over his head and to the ground.
' Gorilla-press ' he thought disjointedly, the quick-think move reminding of a time when Rashid, the Maguanacs and Catherine, while on a joint get together, had convinced the pilot's to watch a wrestling marathon with them, despite the fact that it was A) completely fake, and B) nothing more then a display of muscle, hair and how much you could intimidate someone by yelling derangedly, but not by actually doing something. As he recalled, Wufei had started screeching injustice at the on-screen proceedings and had walked out. Heero had been non-pulsed, even though some of the moves had looked interesting to him. ' What am I doing?'
He glanced over, somewhat anxiously at where he'd thrown Duo and was relieved to see the braided one sitting up slowly, though somewhat confusedly. " Duo?"
Duo shook his head as though trying to rid himself of something before looking up at the sound of his name. " H-Heero?" he asked, voice sounding somewhat unsure. " What's going on?"
' Good question.'
" I'll let you know when I figure it out," he said, turning his gaze back to where Shinigami had regained his footing and was perched on...nothing...staring at them, a malicious grin on those deceptively cherubic features. Heero felt a sense of frustration well up within him at the sight of his enemy sitting on what appeared to be a pile of air.
" I'm a Gundam pilot," he muttered, shoving his bangs out of his eyes. " The physics of this should be easy for me to understand." 'So why aren't they?'
Suddenly, he really wished Jean was there. Not his nature to depend on anyone, he nonetheless realized he was way out of his league.
' Should've thought of that before I locked the door.'
Duo sat where he'd landed, fighting to regain his senses. He still wasn't quite sure what was going on, only that he was in his own mind, and Heero was sending his best Death Glare 'O Doom at what looked to be a copy of himself.
' Correction' he amended hastily. ' *Was* himself.'
Shinigami had been having a good old time, re-hashing some of his more interesting kills, using Duo's body, doing visual replays when he felt his own vivid descriptions weren't horrifying enough. Duo had been sickened when he'd first woken up within his own mind and found himself a prisoner of his own madness. he was no scientist, but even he realized what had happened.
The implant Sinister had put into his head had done more then just make him evil. It had awakened a part of Duo that the American had fought to keep under control all his life; the part of him that was angry at the world, livid at the powers-that-be that took away his family and friends. The very core of his soul that was Duo Maxwell that pulsed with thoughts of revenge. The hidden facet of him that only emerged in brief spurts when he was high on the thrill of adrenaline while commanding destruction in the cockpit of Deathscythe.
The bug had fed off him, nourished by his inner hatred and rage, and had taken on a sentient form of its own, one that delighted in bloodshed and mayhem; one that delighted in all the things Duo abhorred, and it was worse, knowing that as much as he hated Shinigami, it was still a part of him, and therefore, his fault for all the deaths Shinigami's birth had wrought.
' I am Death,' he thought miserably. ' Just as I always said.'
His gaze flickered over to Heero who was standing in front of him now, muscles tense as he watched Shinigami with a focus that was chilling. When Heero had shown up, Duo couldn't say he was completely surprised.
Duo had sensed a strange mind sniffing around his defenses. Unfamiliar to him, he had forced himself to strengthen his barriers. Shinigami hadn't prevented that, seeing as that would only help him in the long run if no one could enter, and in fact had relaxed his restraint around Duo in order to let him do it. That same lax of restraint had been enough to let Duo allow Heero access to his mind - when he'd felt that strong, familiar, reassuring presence on the fringes of his consciousness, he had dropped a part of his shield instantly, implicitly trusting the probing aura that was his partner.
Still - with Shinigami in control, this wasn't exactly the safest place to be.
' Listen to me,' he thought with a hint of disgust. ' I've turned into a fucking schitzo.'
" H-Heero?" he asked, rubbing the side of his face, almost hesitantly. " What's going on?"
He had an idea of course - the way Shinigami and Heero were shooting sparks at each other, he knew that there was only one way a confrontation between them could end: in violence. Much as he wanted to see Shinigami obliterated, his scattered thoughts were solidifying back together and he had reached the conclusion that since Shinigami was a part of himself, killing him couldn't be a good thing.
He thought.
" Heero!" he called out, watching as the Perfect Soldier's fists clenched. " Don't kill him!"
Heero couldn't believe what he was hearing. Duo didn't want him to kill the crazy, scythe-wielding maniac that was currently walking on air?
' Patience,' he told himself. ' He must have a good reason.'
Shinigami suddenly struck out again with the scythe. Heero leaned back quickly, a whoosh of air marking the blade's passing, missing the Japanese pilots chest by inches. Shinigami then sat back again, cackling dementedly, feral gaze focused on him. Heero growled.
' He'd *better* have a good reason.'
Jean looked nervously at the professor before turning back to look at the two forms on the bed. Duo still lay there serenely, lax features making him look younger, and more child-like then he really was. Once again, her eyes tracked to his temple where a small scar remained, the only hint to the horror that had been inflicted upon him.
After being locked out of Duo's mind, she had wasted her energy in futile, trying to find a way in without forcibly destroying the barrier keeping her out. Finding no weakness in the shield that she could detect, she had reluctantly left Duo's mind, re-awakening in the corporeal world. Professor Xavier had given her a small, but worried smile, silently reassuring her with nothing more then a warm feeling at the back of her skull, that she had done all she could do without resorting to methods that would cause lasting damage. That didn't help much, especially as she took in the still form next to the American pilot.
Heero Yuy lay stretched out on the bed next to his partner, the ever- present scowl missing from his face. Even though Heero had spent a good deal of the time wearing a blank mask, there had always been an underlying force behind it, a faint wisp of emotion that was nearly undetectable without either an empathic power like Quatre's, or a strong link like the one that flowed through all of the pilots. Hard to sense, but there, nonetheless. But this...this *emptiness* lacked even that undercurrent, and made Jean shudder from a sudden chill, despite the moderate temperature of the room.
Beast was the first to break the tense silence that had sprung up.
" Can either of you sense what's happening?" he asked, turning to give his EKG machines a cursory glance to see whether or not it was picking up any psychic activity. For all intents and purposes, the boys seemed to be merely sleeping. " Surely his barrier can't be *that* strong."
Professor Xavier shook his head, not taking his eyes off the two before him.
" Not enough to tell you anything concrete, Henry," he said at last. " I can sense two presences, and enough conflicting emotion in there to remind me of Magneto's mind, but I can't tell who's battling who with just a surface scan."
Jean nodded. " The wall is extraordinarily thick - Sinister must have done some upgrades to that controlling device."
" So in essence, we won't know what's happened until one of them wakes up and tells us?" 'If they wake up,' Beast didn't say out loud.
" Correct."
Quatre looked up from where he was sitting with Trowa in the kitchen. Wufei and Jubilee were still comparing battle experience - Jubilee *paffing* a few strands of Wufei's hair to make a point about a girl's strength in battle - and Trowa was smirking at the two of them, but Quatre suddenly didn't care about what topic they had progressed to. He closed his eyes, feeling that familiar twinge starting up again, and he reached with one hand to rub his chest, as though that simple action could alleviate the slowly building pain there.
Trowa noticed his slight action and twin bolts of green pinned Quatre in place as concern replaced the amusement. " Quatre?"
" I don't know," Quatre responded to the unasked question. " It's...kinda like before...but not the same."
Jubilee looked up from her diagram she was drawing for Wufei about one of her favorite strategic maneuvers.
" Yer' probably feeling the effects of Jeannie's trip into Duo's mind," she remarked off-hand. She could have thrown a hand grenade at the table and not have gotten a more dramatic reaction.
" Duo's mind?" Quatre echoed, standing up abruptly. " She's going into his mind?"
Jubilee blinked at this reaction. " Well, yeah - that was on her schedule of things to do when your friend was stabilized."
" I thought she was helping Beast remove the implant," Wufei demanded. He'd seen the effect of Quatre on the receiving end of Duo's mental demons - it was not something he wanted to repeat. " When were they planning on telling us this?"
" Probably after they fixed 'im up and had him back to his old self," Jubilee shrugged. " I mean come on - you were in the room ya know. You saw what kinda mind set Duo had - he's a killer! They're gonna return him to normal before they let him loose."
It was sound reasoning, but Quatre didn't like it. He especially didn't like the way Jubilee called Duo a killer.
" You realize, we're all killers, don't you?" he pointed out to the mutant girl. Jubilee blinked again.
" I know you guys were in a war," she said calmly. " But that's different - you killed because in war, that's what happens. I understand that."
" So why single Duo out?"
" Because it wasn't you that slaughtered a warehouse full of innocent, homeless people, and laughed while you did it."
That frank statement hung in the air, nearly tangible in its intensity. Wufei muffled the growl that rose up in his throat even as he realized Jubilee was right. Trowa's expression didn't change, but he did move slightly closer to his blonde partner, as though sensing his increase in distress. Quatre's hands were folded on the table, but if you looked closely, you could see the faint trembling.
" She's right," he spoke at last in a deceptively calm voice. Then he addressed the Chinese girl directly. " So they're going into his mind to see if he's still under the influence of whatever Sinister did?"
Jubilee nodded, well familiar with what was happening. She sighed mentally - she had seen this too many times before. Call it what you want: possession, mental override, taking a new host, mind-eaters, telepaths, anything dealing with the Shadow-King - the result was always the same. Someone had to go in and determine whether or not the person you once called a friend, was still there, or if they had turned into something that had to be taken care of. Permanently. She sighed again - suddenly, she felt very old.
" Why don't they just remove the device in his head?" Wufei asked, puzzled by this lack of action which to him, seemed the most logical thing to do. " Surely that would end all of this?"
" It's kinda hard to explain," Jubilee hedged, knowing that she lacked sufficient medical-mental knowledge to explain it to someone who had never experience first-hand the effects psychic control could leave on the victim. It was akin to trying to explain color to a man who'd been blind since birth - if you had never experienced it, it was very hard to grasp the concept. Even Quatre had only a mild form of empathy, from what she understood, and that wasn't enough to take someone's mind over. " I think Beastie-boy could do it better."
Trowa nodded, and stood next to Quatre. Wufei rose as well and indicated to Jubilee that she should lead them back to Beast. She rose an eyebrow at this.
" Why do you want ME to go first?"
All three boys looked at each other and blanched slightly. A faint blush rose on Wufei's face as he cleared his throat.
" 'Cause we're not completely sure we remember the exact location of the sickbay." He scowled. " You have far more sub-levels in this 'school' then any Oz base I've had to sneak into."
To Jubilee's credit, she didn't burst out laughing at this admission. Rather, she nodded and turned, leading the three boys out of the room. All the while, the grin never left her face.
TBC...
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Stormy
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