Gundam Wing Fan Fiction / Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ Ain't My Bitch ❯ Phase #02 : Creeping Death ( Chapter 2 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

As the snow fell graciously outside of the warm, cozy mansion within the heart of Tokyo, the inhabitants of the house were having a wonderful Yule Time Carol. They were jolly as can be, being productive in the traditions that made Christmas ever so grand. All of them were singing along to holiday songs, decorating a bulky christmas tree, hanging up decorations, talking with beloved ones, pulling pranks on one another, becoming a gang of drunkards with thanks towards immense portions of egg nog and beer, watching aged, childlike cartoon shows, consumption of candy canes, inspecting the roaring toy train go around the tree in all its magnificence, gazing in awe at the grandiose, luminescent star placed upon the tree, and later falling asleep by the fire at midnight, delighted and exultant for knowing that in the morning, they would all rush to the tree and viciously open their presents.

What a lovely fiction, isn't it?

Reality sinking into the hearts and minds of them all, the four young men with frayed souls and bloodstained hands sat without a sound on the malleable, secure couch. Only a few sounds emerged dreadfully louder when a singular drop of blood, overflowing with the life of an innocent person, strikes the battlefield during hushed rages of cruel warfare. One man clad entirely of white kneeled on the bedpost of the couch, sharpening his luminous katana without much interest. Another dressed in the image of a priest, lounged into the couch, staring straight into the fire, his orbs of colbat tedious and comatose. Next to him was a man sitting upwards and looking nowhere in particular; in addition, he was clothed in faded blue levis and an emerald green wool shirt to match his eye (reason since he had a unibang covering the other one), with crossed arms and legs. Finally, the last young man was glaring at the ground with pure rage in his doe-like aquamarine eyes, nearly covered by his platnium blonde hair. His fists were clenched, his teeth were grazing off one another, and his body started to tremble without his notice.

Thoughts of a friend ceaselessly no more keyed into his mind, sending his blinding fury into overdrive. He didn't comprehend why, out of anyone he knew in his living days, one of his friends would die so unpretentiously. It didn't add up all together. The solutions the police, the court, and the government created was biased and pitiless. As one of his friends would say, "Injustice!" Although others had decided to give up and accept the fact that he was long gone and wasn't coming back, his empathetic senses informed him otherwise. All the evidence didn't build into a solid, robust mountain of a case. Instead, it was like an unstable, dubious mountain of cards that even the slightest breath could tumble down into an abyss of darkness.

For one, they couldn't find the body. Two, they didn't find any fingerprints, any bloodstains, any suspects, or any witnesses. Three (and this was the motherload of it all that kept him on the frayed ends of sanity from then to now), they announced to him and the others that there wasn't enough sufficent evidence to find out who killed his friend, or to prosecute someone in court for murder or homicide. In other words, the government, the court, and the police summed everything up in three magical words: we can't help. Fucking hell! They are the police, the court, and the fucking government! They could have at least done something! And they couldn't find anything at all. Period. Bunch of stupid pigs...

Sighing, Quatre Rabaera Winner stood up from the couch, and announced to the others, "I'm going to Heero's room."

With a ghost of a smile on his face, though he was directly infactuated with the fire, Duo Maxwell replied to Quatre's announcement, "You gonna try to figure out his password to his labtop again?"

"You'll never figure it out, you know that," Wufei stated, still sharpening his katana, his wetstone starting to corrode and wither away. "Yuy will always be a mystery, in life and death."

Although silent in his words, Trowa nodded in agreement to Wufei's statement.

Narrowing his eyes as he turned his back to them, Quatre walked alone once again toward's Heero's room, whispering with venomous intents, "Someone once said, The important thing is not to stop questioning. If I have to, I'm still going to believe in it. I'll believe in it until I'm dead myself, and I can see him for real once again. You can keep your doubts to yourself. Have faith in the damn government, police, and courts. I have faith, hope, and belief in myself and my ideals. Whatever you want to believe is your choice, not mine."

"Sooner or later, Quatre," Duo warned, taking his gaze from the fire to Quatre's burning aquamarine eyes, "you'll understand the truth. I didn't want to believe, but the truth is that Heero's gone. He's dead, ceasing to exist in the living world. And he's not coming back. Not this time, and not ever."

Leaving his doubtful friends behind, Quatre said merely five words, "That someone was Albert Einstein."

Not even bothering to see their stunned looks on their faces, Quatre marched like the lonely, cold soldier in the middle of the battlefield and at the front of the infantry line. Quatre knew that the other ex-Gundam pilots would have expected himself to be the first to believe that Heero was dead. They thought he would crumble immediately at the truth of it all. However, Quatre knew that the truth was his friends were blinded by the false evidence the three demons of Satan handed to them. What surprised Quatre was that they were engulfed in colossal despair and grief, they never took a second look at the evidence and notice its flaws. It was as if they were handed a contract stating their souls were prearranged to Hell, and they signed it, without reading the contract and blindfolded by a black handkercheif.

The thought of it all running through Quatre's head practically shouted that he sought to slap all of his friends back into reality. They were are living in a fantasy, a chimera of what the truth actually laid on the other side of the tale. No matter how hard he wanted to smack them silly, his self-control held him back from doing so. If they didn't believe that Heero was alive, then that's their problem. Not his. He wasn't the one with the complication of not believing the truth, it was the other way around. Sighing to himself, he digged his hands into the pocket's of his khaki pants with a brown belt, while looking down at his hunter green cotton shirt tucked neatly. Throughout the time of Heero's death, Quatre had taken up the hobby of working out, to turn from 5'1" lanky young boy to a fairly-decent 5'9" toned young adult. So far, he's past from 5'9" toned to a 5'9" near bodybuilder. He was still sculpting his muscles and abs around his arms, legs, thighs, and stomach area. It wasn't his fault that he put his anger into exercising. He just had an abundance of it.

Stopping at the end of the hallway was a neatly polished redwood door with a golden doorknob. Who would have thought that on the other side of that precious door was the room of a deadman. Smiling internally, Quatre grabbed the golden doorknob and opened the door that he always kept clean when none of the guys were in the house. Walking into the room, he noticed the familiar scent which Quatre and the others always noticed whenever they entered Heero's room. It was the sweet scent of roses. For some reason or another, Heero always kept roses near his windowsill, the only sign of emotion coming from the Perfect Soldier. After the announcement of Heero's death, Quatre kept up Heero's tradition of replacing the wilting flowers with new ones. The pristine, ideal ones always accurately appearing like the last ones -- ripe, red, and beautiful, with the dewdrops of rain still fresh on them.

His room was the same way he left it, as if Quatre ever touched one of this things, Heero would automatically know it was moved and who moved it the minute he would return home. It must have been a sixth sense of Heero's. Everytime Duo went into his room and tried to swipe something from him in order to pull off a prank (sometimes a dare from Wufei), Heero wouldn't even have to look away from his computer. All he had to do was pull out his trust gun out of nowhere, point it towards Duo, and start shooting. Amazingly, none of his shots hit any of his belongings, or Duo himself. It just hit the wall, which Heero himself would repair afterwards. However, the shots from his gun would have its effects on Duo, usually scaring the poor American half to death, and on one such occassion, making the American shit in his pants. It took Wufei a year, six months, three weeks, and five days to stop laughing whenever he passed Duo, whether it'd be in the hallway, the kitchen, the garden, the driveway, or even Duo's bedroom.

As he sat upon Heero's old computer chair, Quatre recalled the thoughts he contemplated no more than a few seconds ago. The minute he would return home... he would return home... return home. Home. That word echoed throughout his head like a lingering note on a piano, beautiful, zealous and haunting all in one remarkable, distinctive concoction. He didn't even know the exact date when Heero died, for when he heard the news, all he could remember were patches of reality. Everything was a blur to him. The declaration of his death was not just an impact on the ex-Gundam pilots, but on himself as well. Heero was like a pillar of strength, apathy, and faith. Three traits that he himself did not have. Quatre only had hope, hope for a future, hope for peace, hope for a better tomorrow. But never faith. Never faith. People say faith and hope go hand in hand. In Quatre's mind, they don't understand the difference.

Hope was a desire of some good, accompanied with an expectation of obtaining it. Hope was a belief that anything is obtainable, as long as you aspire for it. Hope is nothing more than a "pure" version of the word desire. Confidence in the extreme for one knows the pleasing expectancy shall come. Faith... oh faith. How different it was from hope. Faith had numerous -- countless -- endless meanings. So many interpretations into such a miniscule, insignificant five letter word. Faith was the answer for everything he could think up of. Faith was the confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of anything and everything. Faith was loyalty to a person or thing. Faith was always associated with religion, mainly Christianity. However, faith can apply to anybody and anyone. Faith was a belief, a belief that just couldn't be explained. Something one believes in, and no one can change it. It didn't have to be the supernatural, or the real world. Faith was something deemed and stated as a belief one cherished, and doesn't give a damn what people think. It was his or her's, and nothing would change it.

And faith was the perfect word to deem The Perfect Soldier.

Carefully, Quatre reached over the computer desk and pulled out a black labtop, which almost faded into the shadows of the room. If it wasn't for the keen eyes he had, Quatre wouldn't have been able to find it without some complications on the way. Opening it up, he hit the gray button in the left side corner on the monitor. Due to the inifinite amount of memory, ram, and internet access on the labtop, the computer loaded within precisely twelve seconds on the dot. Additionally, the accustomed screen showed green and then a silver box with two white input forms and two silver buttons. One saying "OK" the other saying "CANCEL." Next the first silver form was the word "USERNAME", which already had the username "amana." Quatre was quite surprised at the username when he first tried to figure out Heero's password. Amana was Arabic for, "faith." Life is not without a sense if irony, Quatre concluded.

The password was a different story though. Quatre had taken the liberty to rid away of his lingering curiosity. As if the question was crucial to life itself, or one that would plauge humanity relentlessly, the thought of it still remained within the confines of his mind: what the hell was so special about Heero's computer? Why did he waste all of his time upon that stupid computer hours on end? Why was he so goddamn overprotective of it? What was hidden inside the chips, drives, and programs on that computer? Those were the questions clinging to his own sanity a few weeks after Heero's declaration of demise. And the only way to cease the madness suddenly growning in size? Crack the code that was Heero's password. From A-Z in every language, every country, every event from the dawn of time to today, Quatre just couldn't figure out the password.

Today was no different. Quatre took in a breath of fresh air, and started to guess as many words he could think to figure out Heero's password, once again. Deciding to try various Spanish words this time around (what else did he have to lose?), he placed his hands over the keyboard, lying them directly over the home row. At 60 WPM, Quatre typed in the word, "escondido." Escondido was Spanish for, "hidden." Hell, the word entirely seemed to suit the meaning of Heero Yuy, besides faith, which was already the username. Holding his breath, Quatre hit the "OK" button with the click of his mouse and waited to see if after all this time, this was the password he was hoping for. To his disappointment, another silver box popped up, extremely familiar to the sights of Quatre. On it was an enormous red X with the words in black bold letters underneath, "ACCESS DENIED."

Rolling his eyes in sarcasm, Quatre muttered, "Wonderful. What else is new?"

For the next two hours, Quatre racked his brain with a mental sledgehammer, crushing his brain every single second to find the correct password. After five minutes, he gave up on Spanish words and tried German. Another five minutes flied by, and still he couldn't find the password. This time twenty minutes passed on the clock next to the labtop that was once Heero's, and the code still wasn't cracked yet. Using both Dutch and Russian languages, Quatre thought up any word that was related to Heero and discrete as well. Giving up after fifteen minutes, Quatre literally started slamming his forehead onto the desk, cursing to himself on what the hell the password was for at least thirty minutes. Psychologically slapping himself, Quatre continued to ponder and test on what Heero's password was. However, after forty-five minutes of using every language he could muster, Quatre couldn't take it anymore.

Slamming his fists onto the desk, making the labtop jump, Quatre yelled, "What the fuck is the password?!"

He never expected an answer, but in the end, he got one.

"It's phorein emi meta bios."

For a second, Quatre thought it was his mind playing tricks on him. It couldn't be him, he wouldn't come back after all this time out of nowhere. Especially into his own room when he didn't hear anything coming from the window or the door. However, there was this demonstrative, pleasant warmth introduced to the room. A warmth that hadn't been felt since Heero was around. Besides, this was the Perfect Soldier Quatre was thinking about. Heero had an alarming aptitude for stealth and espionage that constantly petrified the poor, defenseless heart of the Desert Prince. Once again holding his breath, Quatre turned the computer chair around, and locked eyes at the person concealed within the shadows of the room.

Prussian blue orbs of survival conflicted with aquamarine gems of virtue.

Desirable, obtainable hope clashed with apathetic, outlasting faith.

It was Heero Yuy, the Perfect Soldier, the Diety of Faith.

Raising an eyebrow since he finally knew the obtuse password, Quatre whispered, "Pardon?"

Smirking at Quatre, Heero casually replied, "The entire password is derived from Ancient Greek. What, you think I would be predictable and use merely one single word as the key to my labtop?"

Letting a smile crawl upon his face, Quatre answered, "Actually, yes. I thought that since you were a soldier, you'd choose a less-creative and singular password. I guess I was wrong. How exactly did you come up with that extraordinary password?"

"Let's just say I have a knack for languages. Phorein means to carry. Emi means on. Meta means with. Bios means life. The full password is simple enough when you come right down to it, ultimately meaning into one simple sentence, To carry on with life. That's all one can do, ne?"

Narrowing his eyes with sightless wrath, Quatre sneered, "You mean that's all you could do."

Raising an eyebrow, Heero watched as Quatre clenched his fists in bloodcurdling, daunting fury, matching the menacing ire within his aquamarine stones. The way the Desert Prince glared at him made the Perfect Soldier seem to crack in dread and trepidation underneath the pristine ice that encased his emotions. Quatre stood up from the chair, walking at a leisurely, dawdling pace, as if he was sizing up Heero for a fight. Once face to face, and nearly nose to nose with one another, they never ajared eyes from one another as Quatre started to speak in a tone that didn't register to Heero as the Quatre he knew before he "died."

"I've been wanting to do this for three goddamn years," Quatre slowly muttered with seething mania.

Taking in this new information quickly, Heero exclaimed with absolute surprise, "What?!"

However, Heero never took into account the punch coming squarely at his jawline.

Although still in pain, Heero didn't yell, glare, or even try to assassinate Quatre. Instead, Heero raised his right hand to his jaw, seized the place were his jaw cracked, and in an instant, cracked it right into place without any source of agony or torture. Cracking his neck for no apparent reason, Heero turned his head around from the right and back to where it was, staring at Quatre dead in the eyes. Emotions were wordless and indecipherable, similar to an ancient Harapan document stating the secrets of the universe, yet there was no basis of language to comprehend it. Much to Quatre's shock, Heero did something Quatre didn't expect. Heero smiled genuinely -- no, not genuine. More along the lines of... ironic?

"So that's how long I've been gone," Heero chuckled with the upmost amusement in his voice, adding to Quatre's shock. Walking past him, he could hear Heero's voice rising with humour as he continued his outloud ramblings, "Seems that I underestimated everything. Yes, absolutely everything. How ironic."

Trying to consol his friend, for seeing him to be truthfully alive and frighteningly laughing about something, he whispered with wisdom words he thought up only hours ago, "Life is seems it not without a sense of irony."

Continuing to laugh, Heero replied to Quatre's wisdom while sitting in his old computer chair, "And death is all too similar. Though opposites, they are connected with irony. How glorious this is!" With that, Heero gave away a belly-filled laugh, falling back into his chair. Quatre didn't understand what was so humourous about everything. Heero had basically "come back from the dead." Instead of dying by laughing, he was risen from the ground of burials and undertakings by amusement. However, the laughter was only a smoke screen when he noticed the charlatan turn into his espionage side of his personality.

A smirk crawled upon his face in sweet, desirable vengence, as if the smirk was a spider slithering like a ghost towards its prey. Formidable yet terrifying laughter arose from his dry throat, sounding like the Perfect Soldier had been smoking on a couple or cigarettes. Watching as Heero closed his eyes, the laughter died down, silence ruling over all once again. The smirk was gone, releasing the stone cold soldier that Quatre had come to miss ever since his alleged death. However, Quatre's curiosity started to get the better of him once again. Taking all the courage he had left since the moment Heero snapped his jaw back in place, Quatre started to talk once again.

"Heero, what was so funny?" Quatre asked, somewhat worried of the answer he would recieve.

Hearing those words, Heero snapped open his eyes and began his reply.

"Five years ago after the end of the Eve Wars, my life was allegedly over. I was like the machine I was supposed to be, and now I was obsolete. However, one person changed me, adored me... and used me. Yet I was so blind, never considering the facts at all. I was living in a dream world, a fantasy, an illusion. I wanted to forget reality and carry on with life. That's why I was somewhat emotional during the Mariemaia Incident. That's why I left all of you after peace was attained once again. That's why I was so distant to all of you when I first decided to come life with everyone. That's why I left the house without a note of where I was going and when I was coming back. That's why I died three years ago and never came back."

A short pause reigned for a few seconds, until Quatre asked one more question towards Heero's confession that was vital to his curious mentality, "Then... why did you come back?"

That's when Heero shined to Quatre the most chilling smirk he had ever seen.

Out of nowhere, Heero's trademark gun pointed to an unknown source.

And Heero said the words that Quatre didn't expect to hear.

"If I can't die and go to heaven, let me live and bring hell."