Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Ace of Spades ❯ Ace of Spades ( Chapter 1 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Ace of Spades

By: Kiamirei

*I'm not claiming to own Gundam Wing. Enough said. Oh, and please
email me with

your questions, comments, or critiques! *

Inside Heavyarms, it was unbearably hot. This was strange, because
Trowa was in space, and it was never hot there. Maybe the temperature
regulator had broken. Or maybe it was because he was so incredibly
enraged, nearly crying because he was so mad. Sweat rolled down his
forehead, and dripped onto his quivering hands. It had been only a day
since he had arrived at the circus, only to find half of its members
dead, half of the animals slaughtered, and Catherine missing. The
fortuneteller, a middle-aged woman named Melinda, had informed him of
what had gone on.

"It was awful," she had said, her small body shaking and her normally
dark skin unusually pale. "Oz came, and demanded to know where you
were. We-we didn't know, but they didn't believe us...we pleaded with
them...begged them to leave us alone...Brighton even pointed out the
general direction you had left in...but they killed him anyway."

She pointed to a disfigured corpse about twenty feet away.

"So finally -finally they just started shooting at us and the animals.
We ran, but Catherine didn't get away. I'm so sorry, Trowa...she got
one of them in the throat with a dagger, but they knocked her
unconscious and took her away."

"I-I'm sorry. This is my fault, I-"

"Don't say that. We know who you were when we took you in again, and
we knew what the risks would be. But we care about you. This isn't
your fault or our fault; it was OZ's fault."

Trowa had wanted to cry then, wanted to simply curl up into a tiny
ball and sob until his emerald eyes were red and his thin shirt was
soaked with tears, but he had used all of those up years and years
ago. He could cry in anger, yes, but never again in sorrow. This was
the way it had been for a long time. The boy -who was already a jaded
old man inside - had instead gazed around the grounds. A cold eye
brushed over the corpses littering the area, dried blood on bodies and
wet blood on the ground, staining the earth. The smell of death and
the smell of blood mixed to become the nauseating aroma he knew so
well, and the dying screams were to be sounded forever by the deformed
faces of the numerous mutilated dead.

He had left after that, not bothering to talk to anyone else or even
to bury anyone, and had contacted the other four pilots, asking for
help hacking into OZ's records to see where they had taken his sister.
Trowa had expected Quatre and Duo to help him, but was surprised when
Wufei and Heero offered their aid, too.

"We know this kind of pain," Wufei had said, coal black orbs for once
soft and sympathetic, "and so we will do anything we can for you."

Heero had nodded in agreement.

It was their word he was waiting for now in his mobile suit. They had
gone to see what had happened, and forced him to stay behind,
concerned he would do something stupid.

They were probably right, he thought. When they get back with
Catherine I think I'll be much calmer. Then I'll kill whoever's
responsible for this.

The minutes stretched by endlessly and turned into hours while Trowa
waited, tormented, muscles tight and hands gripping the controls so
tight it seemed that they would be crushed under the pressure.
Finally, though, Duo, Wufei, Quatre, and Heero returned in their
Gundams, scraps of mobile dolls floating around with them, an
infallible sign they had seen battle. After a few seconds they popped
up on his screen, panting. Quatre's eyes looked haunted, and the
others, too, looked shaken up.

"I'm sorry," Wufei said. "She was dead when we got there."

Trowa immediately moved to go, but was at once blocked by Sandrock.

"You don't want to go back there, Trowa," Quatre said softly. "You
don't want to see what they did to her. We couldn't bring her body
with us, so we burned it. I hope you don't mind, but it was the only
thing we could think to do. Come with us, now."

"Aa."

His heart torn in two, anguish washing over him, the pilot of
Heavyarms allowed himself to be led back to the colony.

* * * *

They were back at the apartment Heero had deemed acceptable, and
everyone was asleep except for Trowa. It was three o'clock in the
morning, and he was still up, sitting on the leather couch. He smoked
his cigarette, running his hands through his chestnut hair. Across
from him he had a fire going. It was not necessary for warmth, for the
regulated weather of the colony was rarely even chilly, but he liked
staring into the flames and feeling its heat, so different from the
cold bite of the space that he fought for.

She's gone, he thought. She's really gone. My sister. She's gone.
Those bastards will pay. I'll never forget this day, and I'll make
sure that they don't, either. I'll-

He stopped in mid-thought as an idea began to form in his mind, and
icy jade eyes glinted dangerously. Walking with a silence so complete
that even Heero couldn't detect him he went to his room and took out a
gun and paintbrush. Then he went into the small kitchen and retrieved
several large, sharp knives. After that he left.

* * * *

Heavyarms wasn't hot now; it was cold. It was not, however, colder
than his expression. The clown discarded his mask now, and wore an
expression of pure hatred. It was an emotion -one of the few he had-
that he knew well. His Gundam was completely silent as it arrived on
the base, and he broke through the security systems easily; it was not
for nothing that Nanashi had become a pilot. Duo, of course, had
better skills at such things, but Trowa had knowledge enough. In a
bold move he had put Heavyarms in the hangar, and one of his trademark
flips brought him from the cockpit to the walkway. He opened the doors
to face two guards.

"Hey, kid! What do you think you're doin-mmph!"

The soldiers slid to the ground, making as little noise as Trowa did
when he had slit their throats. Warm blood pooled on the steel floor,
and he was careful not to step in it. With a small smirk, he moved on
to another room, where the soldiers inside died before they had a
chance to scream. One of them had died right next to the steel doors,
and his blood seeped out through the cracks. Trowa stood there, cocked
his head for a minute, and then got out the paintbrush.

Slowly, carefully, he dipped the brush in the blood of the two men,
and brought it up to the wall of the room. He painted first one long,
vertical line, and another one about a foot away from that. The pilot
lowered the brush into the blood again and drew two lines, one
connecting the two vertical ones at the top and one connecting them at
the bottom. He re-wetted the brush. Next he reached it up to the top
left corner, and carefully, ever so carefully, painted an A. Trowa
then did the same in the bottom right corner. He dipped his brush in
the soldiers' blood again. After that he drew two spades next to each
of the A's, and filled in the outlines. He lowered the brush again
into the blood. The pilot of Heavyarms now drew a large spade in the
center of the rectangle, and filled that in too. This required him to
wet the brush several times. Finally, he re-wetted the brush for a
final time and drew another rectangle, this one around the spade in
the center. After cleaning the brush off as best he could on the
uniforms of the two dead men, he stopped to admire his work.

The Ace of Spades: the death card. It was a symbol that Catherine
herself had told him, concerned when one day it turned up in a reading
that Melinda did for him. He frowned, not satisfied. Blood was running
down the wall, marring the huge painting, though it was still easy to
tell what the picture was. The pilot shrugged. He would have many more
times to perfect it.

* * * *

By seven o'clock in the morning, Heero, Duo, Quatre, and Wufei were
wide-awake and wondering where Trowa was. It didn't take them long to
figure it out, and soon all four were racing back towards the place
they had been at the day before, forgetting about the sleep that they
could have been getting.

* * * *

Finally Trowa had cleared the lower levels, and had come to the floors
the officers were on. The entire base was chilly, but he did not feel
it. Desire for vengeance burnt within him, and now that he was getting
it he paid attention to nothing else. He turned left into a room,
where a female soldier stood with her back to Trowa. Slowly, silently,
he advanced until he was only a foot away.

"Excuse me," he murmured softly.

Startled, she turned to face him. She would wear that expression on
her countenance forever. With a speed no one had even guessed that he
possessed, he plunged the blade into her stomach. While her body
exploded in pain, he dragged it up and across, ripping through skin,
muscles and organs, through her heart and out the side of her throat,
feeling the resistance given by her bones and flesh as her blood ran
down the steel and onto his hand. With an almost inaudible grunt he
pulled the weapon free from the corpse as she dropped to the ground.
Once again, he dipped his brush into her blood, and began another
painting. By now he had decided that he liked the way it looked when
the red liquid ran down the walls, and used his "paint" freely.

* * * *

Heero, Wufei, Duo, and Quatre picked their way through the base. They
had just exited the hangar, and were horrified at what they saw. Blood
was everywhere, dried in some places and wet in pools. The stench was
starting to rise and they were careful not to step on the bodies. Duo
checked inside the first room and came out quickly, his face very
pale.

"H-he's not in there."

They made their way through all the levels of the base, getting even
more sickened as the amount of violence increased with every single
room on every single floor. Finally they came to the last room.
Immediately upon seeing it, Duo ran around a corner and threw up. He
came back shortly, and the four entered the room together.

The scene before them was hideous, and all there knew there would be
nightmares to come for a long time. Two mutilated corpses lay on the
ground, with two severed heads close by. In each room, an Ace of
Spades had been painted on the walls in blood, but here there were
five Ace of Spades on the walls, and one on the ceiling. Blood dripped
down the sides of the room and ceiling from each of the pictures, and
the thin, formerly navy blue carpet was wet with the crimson liquid.
Smeared, bloody handprints were on the once clean gray walls, and a
severed arm lay not even two feet from Heero. In the corner stood
Trowa, eyes haunted and body shaking. The head of the commander of the
base faced him, and through his shaking he stared at it with an
intense hatred that did not make itself known from behind the unhinged
look he had. Tentatively Quatre walked over to him, trying not to cry
or scream.

You can't cry, he thought. You can't cry. And don't scream. Trowa
needs you...also, if you start now you'll never stop. You'll just keep
on screaming and sobbing until your tears are gone and your voice is
hoarse. And Trowa will stay there while Duo throws up again. Then
Heero and Wufei will have three people to deal with instead of just
one. So come on, be strong, like Wufei says. Be strong. Don't cry,
don't' scream, just walk over there. One step at a time...

"T-Trowa?"

Trowa turned swiftly, and with a small, pained smile he collapsed into
the Arabian's arms, unconscious, silent tears rolling down his cheeks.