Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ After Colony 198 ❯ Decent into Madness ( Chapter 4 )

After Colony 198

By Iris Anthe

Chapter 4

Golden death swirled in his glass. The liquid was slightly viscous, clinging briefly to the surface of the glass as he held it gently by the edge, stirring it's contents with slow motions of his wrist until it was a moving circle of amber light. Humans took their vices with them wherever they went, even as far away as this carved out hunk of rock, revolving around the sun somewhere between the Earth and Mars. Zechs smiled grimly to himself and took a quick, searing taste of the homegrown whiskey in his hand. The deadly fumes filled him as the alcohol descended to his worn and empty stomach. A strangled, guttural sigh tore from his throat as he waited for his thoughts to dissolve in the familiar poison.

There was a knock on the door at the wrong time, distracting him from his goal of oblivion. It sounded again. "Go away." The normally husky sound of his voice was harsh even to his own ears, magnified by the abuse of two weeks of solid drinking.

"Zechs, open the door."

The sound of his wife's worried voice ripped at his sanity, causing a welling up of old hatred and even older self-loathing, dredged up by the insight that what he was doing was wrong...righteously wrong. In a cloud of guilty rage, he let out a raking sob and flung the bottle at the door. "I said, go away!"

He heard her retreating down the hallway, and almost went after her, as he envisioned the pain that was slowly etching lines in her face. But the thought of those acid-worn lines of disappointment, the marks of his judgment, caused him to once again sink into himself and think regretfully that he'd wasted at least an hour's worth of whiskey by throwing it at the door. "I have to be more practical." The thought was so funny that he began laughing, hoarsely in ragged gasps on the floor.

The sound of gunshots brought him, with hardwired reflexes, to his feet ready to dodge and kill whoever was attacking him. But there was no-one else in the room. He stared about, dizzy with adrenaline and whiskey, trying to make sense of what was going on. "Am I imagining things now?" But the smell of gun smoke guided his gaze to the doorknob, which was now hanging twisted from a shattered hole in the door. His brows came together with abstract curiosity at this strange new addition to his surroundings.

With morbid fascination he approached the ruin of metal and plastic running his fingers over the warm, ragged bullet holes. Hooking his finger into one of them, he swung the door open. His eyes stayed at the same latitude as the ruined knob, and focused on two hands clenched tightly around a handgun, resting against the swell of his wife's eight-month pregnancy.

At the sight of her swollen middle, he snapped out of the trance. He looked up at her face, willing himself not to see the red wetness of her eyes, and gave an elaborate bow, welcoming her into the guest room that had become his cave.

*****

The sheet was soft and cool against his cheek. The unconscious act of rolling over must have woken him. There were noises of people cheering, drums rolling, and laughter, all taking place somewhere near, but the sounds were muffled. He propped himself up on his elbows to get a better look at his surroundings. The inside of the trailer brought back the repressed memory of pain. This was the place where he had returned from death, three and a half years ago.

Heero raised himself slowly out of the bed, donning the jeans and pale, button down shirt that had been left for him on the chair. The shirt smelled faintly of sandalwood--Quatre. There was bread and cheese, and a pitcher of water set for him on the table. These acts of kindness were strangely painful to him, but he was both hungry and thirsty and so went about seeing to his body's needs. He looked around the small circus trailer, and was once again impressed by the efficiency of its layout. A surge of noise outside led him to open the trailer door.

He was instantly invaded by the complex odor of animals, hay, popcorn and human sweat, and the raucous noise of a circus band, intermittently drowned by massive cheering and applause.

He leaned against the doorframe, staring at weeds in the mud, trying to remember how he'd gotten here.

Remembering. He sat down on the metal steps attached to the trailer door. Relena had come to him, as she always did. She had finally come, and he'd been ready at last to give himself to her, to let her guide him out of the desert of his past. But he'd failed. She didn't trust him. She didn't believe in him anymore. Could he blame her? He'd waited two days and then contacted Noin to see if she had gotten there safely, knowing somehow that she wouldn't be there, that he'd been lying to himself. He'd wasted two days convincing himself that she just needed to calm down and then he would travel to her brother's colony and do his best not to disappoint her again. But Noin gave him nothing but silent accusation.

"She called two days ago." The muscles around her eyes tightened slightly. "Zechs is taking it pretty badly."

"Is he going to go after her?"

Noin's eyes shifted to something he couldn't see, off-screen. He could see a moment of pain flash across her face, and then it was gone.

"No, he's not."

That was it. She could be anywhere. He tried tracking her identification papers, but they hadn't shown up anywhere, even on her way to Colony L2 to see him. She must have been traveling under false documentation, but he had no idea what name she'd chosen for herself. He accessed her money and found that her main accounts were empty, and her credit cards were canceled. She'd thought remarkably clearly about this. How long had she had the urge to run? He'd always thought she was stronger than that. He checked hospital data for her DNA identifier...no luck. Well, at least she wasn't hurt, yet. If only he could think of where she would go.

He had wandered around the colony for two weeks, checking slowly, systematically for a lead, but the only person to remember seeing her was a department store clerk near the space port. He'd thought it strange for such an elegant woman to have lost her shoes.

"Well, to be honest, she looked kind of nervous. I've never seen a woman pick a pair of shoes that fast, let alone an entire outfit. She just put them on and paid, in cash. And, she had a LOT of cash! I told her she ought to put some of her money somewhere else, or she might tempt some of the rougher kind to bother her. She gave me the funniest look. She was a strange one all right, but she was beautiful, kind of familiar too."

No-one at the space port recalled seeing her. He assumed she had hidden her features in some way. She'd been in the news often enough that her face had to be recognized by someone at some point. It was as though she'd cast a spell of forgetfulness over everyone who saw her. It was hard to believe.

He even called Sally Po to see if the Preventers might have some leads.

"I wish we did, Heero. Relena's disappearance has left a lot of people on edge down here. There's all sorts of paranoid rumors going around, and we've even gotten some crackpots claiming to be holding her for ransom. We've checked them all, and they've all been lies, just trying to gain some leverage from the unrest. It would help me immensely if you could get her back where she belongs."

So the sheep were getting restless without Bo Peep to keep them in line. All that fighting was worthless. He'd even entertained the thought of joining up with the Preventers again, betting on another war to give him something to do. But it was a hollow thought, coming from a hollow heart, and he knew it. He'd been a coward, and in the end he'd hurt her more than anyone else could. If only he'd gone to her before she'd learned to hate him. If only she could still look at him with that intense purity in her eyes. But it was gone now, and so was Relena.

"Relena." He'd lost her just when he'd thought he could finally have her. Have her? Have what? He couldn't remember what he'd wanted from her. Remembering.

Heero shifted on the steps in front of the trailer, trying not to think about what came next. He felt the bread and cheese churn in his stomach, and started walking. There were food stalls, and games of chance and skill, lined up in the hay covered dirt, but most of the people were inside the circus now, leaving only the vendors shouting their wares, and luridly painted women, trying to attract his attention between stalls. He knew just what they offered. And it hit him with a wave of nausea, the vision of Duo spasming his seed into the body of Hilde, rutting like animals on the kitchen floor, the strong electric lights showing everything in clear detail. He stood panting in the middle of the carnival, trying to block the image from his mind. But it wouldn't leave; it kept replaying over and over, with him trying to move, leave the room, before they saw him standing there. Before they noticed the bulge in his pants. He finally fought back the image and buried it again--a seed of shame, down in his soul, not knowing how it was growing in the dark.

Is that all I wanted from Relena? Is that it? Just a physical need? A demand of the body? Was that all she meant to me? He imagined her lying on his bed, his arm around her, her breathing steady, her body warm. And he imagined running his hands down her sides, imagined the soft giving flesh of her thighs. And then the look of hatred in her eyes. And he wanted to tear the flesh from her bones. Tear her to pieces, seeing her mouth open with the scream of lust that Hilde had worn on her face.

"Please stop, let go. Please." He looked down, and one of the painted women was kneeling in front of him, her wrist bent to an extreme angle in his grip.

"What am I doing? What the hell have I been doing?" He dropped her arm and she collapsed crying on the ground. People started gathering, and Heero took off running, blindly, completely disoriented, hearing only his breathing and the beat of his heart, as he pushed bodies out of the way. So many people, where did they come from? He suddenly reeled back, his head hitting the ground, and the last thing he saw before his vision grayed completely was half of Trowa's face, and a white mask, trying to merge into one.

*****

"Heero?"

"Yes, Relena."

"Do you love me?

"No."

Clear concrete, just the separator lines. Steady rhythm. Easy walking.

"Why?"

Crack. Adjust pace. Avoid person on right. Tip-toe, regular stride. Safe again.

"Heero?"

"Yes Relena."

"Do you love me?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because."

It was a mantra that overrode all other stimuli, all except the ground she walked on. Walking, adjusting her stride to avoid stepping on cracks. The silent conversation repeating itself over and over in her head.

"Why not?"

"Because."

"Because why?"

"Just because."

She had to concentrate crossing this street; the asphalt had degraded to a webwork of fissures and lines, spewing forth black pebbled masses. It was nearly impossible to avoid the cracks. She stood frozen in the middle of Fifth Avenue crossing 35th Street, unable to continue without a clear path. There were too many people, too many feet blocking her view of the ground immediately around her. She couldn't tell if there might be safer ground nearby through the confused, linear shuffle of shoes passing around her. Suddenly the view cleared; the shuffle ceased, and she saw just to her left a big patch of unbroken asphalt reachable with only a skip. "Ah!" She paid no attention to the honking or the shouts. She made it to the other side of the street and continued walking.

"Because why?"

"Because you're weak."

"Why?"

"I don't know. Maybe it's genetic."

That snapped her out of it. My, my, Relena, we're getting cynical. Making fun of our own family, now that's not polite. Father would never approve. Which father? Real father or unreal father? Dead father or other dead father? I said no family! Fine, fine, we can always go back to Heero, any time. She paused, concentrating on her surroundings, forcing her internal dialogue away from the painful rhythm of judgment. Why did the voice in her head sound so much like Dorothy?

Where are we? New York, stupid. Yes I know that, but where in New York? Why don't you look at the street sign? Ah yes, street sign.

For the first time in over forty minutes of aimless walking, she looked up from the area around her feet, and tried to get her bearings. It was lunch time. People were everywhere, ordering food from street vendors, and sitting on benches and public steps in the sun, chatting with coworkers, and shedding business jackets in the heat.

"It's hot."

Her voice was an unwelcome eruption. The inane act of stating the condition of the weather somehow brought it under question. Is it really hot? Does your sweat make it hot? Does everyone else's? This sun is luridly bright. This city is ugly by day. No way to hide it's decay. No illusions to lend romance to the coat of dirt that films over every surface. This isn't how sunlight should look.

She remembered a lake, and a little path leading through trees. Someone was going to teach her to swim. The light was in motion around her, the colors shifting as the sun filtered down around her, laughing with her as her brother took her on a secret trip to the lake.

"Milliardo?" She tried holding on to the image, but felt only clean air and sunlight left behind. "I can remember Milliardo. He was teaching me to swim, even though Mama didn't want him to. We had our secret lake." She had never been able to remember anything of her brother or her biological family before.

"I have to tell Milliardo." She immediately felt a shameful weight of guilt fall around her. She couldn't tell him now... ever. She could still see the stone that entered her brother's visage when she told him she wasn't coming. They had disappointed each other continuously from the moment Noin had revealed their kinship. She couldn't really trust him, though she'd wanted to. She could try to send a message to him, to let him know she was safe, but she felt threatened by the potential contact. Safety could change at any moment. At least in this city there was no illusion of safety. Her defensive introversion fit right in, no questions asked, no interest shown. Chances were no-one would recognize the former Queen of the world walking around the streets of Manhattan, even if she hadn't chopped off her hair and dyed the remains black.

You used to be stronger, Relena.

Why can't we just go home? Home? What home? She stopped to consider the question yet again. Let's see...we have the routines of the Foreign Ministry, and the lies I deal out to the helpless and the weak. The soothing shuffle of papers, and tapping at the computer keypad. Security at every door, watching my every human contact, making sure that no-one gets too close, close enough to damage my precious, inviolate body. But then I left, didn't I? I deserted them. I can't just go back now anyway. Or, I could have Noin and Milliardo, in blissful marriage, complete with a baby on the way. If I left now, I'd get there in time to see it newborn. A little angel with Papa's eyes and Mama's mouth. No. If my brother had really wanted me to be a part of his family, he would have told me a long time ago. Or maybe I could go home to Mother. No, I can never go home. My childhood was a lie. A sweet lie. If I went back it would only ruin what joy I can still remember.

So there is no home to go to, really.

She repressed the thought of Heero holding her to him as she woke in his bed.

There is only this horrible, insular city, filled to bursting with people and their selfish, pulsing lives.

"Can it really be that bad?" She turned her head in shock at the question. It was a disheveled man peering at her with a tobacco stained grin, asking her again, "Whatever it is, can it really be that bad? It's a beautiful day, for a beautiful lady. Why don't you show us a smile?" Others were looking at her now, momentarily entertained by the antics of this gaunt and rumpled man, and waiting to see what she would do. It was an unexpected aspect of this place. So many isolated people crammed up next to each other, ignoring all signs of distress, deftly avoiding all signs of trouble, and yet there were constant oddities...like an, in all likelihood, homeless man, stopping to cheer up a former world leader traveling incognito, while both are summed up and discussed by secretaries on their lunch break. It was amazing, really. The ludicrous arrangement seeped into her, tickling a sense of humor that had been dead for a long time. She giggled, and let out a clean bursting laugh...the only commentary possible on the weirdness of her life.

"That's more like it, princess." She gasped as the tramp winked at her and sauntered away into the glaring shuffle of midtown Manhattan. Does that man know who I am? Or was it just a manner of speech? Relena suddenly felt exposed, her secret too evident to the mass of indifferent eyes. Any one of these people trained in cautious apathy could reveal her secret. It was time to return to the apartment. She'd been out too long. With her face averted once again towards the sidewalk, she made her way to the subway. The dark mustiness of the station entrance had a primordial promise of cover from predators and the sun.