Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Death Throws ❯ Record 1.5 ( Chapter 5 )

Death Throws: Record 1.5

By: Kiamirei

~I don't claim to own Gundam Wing. Please review this or contact me with your questions or comments!

THE LIFE OF THE LOST

His four-room apartment was extremely disgusting. Not that he cared. It was located in the slums of a dirty city on one of the L5 colonies, and the place where he lived reflected that dirt. The grimy, green carpet was stained and had indentations from long-gone furniture, and the place had not been dusted since the day he bought it, which had been around a month after the war ended. Empty fast-food containers were everywhere, some with moldy food still in them. Plastic forks and wooden chopsticks had simply been dropped wherever they had last been used, and an overflowing trashcan was in one corner, flies buzzing around it.

The walls -which were once white but were now gray and brown with smeared oil and grease- had holes of varying sizes in places, and sound traveled through them easily. He could hear the people on either side of the apartment sometimes, when they were arguing, or laughing, or talking, or eating, or watching a movie, or listening to music, or fucking. He had contemplated killing them many times, but did not feel like taking the effort needed. Plus, the bodies would inevitably start to smell after awhile, because even if he killed them there was no way he was going to dispose of the corpses. He was too lazy, and he knew it. There was a broken T.V. in the middle of the first room, and a couch that had come with the apartment. Its cushions were uncomfortably flat, though they did not bother him much, and the old fabric covering them was dirty and had worn away in several places. He slept on it. There was a phone in one corner of the room, but he had never used it and never planned to. Who would he ever want to call? And who would want to call him?

There were spider webs in the bathroom, and the toilet was smeared with dirt. The sink was cracked, and the mirror was broken. Mold covered the edges of the floor, and grew behind the toilet, and the water was brackish. He had broken the mirror with his fist a few months ago so that he would not have to look at his reflection, and the blood from his bleeding knuckles was still on the back of the frame. Broken fragments of glass littered the floor, some from the mirror and some from old bottles, but he never stepped on them. A few faded, tattered magazines lay on the yellowed floor tile, and the shower had never worked well. A soiled tube of toothpaste lay next to the revolting faucet that, like the shower, was barely functioning. His toothbrush was the only clean thing.

His bedroom faced the alleyway, and he had covered up the small barred window with sheetrock and wooden boards. As with the first room, the carpet was soiled, the color distorted. His dirty pairs of clothing were scattered on the floor; he had not washed them for a month. A desk was in one corner, and his smashed laptop was on it, a few books on top of it, most of their pages torn out. There were sheets but no blankets on the bed that he never used. Sometimes rodents crawled in and out of holes in the mattress, but he killed them with his hands and threw them out the window whenever he got annoyed with their presence.

He did not have a job. When he needed money, he would steal it, and spent his days roaming the streets, killing anyone who got in his way. Occasionally he brought a whore to the apartment, and ignored the incredibly sickened look that would show plainly on her gaunt face as she stepped through the doorway. There was nothing for him to do, now that the war ended. He was a soldier, and could be nothing else. Or perhaps he did not want to be anything else. Maybe he was just tired of living, but saw no reason to die. There was no purpose to anything, that much was certain. With that in mind he let his body grow lax and more out of shape than it had ever been in his entire life, keeping up only his aim and his arm strength, of habit that could not be ignored even now.

There was no battle, and so there was no Heero. No one knew his name, and no one wanted to. As much as he had worked for peace, and as glad as he was that it had come, it was not for him; he was made for war, was someone who fought for an ideal that he had always known that he could not adapt to. But he was aware that he did not truly like war, either. It was the only environment he felt comfortable in, but he did not enjoy it. In fact, he hated it as much as he hated peace. The only thing that made war bearable was the fact that battles were the only places that he could acknowledge a sense of purpose and whatever self worth that he might have. Still, like most of the other Gundam pilots, fighting just made the hate grow, and depressed him. He did not enjoy hearing the screams of the ones he killed, although he did enjoy piloting.

Heero Yuy had made his decision almost as soon as the war ended: he would never fight again.

He had not spoken to any of his old allies since leaving them, and had fled from Relena telling her only to leave him alone. From what he had heard on the streets of the Winner family, Quatre was doing well, and Duo was most likely happy, or soon would be. Wufei would be in agony, but would not fall so low as he himself had. Trowa might be happy for a while with Catherine, but inevitably he would end up living a life similar to his own; they were too much alike for the pilot of Heavyarms not to. They were both soldiers and could never be anything else, and they were both nameless, although for different reasons. Yes, Trowa, too, would fall from grace. In all likelihood, it would not take much more time at all.

But he did not allow himself to think of any of them.

Nightmares of the Zero System haunted his dreams almost every night, and he wondered how much longer it would be before his sanity completely snapped. But that barely acknowledged question did not bother him very much; he would welcome insanity if -or when- it came. Better to be completely insane, better to live in a world of fantasies and delusions, than to face a reality not worth living in.

But if there's no point in living, he thought dryly, why not just die?

Pride. Simple pride was all that was keeping him from blissful oblivion. He could not allow himself to take his own life unless it was to complete or benefit a mission, even though he did not value life in the least. No, he would not kill himself, and nor would he force insanity upon himself, or pour mind numbing drugs that he desperately wanted into his system. Pride was all that was keeping him from his own deranged version of happiness.

The rain fell as he walked the streets alone, keeping an eye out for assassins or muggers who had not yet figured out that he was not an easy target. The fools. If anything ever mattered, he might have some vague semblance of pity for them. But as it was, he could not care less, and simply killed anyone who tried to hinder him in any way. He received little to no trouble over these occasional killings; what did the damned really care about the damned? There had only been one small incident, and it had happened when he had been living in another colony fairly far from this one. A member of a ring of assassins had gone after him and he had killed the would-be murderer. Others had tried to pay him back for it, but he had simply found their headquarters, blown it up, and moved to the equally dirty colony where he now lived. He envied the ones he had killed; they could sleep in sweet oblivion, but he was condemned to the filth that he surrounded himself by.

It was slightly cold, but he did not care in the least. In his mind, he was imagining he was at the controls of Wing Zero, destroying the mobile suits that dared to come within the range of his beam cannon. But of course, it was not true, nor could it ever be, as long as he stayed where he was. Immediately after leaving his former allies, he had dropped the thing off inside some large, abandoned caves in an unpopulated region of America. He supposed that the choice of country was both an indirect compliment to Duo, who had become a friend, and because no one would think to look for it there. Quatre had offered to keep it for him knowing that Heero would travel, but he trusted only Trowa and Wufei with his Gundam -mainly because he could depend on them the most without much contradiction or questions. Despite that trust, no one touched his Gundam but him unless it was absolutely necessary. Because of that, he had left it inside a large cavern inside the caves, completely in the dark and hidden from view, and had left only after removing the Zero System and taking out small but vital pieces, without which the suit could not start up. The beam cannon was hidden behind huge rock growths. It had pained him to abandon it where others might steal it, but he could not very well take it with him wherever he went. A few months after leaving the Earth, he had come upon a surprising realization: he almost missed the damn thing, like he did a few of his fellow pilots. But there was no reason for getting it. War had ended, and peace ruled.

He came to a store at the end of the street, and walked inside. Like everything else in his life and in the city, this place was dirty, and the food it sold was cheap and hardly edible. But he would not complain.

I can't whine about it, he thought to himself. After all, luxury would just disgust me. Better to live among the rats and to join the scum of humanity than to live like Relena.

He strolled down the isles casually, ignoring the mistrustful glares coming from the man at the cash register. What did he feel like eating? Ramen? Perhaps not. He had put on weight lately, and was becoming almost chubby. The Japanese boy made an inaudible sound of contempt, directed at himself; he was quite pathetic. Then, deciding that, as usual, he did not care, he picked up the dusty package of noodles and left the store. There was nothing wrong with a little more weight than he was used to. When the cashier started to come after him -no doubt preparing to get a gun and shoot him- he remembered he had not paid for his food and threw a few coins at the man, who caught them while spitting a long stream of curses at him.

It was still raining when he got back to his apartment, which had a lock far more sophisticated than most buildings in the place would have. Most. The headquarters for the assassin rings were very secured, though even they were relatively simple to get into, compared to some places that he had been forced to infiltrate. He knew because after arriving on the colony, he had snuck into the control center of each ring, just to be sure that he could if he needed to. That was before his habits had gone from those of a soldier to the ones that he currently held.

The pot that he was using to cook the package of noodles in was encrusted with the remains of other foods that had been prepared in it before, and discolored somewhat. He turned on the water from the kitchen sink, ignoring the moldy sponge and the brackish water. It did not matter; he would not die from it, and did not ask for anything more. The former pilot threw the empty package on the ground, emptied the seasoning into the pot when it was time, and threw those packages on the ground as well. A few minutes later, dinner was ready. He had been eating the same meal for three months, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Heero sat on the grimy couch, eating out of the pot, and stared at the broken television screen, thinking about absolutely nothing.