Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Parallel ❯ Duo's Song ( Chapter 4 )

"Go to hell."

Heero's curse was limp with petulance and Duo was moved to pity. He also could feel the triple squeeze on his oh-so-distant right toe that told him time, as it were, was running out. Heero was uncharacteristically defeated, his eyes dull and his whole body a sullen lump. Duo's voice was a wheedling tune of purpose and hope in a world that didn't seem to ever let him go, no matter how hard he tried to leave.

"You can come with me Heero. That's why I'm here, to bring you back. You obviously don't have anything here worth living for. In my world everything is almost exactly like it is here in yours, only Relena is alive. The peace that we cut ourselves open for is bleeding away and only you can get us out of this mess. You need to wake her up. You need to give her the magic, Prince Charming kiss to bring her back from the dead."

Heero tried to block the ache he felt growing out of the place where her ghost still wandered inside him. He tried not to listen to Duo's song.

"We all need your help Heero. You once told me that you had the plans for Wing Zero in your head. If we're going to fight these bastards, we need to unlock that brain of yours and build our suits again. Lady Une is dead and according to Trowa she purged all technical data on the gundams in the Preventers files before they killed her. The old pestilence gang really are all dead except for Howard and he's not remembering fast enough. The only good news is the Blue Earth assholes don't have the gundam plans either."

Heero looked at Duo oddly, obviously still in a vulnerable state. He looked for all the world like the wide-eyed, hopeless child that had once caught the eye of a mad scientist on the streets of an L1 colony. Then suddenly the eyes narrowed, closing off access to whatever Duo had been seeing, and Heero said, "So, you want me to kill off all the bastards I've already assassinated here all over again, for you."

"Uhhhhhmmmmm …" Duo decided to just go with it and replied, "Yeah, I guess. Something like that."

Heero thought to himself about the last two years spent in a cycle of controlled blood rage and small releases as he systematically killed every top member and every hired assassin of the Blue Earth movement. He felt the emptiness these calculated murders had failed to fill, and knew that emptiness could never be filled, only perhaps crowded aside, or carefully ignored. He thought of a different Relena, not his, some other man's wife, some other Heero, one who had managed to get there in time the day of her assassination attempt. He thought of making believe he was home in her presence once more. He thought of holding her and sleeping with his arm around her, the smell of her scalp and the soft invitation of her buttocks curled against him.

"I'm hallucinating."

"Look, Heero. Ahhhh, I hate to rush you about this whole leaving your universe thing, but Trowa is about pulling my toe out of its socket telling me to hurry it up here. You see, it's hard to keep the energy needed for this little trip going for very long. So, if you don't mind, just close your eyes and trust your old buddy here, okay? You weren't going to be alive here much longer anyway so why not have an adventure and satisfy that little save-the-world thing you've got going one more time. If it all works out, you save the day, you get the girl and we all live happily ever after … I hope. All you have to do is put your hands around my neck and not let go. Definitely do NOT let go. Oh, and don't touch anything else except with your toes, and then lift them up at the last minute. Got it?" Duo barely paused to let Heero even act like a decision could have taken place. "Ready?"

It was insane. This whole thing was unreasonable--without reason. Heero had to be dead and this was some strange dream his brain had entered into as the connections between his cells broke down. But then again, if it was a dream in which he could see Relena alive just one more time, then why resist? He just didn't know his imagination had ever been capable of something this elaborate without the aid of the Zero System's hallucinatory side effects.

Numbly, in a state of monk-like acceptance of whatever came next, he put his hands around his dead friend's neck and amusedly considered choking him just because he finally could. Before that could happen, however, Duo once again brought his hands together as though in prayer and touched the tips of his fingers to the edge of the space membrane that had retracted to the line of his clavicle. Quickly the black non-substance oozed its way up his neck, covering Heero's hands, then the rest of Duo's head. It crept organically up Heero's arms, forming around them perfectly and obliterating them from sight. It took the remains of his zen-like state and his general unwillingness to react to frightening experiences to keep him from disastrously pulling away from his still sensed contact with Duo's neck. It moved along inexorably, until it had covered his shoulders and began to encase his chest. Embracing this as he would any other possible death, Heero closed his eyes and surrendered as the void swallowed his face at the same time he felt the slight pressure of it obliterating his loins. At the last moment he remembered to lift his feet, and the process was halted just in time.

On the other side of the seeker's well, the readings came through that the membrane was once again whole and Quatre began the arduous mental strain of calling it back home.