Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ The Creed Arc ❯ The Door: Caverns ( Chapter 14 )

Title: The Door: Caverns

Author: Lethanon

Type: Multi-Part

Warnings: Angst, 1x2x5, Preventers, Psychological....just lots of angst.

Caverns

There is a room I am familiar with. It's not large, or small but somewhere in between, non descript and hard to find in its anonymity. I go there sometimes, or I did, once. I guess I should think it strange that I'm there again, but it's not strange, not really. It's just…one of those things you do, that I do. One of those places you go when all else falls apart and you know its not going to get better. How do you know? Simple. The only way to make it better is to work at it; to do it yourself, and sometimes you just reach a point, a breaking point, when you can't be bothered. I had reached that point and stomped so far over the line I doubted there was any going back.

This place where I go. It has a bed, a set of drawers, a small table. They don't interest me; ever have. What interests me is the mirror on the wall, a simple, cracked, dusty thing of glass with a person trapped inside. That person is me, or some form of me I have never known. I am no closer to knowing who he is than I ever have been and that thought comforts me no more than any other. My thoughts don't haunt me, not really. They are just there, like everything else and I wonder…am I alive? Am I really alive? Or have I fallen asleep, maybe died at some point without knowing. Am I trapped here, in this body? Is this hell?

The sad thing is, I don't know anymore. I could once shake off the melancholy, bury myself so far behind a façade not even I knew the difference. But I know now. I knew it for a brief moment, in a safe house long forgotten, and then the war took it all back and when t was over there was nothing left of the dream I had, only the endless waking nightmare that permeates all things.

When I come to this place I lie on the bed, on my side as I cannot when I share a resting place with Heero and Wufei, and I stare at that mirror and the person inside. I dream up stories; lives he might have lived, loves he might have known, but they all end badly. I don't know any happy endings. I've never seen one.

I spend time here, with the reflections, reflecting on refractions, refracting the reflection…around and around it goes. I talk to him in hushed tones, whisper my dark desires and for once no one answers back. No one tries to offer comfort because there is no one there. I know this, but I keep talking, sorting, searching unknowingly for a key, a sign of a key, a touch that could mean it might exist. This thing that I search for that might not even exist.

Time segues. At some point I fall silent, but the tirade continues, the vocal clamouring inside my head, my heart, my soul, but the words lose their meaning and I fall, as always into a dark abyss, and there the search ends, for I know this place as I know no other and there is nothing to be found here save shards of a mask broken and reforged only to broken again. And reforged. Life, repeating itself over and over, never learning from its mistakes. Am I some broken child incapable of accepting what is before me? Incapable of believing there is nothing more, that this is all we have? Am I wrong to be that child? Is it really so wrong.

The mirror cannot answer me, or will not, I am not sure, and there is no one here to turn to, to beg for help, to reach out to for aid, and even if there were I would not.

At some point I rose and went to the table. I sat and scanned the few items scattered there. Maps, long covered in dust. A detonator, useless with nothing left to destroy. A fake id, once used and long discarded. I sigh to see these things, memorials to a fate I had passed by. These were things that should have died with Deathscythe; that should not exist, and yet they did. Here, in this room that I am familiar with.

I have always claimed destruction was a worse fate than death. I hold to that still. You can throw a thousand sticks at me, a thousand stones, and they can break me, annihilate me; kill me, but they will not destroy me the way I can destroy myself. When there seems no better alternative I seek out those places most likely not only to kill me, but to cause my ultimate destruction. So I seek out these rooms, these places, where it's quiet; I am completely alone. It's dark; there aren't any lights. It's empty and I'm hungry as hell.

It takes time, but I manage to leave that little room, for a short time, when the scratchy little digital watch I'm wearing tells me its morning. I need supplies, but not the kind one might have thought.

It's not an easy thing, to go unnoticed on L2. People seem to think it would be a simple thing, and that I would find it even easier because I grew up here. That only makes it worse; people know me here, recollect vague mentions of my younger days. I do pass unnoticed by the rich and popular when I need to but I cannot hide from those who have the tongues to ruin my exile. Give a tongue enough money and they'll tell you anything you want to know. If Heero and Wufei were anywhere nearby, if they had bothered to follow me this far, I could not afford for one man to talk. Not one.

So I took long roads, passages I hoped most had forgotten, plagued places that had always failed to touch me because I was rejected by god himself. It took time, but that is something I have in abundance. It took me four hours to reach the small local store at the back of L2. Once there I took one look at the old guy behind the counter and for nostalgia's sake asked for 'the usual'. He gave me an odd look, then grinned and started putting things in a box.

"You know kid, you don't look so good."

I gave him my best blank stare.

"When's the last time you ate something? Or slept? Those uniforms have been looking for you for weeks."

Uniforms? I must have swayed on my feet because the old man had his hand on my elbow and was hauling me toward a seat.

"Uniforms?" Is that really my voice, so hoarse from disuse? Or is it overuse? So hard to know. So hard to care. What do I need a voice for anyway?

"They were talking about them down on the east side. They haven't been here yet; think they're working their way from the north. A few days and they'll find the shop but don't worry, my lips are sealed. There are four of them, do you hear me? Four."

He was right; I was losing it completely but I couldn't bring myself to find a way back. I was spinning into darkness and sending the mask out to do the hard yards, as always. Am I a coward? Maybe I am, but I don't care. There are four; four Preventers hunting me down.

"One of them's that politician from the war. He works with a woman, short dark hair. DO you know them?"

Know of them, not them themselves. Zechs and Noin; they were not taking any chances; Preventers had sent their best to collect the wayward gundam pilot threat. Why had I never seen this before? Why was I so blinded by…whatever this was? Too many why's.

"The others are your boys from the war; 01 and 05 I think."

Yes, it would be them. They would follow me anywhere. I used to think I knew why, but I was wrong. That wasn't the reason at all; there is no reason, not one that made any sense anyway. I asked for a reason once, begged even, but reasons are just lies; the truth in a bastard form. I don't want reasons anymore.

"Kid, I know you're good, but…I think they'll find you, that's my honest opinion. If you're gonna run, you better do it soon, you hear?"

I hear. And you're right; I am good, but not that good. There is nowhere in the whole of the earth sphere that I could hide from them. I could run, you're right, but for how long? How fast can I go, and is it fast enough? I ran here, hard and fast, but they still came after me. They always will because there is that report in that draw in Sally Po's office that says I'm dangerous. Not to be trusted.

It says…I'm a liar.

I want to say something, to thank this man for risking so much so many times, and for taking those risks again, for thinking I'm worth it. But all the things in that report are rushing through my mind and I can't help but wonder; am I really worth it? Am I who I think I am, and who do I think I am? Am I….a liar?

So I just leave with the small box of supplies he has given me and a head full of screaming voices, all of them my own.

I can't run anymore. I can't hide anymore, and chances are I am a liar. Who is this stranger whose skin I reside in? What are they going to do? Where are they going to take us? I don't know what I fear more….running faster, harder, further than ever before, or going back.

One thing I knew for sure. I would not be a prisoner any more; I was not a street rat anymore. I was an ex-gundam pilot and the only one who received no respect in that regard. I should have been able to take a short vacation to whatever colony I wanted without Preventers hunting me down like a wild animal. I helped give them this peace and I was entitled to live in it. Wasn't I?

I stumbled back into the room I was familiar with a long time later, dumping my box of supplies on the table and struggling to stand in front of the mirror. I did not know the face that looked back at me. It was gaunt, pale, in disarray. I recalled the word 'weeks' and wondered when time had begun to slip beyond my grasp. When the person in the mirror had the chance to become a ghost. It didn't really matter; what was done was done. The only thing left was to decide what was to be next.

I unpacked my box. A few ration bars I didn't want to eat were tossed in the corner. There were several pads of notepaper, a complete set of aerial maps for the colony, a pack of red and blue markers, a pack of plastic explosive and a few fuses. The usual. Duo grinned to see the yellow plasticine; there was no use for it now but the man had put it in anyway. Some traditions were hard to break.

I laid the aerial map for the whole colony out on the table and starting at the north gates began to trace the 'correct procedure' path through the colony. I estimated them to be three days from my little shop, four from my room. I had no doubt they would find me here if I did not go out to meet them.

I took up the pad of paper and a red marker and began to write. I do not know what words I put to paper, only that the ink flowed from the pen and that they were, perhaps, the only truth of myself that has ever been written; that I have ever allowed out. When the pen stopped I did not read the words written there, but folded it neatly. Then proceeded to make a small box from the explosive. It was a simple thing and when I put the folded paper inside they seemed to go together as such things had in the war. I set it all with a fuse. No one would ever know the contents of that box but me, and I tucked it in a small alcove behind my mirror and that was that. Duo Maxwell was in a little yellow box in a room he was familiar with, and the mask could walk out and greet them, none the worse for wear.

So I packed the supplies back into the box, slid it all under the bed and left, knowing full well no one would enter that room in my absence. This was a room I was familiar with; the others who had been were long gone. Ghosts, like me.

It was dark when I finally reached the point I assumed the search party had reached, early morning by my guess. The streets were relatively quiet, a few bums standing around barrels with shimmering flames within providing a small hint of heat. I did not go to them, no longer one of them. I was a liar. Instead I chose the largest crossroad I could find in the vicinity and sat down in its centre. They would find me, I knew, and I was ready for them.

They came with the first signs of dawn, all four of them to that point where I imagine their search had ended the evening before. They looked tired, worn, but determined. I don't think they recognised me at first and I had time to study them, my would-be captors.

Zechs I knew least of all; he looked annoyed, furious that he had been sent on this mission and I couldn't blame him. A prince sent to fetch a disobedient street rat. I could understand him to a certain extent. His rancour seemed to rub off on Noin, who walked close to his heels, watching his back as ever. They were a pair cut from the same cloth those two, but it wasn't my kind of cloth.

Heero and Wufei looked tired, slightly haggard. I like to think they missed me, but some darker part of my soul was happy they suffered, was delighted they were in pain, wanted to see…see them dead. How long had I fought against that very idea and now some part of me wanted it. Perhaps I was a liar after all. Or perhaps I want something else and I just don't know what it is so I give it the only name I know; death.

Heero is the first, his sharp senses realising the mad bum in the middle of the road isn't moving, isn't trying to get out of their way, is in fact just sitting here, waiting. He glares at first and I can't help but grin a little to think that is his reunion face. Then his face is clearing in shock and he's sprinting with a shout at Wufei. He almost makes it, but that final step eludes him and he pauses, arms outstretched, knees halfway bent to the ground, face blank, body frozen.

"Duo…"

I cock my head to the side at the same time Wufei pushes past Heero and with no hesitation falls to the road and throws his arms around me. It seems the cue for Heero who finishes falling to his knees and throws his arms around both of us. And all I want is to push you off; to get rid of you, or maybe…to just get rid of myself before I do something I might regret.

They don't know what to say and I almost laugh to realise it. These are the two who shattered my mask, broke down my walls and destroyed everything I believed in. They made me feel, accept…love. They always knew what to say; knew what I needed to hear. But I didn't need to hear anything now and I think they knew that. I needed to be left alone and they knew that too but could not leave me be.

"Duo Maxwell, you re hereby under house arrest according to the Preventers policy 743."

I looked up at Zechs with a scowl on my face. House arrest? Why not just shove me in handcuffs and be done with it, it was obviously what he wanted. Or a straight jacket; that's what the file in Sally Po's office wanted. But I didn't say anything. I didn't object. I let them lift me up, and I let Heero carry me when they realised I couldn't really walk on my own anymore. I let them drag me back to their hotel and lock me in my room like a wayward, disobedient child and I just sat on that bed while Heero and Wufei fumed, ranted, raved.

I don't know what they expected me to say to them. What was one meant to say at a time like this? So I just watched them, finding the play of rage across their faces fascinating. The truth is…I don't think I care anymore. Something has changed, altered, shifted. I am not who I was, not who I have been; I wasn't even a mask anymore. I'm not really here at all. This body is living still, breathing in and out, but behind these eyes, in the window…there is nothing but a reflection. Duo Maxwell stayed in the mirror; traded places.

"Duo…talk to us!" Why are you on your knees Wufei? Why are you looking at me like that? What do you see? Who do you think I am? What…what do you want me to say.

"I'm sorry."

Why are you both looking at me like that? Isn't that what you wanted to hear? Isn't that why we're here, doing this, whatever this is? Don't you want an apology?

"Duo…you don't…You've never…I mean…" So much trouble to say a few little words Wufei? Welcome to my world! And of course I've apologised, haven't I? When you're sorry it's what you do, isn't it?

Heero's hand runs down my braid, pulls it over my shoulder and he kisses it. I think I can almost see tears in his eyes. Tears for me, Heero, or for yourself? What good are tears? They're for the weak! When did you all become so weak? I want to scream, but what good will it do me? It won't change anything!

"Duo….promise me."

Heero…you never know what you're asking. Or perhaps you do and it doesn't bother you that you ask for the world and then some. I don't know…but those words. Promise me. You've asked for promises before and I've kept them no matter what it meant…do you know what it means to me? To have to hold true to the chains you beg me to put on myself? And then you label me a liar. I haven't lied; not to you! Never to you. Only ever…to myself.

Myself, who is gone. I will…promise you. I will…obey you. I will…stay with you. I will…follow you. I will…be a doll for you. I will…die for you.

"I promise."

And you're so happy to hear those words as the two of you push me down on the bed and have your way. And when it's done I just lay there, trapped between the two of you and stare at the ceiling. I don't recognise it. I don't recognise anything anymore. I know we will leave soon, leave for home, but I don't know home anymore and I don't want to go. But I will…I will go with you.

What do the wishes of a drowned man matter? You can't hear him scream for help, you can't see him sink beneath the waves, you can't catch him as he falls. So what does it matter? It doesn't.

This is a room unfamiliar to me. It's not large, or small but somewhere in between, non descript and hard to find in its anonymity. It's just a room and it has no real significance. It's just the place I am in right now, like all the other spaces I have hidden in over time.

There are things I have dreamt about all my life; a family who loves me, friends who will embrace me, a home to warm me, a life to breathe life into me. These things…will remain dreams to me. Locked away in little rooms of their own, to slowly drown and fade over time. And I will stay here, where I have promised to be while another me waits to be discovered behind a glass reflection that will mark its end.

No longer hiding. No longer running.

Just waiting, in rooms I am familiar with.

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