Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ The Dancing Fortress ❯ Chapter 3

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

(AN: A big thank you to my reviewers! KuraiMoon, don't worry-- I'm a bit of a 1x2 fan myself, I promise you that things aren't what they might have seemed.

In sadder news, my inspiration for this story seems to be going slower than that for other projects, so I don't know when the next update here will be. I can promise that the story will not die entirely, but other than that, I'm not sure.)

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CHAPTER THREE:

The Fortress is named due to the effect in has in the air around it: a shimmer much like a heat wave, that makes the image of the structure dance back and forth across the viewer's eyes. Some fame-dazzled songstress no doubt coined the phrase, once upon a time, and it stuck. However, in most places it's often also called the Vanishing Fortress, due to its tendency to completely disappear from wherever it's been seen last.

For much the same reason, another of its names is the Imaginary Castle.

To many, it's nothing more than a legend, though everyone has heard of it at some point in their lives. No mage had ever investigated it, to my knowledge-- I certainly hadn't. No one with the necessary money was curious enough, I guess. It wasn't any different this time around. Half-whispered gossip at the fire in a tavern, a buzz of rumour in the marketplace, but no one approaching me with a job offer. I was prepared to sip my beer and listen, and never do anything more.

Heero, as I discovered, had other plans. Ones that involved a hurried hunt to find the Fortress, tracing rumours and hearsay to its current location, and then an infiltration of its lower levels. I, of course, insisted repeatedly that he was mad, threatened on several occasions to leave him to his search and go my own way-- and complained bitterly the entire time I was boosting him through a low window in the dark.

Someone had to stay positive about the whole situation, after all.

Unfortunately, there are things that even my calloused soul can't make light of. I think I found most of them inside the Fortress' walls, and the sight of them will very likely give me nightmares for the rest of my life. One particular scene will be forever etched in acid on the inside of my eyelids: Heero kneeling beside the tiny, crumpled form of a girl, no more than a child. Her hair is red, spread across the floor, and her one visible eye is blue. She's looking up at Heero with an expression that is half frightened, half hopeful, and her mouth is slightly open as she whispers something to him. And around her are the filthy stone walls and rusted metal that make up the room, the slimy mildew and the dark dried marks that look like blood.

If I close my eyes, I can see that tableau as clearly as if I were still standing there at the door of that cell. I could do nothing but stare when I was there, and I can do nothing but remember now. I-- I don't think I've ever felt so helpless in my life. Or more ashamed. My little self-indulgent bubble was thoroughly shattered, leaving me to realize that there was infinitely more pain in the world that just my own.

And so I simply stood there with my mind numb, watching as the girl's expression changed to one of relief in response to some words of Hirei's, watching as Heero then stood in one sudden, graceful movement and returned to the door. He moved past me without ever looking back.

I think the girl watched me as I turned to follow. I might have heard her whisper a farewell. Or it could have just been my imagination, trying to create the illusion of life where there was so little left.

I caught up to Heero after a short distance in the near-darkness. We walked in silence for a rather strained moment, before I could find my voice and ask what he had said to the girl. And then he said the set of phrases that will probably echo in my head for just as long as that earlier image will haunt my dreams.

He said: "I told her that, one way or another, I'd make sure they'd never hurt her again." Then, before I could ask for clarification, he added: "If we can't get her out, I'll find a way to come back and kill her. Anyone in here would prefer to die than stay another day."

It was not the answer I had expected, and far more than I had wanted to hear. Without him saying another word, I suddenly knew that he had once been in that awful place himself, that he knew intimately who they were. I started to realize how he must have ended up so broken and torn in the road that day we met. Part of me gaped in awe that he had been able to make himself return, because I think if had it been me, I would have run until my legs gave out and never looked back.

A larger part of me wondered what could be important enough to make a man walk back into his prison.

And one small, high-pitched corner asked just what the hell I had gotten myself into.