Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ The One-Eared Neko ❯ THE SEDUCTION OF PAIN ( Chapter 12 )

Part 12 THE SEDUCTION OF PAIN

"No."

"Stop arguing with me!" Heero snapped, his voice turning unnaturally immature and impatient. In the dim of night, two fierce blue eyes threatened violet back, and the traveler stood waiting sullenly with the metal door swung open at his hip.

Heero's gaze fell uselessly on the battered bohemian and could do nothing to convince him, only burn hopelessly on his face. His fingers clutched around the slippery metal frame, gritting in frustration. Just Duo's luck-it'd started to rain after he'd been thoroughly beaten. What a way to lighten the mood. The sudden summer rain shower had drenched both of them and now the steam rising off his frustrated expression could almost be seen.

In the passenger seat, Duo slumped back without a sliver of his former spirit. All of it seemingly had been emptied through the beating and bruising he'd received at the hands of the now deceased bounty hunters. And his body showed it.

Water matted his drenched, shoulder-length hair to his face and neck, adding to the image of the disarrayed bohemian, along with the blood and shadows of bruises covering his body. A thin sheen of water-diluted red leaked steadily from his nose, pooling pathetically in the corner of his lips. There were cuts scabbing on his face, the nape of his neck, and around his collarbone-mixed haphazardly with the midnight-colored bruises appearing from his neck down to his chest. His arms and legs hung limply from an exhausted torso like the disturbing limbs of a disowned doll, immobile without the guiding hands of its puppeteer. And, staring down at the beautiful, marred profile of the bohemian, he knew that puppeteer was gone. Duo's eyes were not tired like the rest of his thrashed being; they were cold, precise, and dead.

After all the bodies had fallen and Duo had collapsed, Heero had managed to lift the scrawny con man up and sling him up in a fireman's hold, hurrying for a new escape vehicle. Looking back, it was needless to hurry. Duo had slaughtered each of his pursuers and left their bodies where they had fallen. They wouldn't be following.

Over the time of the beating, the dark blanket of clouds had liquefied into a rolling cover of awaiting rain, which had poured down without warning. Heero had dragged both Duo and himself to the car, gently placing his travelmate in the passenger side of the red Corvette, but not before the impromptu rainstorm had soaked him to their bones. And now, rattled awake by the rocky path beneath the Corvette's wheels on the long trail down, Duo refused to move an inch or let Heero assist him at all.

The Japanese man was quickly dwindling on his patience reserves. His heart had broken minutes, seethed in a boiling puddle of fury in his stomach, jolted back to life with an injection of adrenaline, and most recently, had been enraged by an incredibly stubborn bohemian. He couldn't take much more of this. With the Corvette parked at an awkward angle in the muddy, waterlogged ditch beside the Isuzu, he was itching to leave this place as fast as the engine would take him. There was just one problem.

Duo's lifeless eyes shifted momentarily to the traveler's disgruntled face, slicked with lines of rain. And in a low, indiscriminate tone, ground out an order. "No. Get out of here and leave me the fuck alone." In his blank violet eyes, Heero could tell that there was no loathing in his expression, only this muddled signal he would be null to interpret. He started to object, but he was cut off as the bohemian moved without another word and gripped the wet handle of the door. With a surprisingly strong and careless jerk, Heero found himself being shoved to the mud and out of the way, allowing the car door to slam shut with a soft, aloof chuck!

Duo had pushed him! That… that… jerk!

He staggered up to his feet and glared into the window. He pressed his palm flat against the window, hoping to catch the attention of one bleeding con man. "Duo, stop this. Don't be so fucking stubborn! Let me help you," he snapped, still pressing his hand tightly against the glass. "Open this door."

He didn't even get to see the flat, disinterested look he wore before the bohemian reached down, with one arm folded around his tender, hurting ribs, and locked the door with a flick of his wrist.

Heero frowned and pounded his fist against the glass. "Duo!"

The bohemian turned his head and Heero wasn't even sure that he was still looking in the same dimension, let alone at him instead of straight through him. "Go home, Heero Yuy. I tried to warn you that this would happen," he said flatly, speaking just loud enough to get through the glass and no louder. He turned his head to stare off into the darkness of the forest, as if the traveler wasn't even there.

"Don't be ridiculous," Heero argued back. "You never said this would happen. You couldn't have known something like this would occur and neither could I." Momentarily, he won a distant glance, before Duo looked away once again, this time his movements more sluggish and jerky.

"Oh, yeah?" the bohemian asked quietly, staring dully out the window with a line of fresh blood leaking down from his nose over his lips. "Then how come I did know?"

In mild horror, the traveler watched as Duo ignored it completely and let it slide down the curve of his chin and drip into his lap. "Save yourself. Go home, back where you belong. My world is no place for you to be."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Heero growled lowly, kneading his knuckles against the glass, leaning forward in frustration. 'What do you know? I don't belong back there, anyway.'

The rain pattered loudly around them, assaulting his eyes, streaming down his neck, adding to the frustrations and causing him to bare his teeth in a grimace. Again, Duo refused to look at him. And that drove him mad, more so than all the contempt that Duo was miming lifelessly through.

"Listen to me, Duo Maxwell!" He struck his fist against the glass.

The bohemian stared off dully. "Leave me here. Take the truck and go back home to where you belong. I'm a big boy; I can go on by myself. That's an order, Mr. Yuy," he lulled dispassionately. After blinking once, very slowly, the lifeless gleam in his eyes seemed to corrode, until only the raw underbelly remained. He let out a low moan that was muffled by the glass and steel separating them and the constant milieu of rain. Heero watched his lips part weakly, remove his arm from his side, and bury his head in his arms against the dashboard. Bending his head down, he agitated his bloody nose and red dripped down his face once again.

That lovely sensation of pain was apparently paying him a visit once again and the bohemian apparently thought he needed no help.

Heero angrily pulled his fist from the window and slogged through the watery layer of mud across the ground, pacing to the other side and opening the driver's side door, which Duo had not yet gotten to. In his mild panic still lingering from the bounty hunters, he'd overreacted and forgotten that Duo had only locked the one door.

Heero clamored in the seat at the odd angle of the parked Corvette, crawling over to Duo, whom was slumped semi-conscious, bleeding on the dashboard. He frowned, but wordlessly pulled the injured man from the car with utmost consideration for his substantial amount of very tender bruises and boot-marks dug into his skin. The bohemian moaned quietly as he gave into the traveler's arms and limply allowed himself to be moved. His chin rested tiredly in the warm crook of Heero's neck, drifting uneasily back and forth from consciousness, breathing quietly as he pulled him to the open door.

When he finally was seated on the edge, Heero stepped back for a moment, and then reached for the battered con man again. He didn't fully trust Duo on his feet, knowing he very well could have scraps of fight left in him and might try to pull away, so he slid his arm under the bohemian's mud-caked knees and eased his other around his shoulders. Duo rolled into his arms like water to thirsty lips and laid there without a sound, blood and rain cavorting down his cheeks. For a moment, standing there and staring downward at his rain-slicked face, the vivacious bohemian with the seductive smile looked three days dead. Heero readjusted the weight, bouncing Duo a little and lifting his knee to momentarily support him as he got a firm grip on him.

He glanced down once more as he settled both feet into the watery sheen of mud, and wanted to make a harsh, frustrated comment about Duo's behavior, but bit his tongue and held it back.

Through the rain, Heero carried Duo out of the ditch and across the muddy gravel to the passenger side door of the Isuzu. He was careful not to jar him as he walked, biting his lip. The bohemian was curled against the wet warmth of his chest and said nothing.

In order to open the door, Heero regretfully had to lower Duo and press him tightly against his side with one arm, hoping his lifeless legs would be able to support him for a moment. Weak fingers, stirred awake, clawed at his waterlogged clothes and Duo pulled himself closer to Heero as he locked an arm around his waist for support. His head rested on Heero's arm.

Although the handle was slippery with rain, the Japanese man managed to grab and turn it, popping the door open. He once again scooped Duo up in a bridal carry and climbed inside.

Inside, it was dark and stale. A misty cover of green light from the clock on the radio dusted the seat, the digital numbers silently blaring the devil's hour. Two rain-drenched bodies were soon crowded inside, the first lying the second out on the seat and crouching beside him next to the narrow seat, leaning out to slam the door shut. The tattoo of the summer rain dulled to a distant drone and the sounds of the uneven breathing came into sharp contrast. Heero turned his head from glancing out in the rain, swallowing dryly, and looked down at Duo again, panting slightly.

The bohemian was laid gingerly across the seat, lying tenderly on his back so that his muddy, frozen bare feet shivered at the driver side door and his head rested uneasily on the passenger door. In the dimness, Heero could see his teeth bared painfully at each sharp inhalation. The blood would not relent and it leaked from his nose seemingly without end. It was no help that Duo kept twisting his head and thrashing mildly in distress. Heero frowned and moved to kneel beside Duo, sitting in the foot space and the dashboard prodding into his spine in order to give the injured bohemian a full bed.

"Stop moving, you're just making it worse. It's never going to stop bleeding like that," he said, rolling his white sleeve over his palm and gently soaking up the blood dripping down his face with it. However, Duo choked roughly into his sleeve and shoved it away.

"No, it's not that-!" He tried to say, gasping in mid-sentence and flashing his teeth in a pained grimace. The bohemian bucked suddenly, arching his dripping back off the seat to wildly claw at something. He hissed, grinding his teeth. "Oh, shit!" As he keened out between his teeth, Heero climbed up beside him so his soaked, trembling legs pressed into his side and he could put a hand on his knee. The confusion on his face soured into horror as Duo pulled a gleaming, dripping thing from his back with a half-cry of pain and tossed to the dashboard. The bloody pocketknife blade clattered wetly to a stop and began to drip.

Duo panted harshly as acid sparks of pain shot out from every nerve in his back. His chest rose and fell almost violently, like an animal thrashing against the cage of his ribs. Once he had thrown the knife, he collapsed tiredly to the seat and closed his eyes. "Goddammit-I couldn't even feel that until now."

"So. The pain's getting getting worse," Heero said solemnly. He wanted him to admit it.

The bohemian dryly swallowed some of the discomfort and nodded.

Meanwhile, Heero scavenged through his luggage, a knee propped on either side of the bohemian's shaking legs as he leaned over and rummaged. Retrieving what he wanted, he tossed it impatiently into the shadows. The ratty cot pillow and his own sweater, recently removed, were clutched in his hands as he quickly went to tending to the violently battered con man. Duo took the pillow and shoved it awkwardly beneath his head while the shirt was wrapped around his muddy ice-cold feet. Heero leaned down and bundled it tightly with the sleeves, assuring they would remain warm. The traveler turned, still straddling Duo's legs, and saw that the bohemian's arms had dropped limply to his sides and his fingers brushed the floor. Pain blurred his expressions.

"How is it?" He asked uncertainly.

"Just as good as it looks, Heero. Listen, there's some-some bandages and stuff in my suitcase… Could ya get 'em for me? I feel like horseshit-"

"Yeah," Heero acknowledged. He leaned over the seat again, and groped through the layers of luggage until the cold metal claps of the con man's suitcase struck his knuckles. Heaving it onto the back of the seat, he balanced it quickly and carefully, tossing the latches and opening it. Beneath him, the bleeding bohemian shifted to lift his aching head, gritting his teeth.

"The lid pocket there. Yeah. Grab those antibiotics, too. I'll need 'em."

After collecting a roll of bandages, a curious metal tin that appeared to be handmade antibiotics and a plastic bottle of aspirin along with a bottle of water, the Japanese man also snatched up the blanket and handed it to Duo, whose cold, muddy, and bloodstained hands snatched after it as eagerly as he could in his state.

"Jesus fuck, this hurts…Thanks," Duo coughed, shivering and pulling it around him. The bohemian gritted his teeth and settled his face against the fabric of the seat. He added eloquently, "Man, this sucks."

"Roll over and let me see that wound. You're bleeding all over the seat."

"Oh yeah, that's the worst thing right about now," Duo commented sarcastically.

Despite the sneer, he managed to follow orders and lay gingerly on a bruise on his side, his face pressed into the seat, breathing tiredly. Movement agitated the knife-wound and the coppery scent of fresh blood sifted into the air. Duo's nose cringed and his muscles ached, tensing around the wound.

Heero set down the rest of his supplies beside the bohemian's feet and leaned down with the antibiotics in hand, peering down to examine the wound. Lifting the blood- and rain-stained black shirt, Heero saw in the dark red slit in the small of Duo's back, just to the left of his spine. And above that, gashes administered by vicious boots and fists, bruising his skin.

He frowned. "I can't treat them all like this, and besides, your clothes are soaking. Take off your shirt."

The intense blue-violet eyes of the bohemian settled on him, analyzing him sharply. Eventually, they dimmed and lowered. Unbuttoning a line of hidden buttons at his collar, the shirt became wide enough for Duo to slide over his head and his hat and revealed the true horrific nature of the bruising to light along his slim, knobby frame. Unfortunately, the exhaustion had caught up with him and sunk into his bones, draining them as he undressed. Duo became half-tangled in his own clothing and Heero thoughtlessly leaned forward to help. The bohemian flinched noticeably as Heero helped to pull it over his head, but made no move to object and simply remained still, the cotton blanket collected in his lap. Heero balled up the bloody thing and tossed it to the floor.

Duo glanced at the sweater from beneath the rim of his black baseball hat, then back to the traveler as he continued with his nursing work.

There now were tiny trails of drying blood striping the side of Duo's head, knotting his hair, from the staples lodged into his head. Heero frowned at the disgusting thought of having one's hat stapled to one's head for the sheer sick pleasure of the torture, with bounty hunters sneering above you in your misery. But when leaned forward to fix it, a forceful hand clutched his wrist. His fingertips were barely brushing the rim of the hat.

Equally forceful, nearly glowing blue eyes sealed his lips shut out of their sheer intensity. "No touching," Duo said, tossing Heero's wrist down. "The face and hair is personal, and I told you to leave the personal shit alone, okay?"

"I'm not going to let you sit there with goddamn staples lodged in your head," the traveler said firmly with an underlying sourness. He was still straddling Duo's legs, scowling down at him. "That's just foolish."

"I can handle that later. You just do the rest, please." Duo's head swayed slightly, limply pulling the blanket over himself. "I'm fucking tired."

Heero complied obediently as the waifish bohemian laid down on the seat as trails of blood seeped from the wounds he'd suffered at the hands of six now-deceased men. The ratty cotton blanket was already stained with blood and mud, clutched to warm Duo's bare torso. Heero was unhappy as he gauged the severity of the wounds, but he had no other choice. Using his short fingernails, he managed to pry the lid off the tin without slicing himself and was presented with a dark red substance smelling of herbs that dried chalky and mildly acidic on his skin. His nose twitched at the foreign smell.

"What is this, exactly?"

"Like I said, antibiotics, healing shit. Whatever you so desire to call it," he slurred half-sarcastically.

Heero remained silent, still staring at the strange-smelling substance he held in his hand.

"It's Mother's home recipe, for scraped knees, bumps and bruises, or when I got gang-beat on the way home from school," Duo quipped darkly. "Trust me. That stuff works a thousand times better than any alcohol and it doesn't sting as bad, either." The bohemian's semi-pleasant tone faded into a bout of coughing and disappeared into tensions and pain. Heero didn't go to work instantly, though, and only stared through the darkness, still straddling Duo's shivering legs with the strange tin cupped in his palm. Something distrustful stirred within him, and all his suspicions began to become overly curious.

"Duo, how did she make this?"

"Leave the dead alone, Heero, and mind the living before they join them," Duo warned lowly, rolling onto his stomach and nudging his chin into the crook of his crossed elbows. The hidden barbs in his tone were not lost on the Japanese man. Silently, Heero nodded, and went to the task of tending to all the wounds.

Sometime later, the bohemian was lost to the world from the medical ministrations and had given into a black hole of sleep. It was restless and lifeless. Duo wasn't aware that he had been asleep until his eyes opened upon a much lighter shade of black sky and the dimming of the stars overhead through a glass truck window. Along his back, soothing warmth seeped into his wounds and the restrictions of bandaging lacing his torso. He'd been injured little beyond his chest; the bounty hunters had delighted most in hearing pained bursts of breath exploding from his chest and watching him struggle to take in a breath. Already, he could feel his skin knitting itself together with a mild stinging sensation.

Gingerly leaning up, he shot a level glance toward the traveler. A sliver of moonlight struck the back of his eyes for a moment, watching the Japanese man who sat harmlessly in the driver's seat looking out the windshield, and they glinted as fluorescent silver orbs for a split instant. Unbeknownst, Duo gave the traveler an impatient expression, one that could easily dissect him with even the slightest glance.

"Go on then," he half-taunted in his ill-mood "Berate me. Tell me what an idiot I am. I've been longing to hear it from your lips, Heero," the bohemian sneered tiredly.

Heero turned and stoic blue eyes responded dully, "I'm not going to."

Duo considered him guardedly for a moment, finally slipping into a mildly painful sitting position with his knees folded against the dashboard, but again his mood eroded into venom. He tossed the bloodstained pillow to the floor and stared out the windshield. "Liar. I hate liars," he hissed. Tense moments passed before Heero summoned up the raw nerve it would to confront the currently very disagreeable bohemian. He truly didn't want to pry into something that would upset him more than he already needed to be, but he needed at least a few answers from this questionable criminal.

"How did you get through the ropes, Duo?" Heero asked.

"I bit them." And much to the traveler's horror, the bohemian lifted his arm to display the bloody slashes scabbing on the inside of his wrist, which Heero had missed in the bandaging process. Duo limply let it fall back to his lap and still refused all eye contact, casually rubbing his nose and glancing around in apathy.

The traveler, however, couldn't be satisfied with burying a topic that was very much alive. His serious blue eyes fell on the profile of Duo's face in the darkness of early morning. "I thought you said those 'dumb thugs' couldn't lay a finger on you."

Duo shrugged. "Idiocy works better in numbers, I guess. Stupidity burns stronger, faster, more efficiently."

Heero frowned at the listless tone and dodgy answer. "That's not true, Duo," he said quietly. "Why did you even leave and go out there? Were you looking specifically to get in trouble?"

"No, it's just a lovely side effect," the bohemian growled dully, still not looking at him.

"Why did you do that?" Heero was demanding him patiently, but it wasn't working on the bohemian tonight, apparently.

"Do what?" Duo asked in return. Every ounce of his tone was exhausted and severely caustic.

"Why didn't you fire on them in the first place? You obviously had your gun the entire time, since you never go anywhere without it."

The bohemian glanced distantly out the window, bending his elbow against the window. He simply grunted in reply with an equally dismissive shoulder.

"Duo."

"Fuck off and let a guy get some rest, why don't you, Yuy?" the brunet bohemian said, kicking the dashboard just before he crossed his legs. The true display of hostility was his formal last name.

"I warned you that you shouldn't have let them live," Heero said, returning with a pointed look.

The other man's tone turned lethal and bitter and the moonlight gleamed on his frown, his snarling, bared sharp teeth. Still he refused to glare at the traveler, although the temper in his chest was accumulating into quite the spitfire. His eyes could have burned holes in the dashboard. He spoke in a harsh, brusque tone. "And I didn't. I sent them to Hell, Heero. I sent them to Hell just to make you happy."

"To save my life, you mean."

Duo looked darkly in his direction. "Living makes you happy, doesn't it?"

Heero frowned, but his nerve decided to still press its luck.

"I want to know why you didn't fight back, Duo. I know you're more than capable of fending off men like those, so why didn't you?" When sullen silence was obviously the only response he was going to receive, he skipped to another topic with equal single-minded determination.

He was an anthropologist of sorts now; he wasn't going to take bullshit from Duo after he'd endangered himself to save his life and only receive a wretch's appreciation in return. He was not a doormat. He'd pulled himself from out underneath his own conformity, he was traveling with a con man, a criminal-he wasn't as naïve and innocent as he may have looked. And across the way, Duo's nearly cruel blue eyes seemed to respond, 'What do you know about dangerous, little traveler?'

"What did you do to them to make them so angry, so vindictive like that?" he asked. "God, it seemed like you had killed their children or something-"

Suddenly, his voice filled the cabin and he ground a fist on the armrest. "Nothing!" Duo suddenly barked. "I did nothing to them, absolutely nothing! But fuck-why not kill me anyway?! Clean off all the scum before it infects everything!"

Duo's outburst seemed to suck away all the audacity in the traveler's objecting blue eyes, and a simple grimace was displayed in place of another displeased, prodding question. There a sharp hurt in Heero's chest, watching the bohemian snap to no one and everyone at the same time in a strange desperation. And he'd been the one pushing him further and further until he'd reached that small breaking point.

Duo finally sighed as the steady throb of pain underlying all his swimming, seething thoughts began to rattle the inside of his brain. With an ugly frown, he snatched up the aspirin bottle that the traveler had left on the seat and ignored the piercing looks as he popped two pills into his mouth and downed them dry. He gathered up the stained pillow and blanket and crawled very carefully into the sleeper compartment, leaving without so much as a benign "good night" or even a second glance. And when he was gone, Heero sighed and allowed his forehead to rest on the steering wheel.