{See the storm is broken / in the middle of the night}

The Sky Is Broken part 1/3

SongFic by Scheherazade

Song by Moby

Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to "The Sky Is Broken" by Moby. I do not own Gundam Wing. I am not making any money off of this fic. Please do not sue me.

Warnings: Yaoi, angst

Pairing: 3X2

Archived: also at PinkNina’s 2X3 contest site http://get-me.to/TroDuoContest

E-Mail the author at alicit@aol.com

C&C is appreciated, please send!

This is a fic for PinkNina’s 2X3 contest

{song lyrics}

* * *

{See the storm is broken / in the middle of the night}

I love the sound of thunder in his arms. Sometimes at night I just stare into his sleeping face and listen to the sound of nature raging outside. Our foreheads pressed together and our legs entwined in our bed. He almost always falls asleep before I do- I guess I tire him out.

I like to listen to the rain fall so hard on our roof, and the purr of thunder seems to echo in the corners of my mind. I stare forever at the soft fringe of eyelashes that graze the tops of his cheeks and the eyelids that temporarily hide his laughing blue-violet eyes. Well, they’re not always laughing. Sometimes they’re loving and soft. I see that sometimes when he thinks I’m not looking, he stares at me in a fashion not unlike the one I use when I watch him at night, in the dark. I used to not like the feeling of being watched. It made me feel uneasy and threatened, it kept me at alert for possible attack. A holdover from the war, I suppose.

When the storm is outside and I’m memorizing him like that, it seems like the war was an eternity ago, and not just a mere four years. It makes me forget that when we wake up in the morning we will don our Preventers jackets and start ‘putting out fires.’ That’s another thing I love to see in his eyes; fire. He looks at me with the fires of passion lighted in his eyes and I feel as though he’s suddenly become a pyrokenetic and lit me like a candle. I can feel the same fire steal into my own eyes as his eyes change to become "come hither" ones, and I can do nothing but obey. Later, he’ll have bedroom eyes as we indulge in our fantasies until the sparkling orbs become clouded with lust. If I weren’t so preoccupied while they were doing that, I might become trapped, waiting for the mystifying depths to change once more.

I see the shadows of the droplets on the windowpanes shadowed on his perfect skin. I watch as one ghosted pearl travels from his pale forehead, down the gentle slope of his nose to the cleft above his lips and then seems to drip to the corner of his mouth before trailing over his chin and down the sweet skin of his throat. The shadow rain passes over a small red mark at the junction of neck and shoulder and I’d blush, remembering marking him in passion as he begged for me to take him. I resist the urge to kiss him once more and settle for lightly brushing an errant strand of silk back behind his shell-like ear. It’s moments like those when I wish the world would forever be nighttime and the rain would keep falling so I can stay like this forever.

I lie awake in the rain, studying the plains of his face, and trying to memorize them, trying to picture his heart-shaped face and beautiful rosy lips in my head to test my memory, lest he be gone when I awake. That is my worst nightmare.

{Nothing left here for me}

In my nightmare, I’m standing alone again in the field. I start crying for my parents; people who I can’t remember in my waking hours, but seem to be a given to my dream self. I feel two years old again, crying at the wreckage of my life and screaming for my mother, father and dear sister to come back. I won’t remember them outside of dreams and when I do, it’s in sadness. The utter heartaching sadness of a child alone in the world and forced to do what no child should be forced to do.

Kill. It’s really ironic how good my relationship with the mercenaries was. They were like a surrogate family to me. They taught me most things a real family would teach a kid since they found me when I was still mourning my parents. They taught me how to cook, which I bet Duo thanks them every day for, and they taught me how to kill. But they also taught me about camaraderie by example, how they trusted each other in a world where everyone was against you. They trusted each other too much. I wish I could stop hating the traitors that were found among us. The ones who sided with the Alliance after our position was given away. The hated Alliance who took away my real family and my newfound one. They took away our commander, who was like a father to me.

In the field in my dream I see the explosions again, I see them die before my very eyes and I feel so very powerless, so very alone. But it doesn’t stop there; the loneliness eats at me until I see a shining object in the horizon. HeavyArms. All of a sudden I’m back in the cockpit. I feel the sense of belonging again for the faintest of seconds, and then I remember what I’m to do there. Kill. "Not again!" I sob as I feel my dream hands move of their own accord and wipe out everything. It’s just like it was in the war. All the suits are going down as I can see a small mental ticker just counting up the bodies. The heathen calculator won’t let me think they’re just machines and shows me the body count.

Yes, that was how I got through the war. I would just make like I was destroying robots instead of lives. That is, until I stepped out of the machine. Then I steeled myself, because when the adrenaline left my blood, the regret came to take its place. And I felt as though I’d break under the weight of the souls I had taken. The dream is ruthless. It strips away the hatches that cover the enemy Leos and I can see the faces of the pilots. Young men and women who didn’t need to fight. Young men whose fiancées were wringing handkerchiefs at home over them, if people have handkerchiefs anymore, young women who probably were in the same position. In my dream, sometimes the dead pilots have little tags hanging over their heads. It looks like an old computer game, and if you look at the tag it will have the person’s dreams and goals on it, an their family and friends.

Dream me keeps the same stoicness I had kept during the war, but dreamer me is screaming silently at the horrors I’d caused. And it can’t end there. Among the rubble I see a scrap of soft purple against the navy of the uniforms and the crimson blood and blackened shrapnel. I strain my neck to look and I see Cathy. My Cathy, my beloved adoptive sister, staring up at me in horror. She moves her lips but I can’t make out what she says. She starts screaming but I can’t hear her. So I do the most logical thing to do when you are in a dream. I go out of myself and float to her, but she’s still screaming at the dream me, who is out of the Gundam and pointing a cocked raptor magnum at her head. I’m standing at her side and I finally see what she’s saying, and it breaks my heart. "You monster!" she shrieks and I watch in horror as dream me pulls the trigger and kills her. Her blood spills from the hole in her forehead and her eyes are dead as metal as she slumps with a sickening sound to the earth.

All of a sudden, dream Trowa whips around and points his gun at another unarmed innocent. Well, I guess he’s just as bloodstained as me, but I always semi-worshiped him as an altar of purity in our impure world. He unwillingly stood on the pedestal for me, all the while blushing a little and trying to get me to see, what he always said. ‘You really are a kind person.’ Well, he wasn’t saying that in my dream. Quatre had a look of rage on his face an he yelled the same words as my Cathy had just before, "You monster!" He slumped to the ground after that too, shot higher in the head and more to the right. Dream me had put the bullet right through the right lens of those damned goggles that Quatre always wore on his head.

I’d hear the gun’s morbid click again and turn to see dream me pointing the gun at Chang Wufei’s head, point blank range. Wufei seemed to be unnecessarily calm, like he was dealing with a madman or something. And he was. I could hear his firm tone while he said, "Trowa, there is no honor in killing this way. You know that, I know you do." Wufei was about to continue when his eyes went wide in realization. Dream Trowa smirked. Wufei licked his lips, probably to say something else, but all he could manage to whisper was "You monster..." I wish I had the power to close my eyes in the dream but I don’t have the willpower. I can almost see the bullet enter his skull, in slow motion like in that old movie, and I can find the moment in which Wufei leaves that body.

I don't guess at what comes next, I know. It’s just like it was that time when I was in OZ. Dream me sprung over to point the gun at a crouching figure whose weapon is only halfway to ready. I always respected and looked up to Heero, because he was what I aspired to be during the war. But in my dream, my close friend merely gives dream me a cold look to match my own as he pronounces, clear and even, "You, monster." The perfect soldier’s body slumps in a disjointed bag of flesh with the fourth bullet from the gun.

"You Monster!" The voice of my beloved holds so much shock and horror, and the look on his face is of disbelief. His mouth hangs open as he stares at the desecration that surrounds me. His beautiful eyes well in tears as he tries to form his mouth into words to ask why. I try to run to him in my disembodied state, but am sucked back into the body of dream me, so my eyes are locked with his as I feel my finger curl around the trigger and pull the resisting lever back. I squeeze the now warm piece of metal ‘til I feel the kick of the bullet leaving the chamber and hurtling through time and space to take away the one thing I value above anything else. My Duo. His eyes still show my betrayal as the light flickers out behind them, and I can feel the hate for me that he leaves with.

At the end of the dream, I am left alone once more, with nothing left to care about but the crimson river that swirls around my feet. The gun had only five bullets, not enough to let me follow them. I sit in the mess of gore and curl up into the fetal position until the dream mercifully ends and I am greeted by the cleansing light of dawn.

{It’s washed away}

The glory of the morning after the rain pushes the shadows of sorrow as the light filters in the window. On this one particular morning, I groaned and slit open my eyes slowly so as to not expose them to the unfriendly light too quickly. When I had fully adjusted to the brightness, I was greeted to the sight of Duo, grinning and staring at me devilishly. He had wrapped himself up in swathes of cloth that were recognizable as our sheets and had only his head poking out and the tops of his fingers. I raised one eyebrow at him, wondering what sort of devious plan lay behind those eyes. He quickly put on his best lost puppy dog face and said, in the most innocent voice he could conjure up, "Trowa? I got tangled in the sheets." He lowered his eyelashes so he was peeking out from under them demurely while he purred, "Could you help me get out? I promise to make it *worth your while*"

How could I be expected to turn down an offer like that? I grabbed the bundle known as Duo and jumped up so that I was straddling what I presumed to be the hip part. Duo snuggled down into his sheet cocoon looking very pleased with himself, and it was becoming rapidly evident that I was pleased with him as well in my nude state.

I do so love unwrapping presents. Almost as much as I love unwrapping Duo. Well, actually, there is nothing even close to unwrapping Duo, but that would ruin my whole pun, now, wouldn’t it?

Seeing as that was one of those days in which we were obliged to go to work. we quickly showered, separately, so as to assure that we would not be any later than we were apt to be. You’d think that Une would have gotten used to our chronic tardiness, but she was always disapproving. I guess I must have made too good of an impression while I was posing as an OZ supporter working under her jurisdiction. I just realized that I had the same boss then as I did in the war. Most of the times we were late, it was because of some sort of completely legitimate reason and Duo always gave Une our excuse. For instance; Duo blew up the microwave trying to make hot cocoa ("How was I supposed to know that the cup had a metal band around it?"), I made us wait while I fed a stray tiger cat ("You should be proud that your Preventers are so considerate of unfortunate life forms."), or that our car wouldn’t start ("...And I wouldn’t want to get this lovely jacket dirty working under that greasy car...").

By a few months of this, Une had found a sarcastic or biting remark for each of these excuses, especially the ‘considerate of life forms’ one. But I got the feeling that she looked forward to ‘Maxwell’s Daily Report’ as it became so *lovingly* dubbed by our *considerate* co-worker, let’s call him W. Chang, for anonymity’s sake.

Suffice it to say that life was good.

{The rain pushes / The buildings aside.}

It’s so amazing how the horror of the nightmares is pushed to the farthest corner of my mind during the daylight. My days are filled with fun and joy, all thanks to Duo. He has given me a better outlook on life and put so much laughter and love into my life. He’s still cracking just as many jokes as he did before, although I’m pleased that they have become less dark as he’s learned to leave the past be. I’ve started joking around with him too, and once he got over his initial shock of my coming upon a sense of humor, he’s been rather proud of himself in ‘bringing out the clown in the clown.’ Yes, all the credit goes to him.

I don’t know if I’d still laugh at that joke. It wasn’t a real joke, of course, because it came from Heero. But if it was just our life today, and we’d been talking, and Heero said, "Let me give you one word of advice." And I’d say "What?" of course. And he’d reply, "Dying hurts like Hell." When it was during the war, I laughed. But now? Now, I don't know. I hope I wouldn’t. I hope that the stoic soldier that found the humor in that is gone, for the most part, or at least not in charge anymore.

But, back to that day.

I got to work, typing up a report on a former military facility’s metamorphosis into a storage site. Routine paperwork, but I couldn’t concentrate. I was getting that strange ‘something is going to happen’ feeling in the pit of my stomach. I had a rather extensive conversation with Quatre over that sensation one time. We had arranged to meet in a coffee house before he was to go to a conference in the city.

Duo and I had moved to upstate New York in America from our colonies because we both were so in love with the real weather on Earth. That might seem a little strange to anyone who hasn’t lived in the colonies, but the randomness of the weather here is so refreshing after the pre-programmed psudostorms we had on the colonies. I love waking up and not really knowing how the weather is going to be that day, having to rely on the weatherman’s predictions which are oftentimes wrong, especially with the lake effect from Ontario factoring in. I am enamored of the rain we have so much of, even though many locals and earthlings complain constantly about the "miserable weather." Duo adores he snow that penetrates the winter months here. In our first winter here, I think he tried to make up for all the childhood years that were spent without this type of frolicking. We went sledding in a local park and built snowmen in the snow. When Duo made snow angels, they all had a little triangle coming off the side of their heads from his braid that sways in the snow. He then learned to put it up above his head so that his angels had ready-made halos.

Oh, damnit, the day, right.

I thought that the feeling was coming from he fact that Duo had to go on a short mission with Wufei, it was only going to take about a day. They had to deal with a couple of colony leaders on L-3, who were in deadlock over rights to a particular trade route. Sally and Noin had been working with them until recently, when it became obvious that they needed someone more abrasive to try and get the stubborn old men to pay attention, plus one of the men had been harassing Noin so she slugged him. From what I had gathered, Wufei was going to scare the men into cooperating, and Duo was going to sweet-talk them into a deal. A sort of political "good cop, bad cop" routine, if you will.

I was uneasy about letting him go, but, with the assurance from Noin that at least one of the leaders would be on best behavior, I didn’t object too loudly.

At the end of the day I printed out my report, said goodbye to Heero and the extremely frustrated Sally (who would be later venting to Une about the injustice in the way that she was not taken as seriously as others because of her gender. I think that she may be spending too much time around Wufei, or too little, whichever way you care to look at it.) and turned my papers in to Une. I was about to leave my office, having gotten all my personal belongings, when I saw Une, again, at my door.

Her brow was furrowed in consternation as she found something extremely interesting in her shoes, and her hands clasped and unclasped in front of her. "Une-sama, I was just leaving. What is it?"

She cleared her throat and leveled her eyes at me. "I just got a call in from the L-3 police." The feeling came back stronger and I felt nauseous as Une continued. "There was a car accident." I felt my knees go weak and my throat felt fuzzy. She swallowed once before continuing. "The other driver swerved into the oncoming lane." This wasn’t sounding good. Une was taking too long with this news, she was usually very straight forward. This meant nothing good. Une’s eyes suddenly softened in compassion, "They said she died on impact. She didn’t even feel any pain."

Somehow my throat opened enough for me to speak. "Cathy..."

"I’m very sorry, She’s dead."

{The sky turns black}

Cathy was like family. She was the one who took care of me when I couldn’t remember the faces of my closest friends. She kept hoping for me even though I didn’t recognize her. She was always so loving, trying to protect me like a mother bird. She saved me from myself when I felt like letting go. She didn’t give up on me, even when I had given up on myself. I gave her all the love that I had given to my family and she had given it back to me unconditionally. She always opened her arms and her home to me and any lost soul I had brought with me. She was always laughing and trying to get me to laugh. She put up with my silences and moods. She was my family.

She was the only family I had left, so she couldn’t be gone. She was the only family I had left...

And she was gone. Oh, Cathy.

{The sky...}

I got into my car and drove home alone. I found myself becoming hypersensitive to the traffic around me. I kept expecting an oncoming car to come and take me away, like it had done to Cathy. When I saw the flashing lights of a police car up ahead, I nearly had a panic attack. I kept thinking that that was Cathy and that she was in a mangled wreck just off the shoulder, bleeding her life away. It didn’t even help when I saw it was just some guy pulled over for speeding.

Duo and I had bought a small house in a suburb. It didn’t take long to drive into the city so we could go to work, but it was far enough away from the constant hubbub of the masses that we could feel like we had enough room to run around in. Our house was a golden yellow color with black shutters. It had four levels, consisting of two attic rooms, an upstairs with two bedrooms; master and guest. The guest room was reserved specifically for Catherine or Hilde when they visited. Now it was just for Hilde. We also had our workroom (with a futon for other guests) and a bath. The first floor had a dining room, living room and kitchen, and the basement was partially finished with this built in bar that was really what sold Duo on the house.

I walked up the staircase to our room in a daze. I pulled off my jacket and shoes and sat on our big bed for about half an hour just staring at the wall. This couldn’t be happening. She couldn’t be dead. I felt the denial start to creep back through my skull. Walking out towards the stairs, I thought about going downstairs and getting a bite to eat, but then I thought about the vegetable soup we had in the fridge from her and lost my appetite. Looking towards the bathroom, I decided to take a shower to clear my head. I locked the door behind me, something I rarely do anymore, and peeled off my clothes, leaving them in a pile on the floor, even though the laundry chute was right next to me. I ran the water so I came out in the perfect temperature and strength. I had it figured out so I could do it in my sleep if I so wished; two full turns hot, one turn cold. I stepped into the running water and just stood there for a minute before realizing that I had forgotten to take my watch off. Quickly, I undid the clasp and leaned out from behind the curtain to fling it over to the sink, where it landed with a dull clink.

I tired to fill my head with good memories but they kept being intruded on by the deadness that thinking of Catherine gave me. I used every ounce of concentration left in me to conjure up the shadow of a beautiful day spent with Duo.

{Push it out to sea}

It was our second year together in our new locale and we’d acquired enough money to spend on frivolous objects. Hours of overtime and special assignments all amounted to just enough to fully pay for a nice little sailboat. It wasn’t stupidly large, it hat two small berths and a long middle part for sitting underneath, but the best part for us was the deck. Duo was the self-appointed captain of our little vessel, which was fine with me, because having to steer the boat would have ruined my plans to sit at the prow while we were sailing. We docked it in Sodus bay, which is a nice little harbor off of Lake Ontario. The first time we ever took it out was perfection. Duo used the motor to get us onto the lake then I rigged the sails so he could turn off the motor and we just let the wind propel us. I sat with my legs hanging over the side and leaned on the wires that surrounded the edge of the craft.

I loved the feel of the fresh air on my face and in my lungs and the spray tickled my feet with its inviting coolness. We anchored the boat in a small cove used for swimming and splashed around in the lake’s cool depths. When we tired of that we just lay on the deck, sun-drying ourselves and baked while we napped in the warm sun.

The water I was running suddenly turned very cold and I was cruelly jerked back to reality. The spray on my face seemed to be taunting me, bringing me back to reality when all I wanted was to get rid of it. I turned off the tap and reached for the towel. Patting it against my face, I suddenly felt a wave of sadness envelop me.

{There’s nothing left here / for me}

I sunk down into the bed and waited for something to happen. With the blue towel wrapped around my waist, and no particular inclination to get new clean clothes anytime soon, I lay with my legs dangling over the foot of the bed and closed my eyes. For a little amount of time, I watched those patterns you can see on the backs of your eyes when you push on them, scrubbed my eyes to prevent myself from sleeping. They finally dropped to my sides as not-so-blessed sleep enveloped me.

{I watch it lift up to the sky}

I was dreaming again. This time, it felt as though I was watching a scene from up above everything, or that I was watching a police helicopter video. In the dream I could see L-3, specifically a street near where I used to live. I could see the roof of the grocery on the corner, and the library that was across from it. I could see, in the distance, the hulking mass of the industry part of the colony backing the regal building of the college. In the other direction was the skyline of the commercial sector plus a small apartment building where Cathy lived, not too far from where I was hovering.

I turned my attention onwards, and watched the traffic zoom under me. Idly, I watched the different colored automobiles speed through the intersection in a carefully choreographed pattern. First the vertical line moved and then the horizontal. I noticed a pale blue car go first through the intersection. I started following it with my eyes. It looked like Cathy’s car. It traveled along the stretch of road, towards the tall building in the distance. It seemed that the rush hour traffic had suddenly gone because I only saw one other car on the road. It was coming in on the other side of the street, rather fast actually. All of a sudden, a small cat ran out into the street in front of the oncoming big red truck. The unknown driver swerved to avoid it and plowed into Cathy’s car. The force sent it into a 360 spin and when it comes to rest I can see that it is completely crushed. There was no possibility of survival.

All of a sudden I was in the car with her, in the passenger’s seat. She was dressed in her street clothes and was humming a little to herself while she drove along. It was one of the tunes that they’d play in the circus during our act. She was completely oblivious to the danger that I was so painfully aware of. I tried to call out to her or get her to notice me, but I couldn’t. I put my hand on her shoulder, to try and shake her, but the appendage just disappeared into her body, as if I was a ghost in her world, or she in mine. The red menace appeared in her vision, and then swerved. She slammed on the breaks but it was too late.

{I watch it crush me}

The impact whipped me back and I felt my head crash against the ungiving headrest. Then I was flung forward to hit my head against the dashboard. I dimly realized that the airbag must have malfunctioned as I felt my head crack on the plastic. The spin of the car was dizzying to my swollen brain.

When the car came to a halt, then I felt the searing, wrenching, throbbing pain permeating my head and neck. I felt as though I had fallen victim to ten migraines and three major hangovers all at once. I had thought, before this, that you could not feel physical pain in a dream, but you can. Physical and emotional pain welled within me as I realized I couldn’t feel or move my lower body, but I can see the blood. The worst part was the realization that Catherine was right next to me, I can’t bear to turn my neck because of the pain, but I could hear her labored breathing and see her blood mined with mine. Out of the corner of my eyes I could see two identical rivers of blood, hers and mine, mix and pool on the flooring.

My heart broke as I heard her whimper, then sigh. I gasped at a single word from her, and then my world went dark.

"Trowa…"

{And then I die}