Rating: Mild R
Pairings: 3+4, references to 1x2.
Disclaimer: Yea, although I walk through the valley of Gundam Wing, I remain untouched by lawsuits, for I own nothing and lay claim to nothing. So mote it be.
WARNINGS: Angst, dark, semi-bastardized characters, language, violence
NOTES: ::this:: and (this) both indicate non-verbal speech of some kind; *this* is emphasis, you know the drill
Part 2: Hiding
I shivered as I tilted Howard's mission log towards the light source so that I could read it; by common consensus we had left the blinding halogen lights off and were conducting our self-appointed investigation by the soft glow of one of Trowa's hand-held table lights. "Why is it so damn cold on this station?" I demanded of no-one in particular. "It can't be healthy."
"I do not know," Wufei said absently from the other side of the table, "but the environmental controls have not been functioning properly for some time."
"You get used to it," Trowa assured me as he scrolled through data on a computer link, setting the printer to spool something out. While he was doing that, Wufei and I were comparing dates of the disastrous mission of three months ago, and Wufei let out a slight sound of satisfaction as he found whatever he was looking for.
"Here." Wufei rested his finger on a blank square in the calender, and glanced up at Trowa for confirmation. "November nineteenth, that's when Howard and his ships rejoined the main force."
Trowa nodded, and did a bit of mental arithmetic. "He'd been avoiding OZ ships in the area for about a week, so that places the date of Duo's capture on the twelfth." He looked across the room at me, a question in his eyes.
I pulled the calender towards me and studied it, trying to remember what had been going on at that time. Nothing really came to mind, so I ran down several weeks into December, and stopped. "Several times during this week --" I waved my hand towards a line of dates -- "I woke up in the morning with a feeling of intense nausea. The doctors didn't find anything wrong, so I didn't think anything of it at the time, but..." I trailed off and frowned down at the calender, running dates in my head.
A small stack of paper plopped onto the table in front of me, and I looked up into Trowa's closed expression. "The autopsy report," he said in a very quiet voice, and returned to his seat. For a moment I just stared at the paper in my hand like it was a loaded gun, then forced my shaking hands to pick up the paper. Forced my unwilling eyes to the page, and began to read. I didn't want to. I didn't want this cold uncaring evidence that told me my feelings were wrong, that Duo was really dead. More than anything, I didn't want to taint my good memories of Duo with this final and ultimate invasion of privacy. I didn't want to, but I read it anyway, because it was information that I would need if I was to figure any way out of this mess.
Wufei nodded in satisfaction as he checked the dates I had pointed out. "December ninth Heero, along with myself, Trowa, and a dozen other fighter pilots, staged a raid on Dixon base and recovered Duo's body." He recited the information like formulas from a science textbook, his eyes dark and still and fixed on the slip of paper in front of him. "The doctor estimated the time of death to have been sometime in the previous forty-eight hours -- so it would have been the seventh or eighth of December."
I did not respond. I heard his words, but my brain wouldn't acknowledge anything except the autopsy in front of me. The doctor had been conscientiously thorough in her report, cataloging each injury into a probable cause and time inflicted. The room began to dim around me, and my own breathing sounded very harsh in my ears as I flipped past the pages and skimmed over the neat clinical text and all the pain it hid. My eyes skidded to a halt on the last paragraph, and the meaning of Wufei's words became more apparent. Time of death between 1800 12-7 and 0900 12-8. Exact cause of death unknown; possible causes included blood loss, dehydration, malnutrition, exhaustion, hypothermia, systemic poisoning, suffocation due to liquid in the lungs, stress-induced heart-failure, blood clots --
It was funny. I'd been a soldier before I'd been a diplomat, but I never realized how many ways there were for a man to die.
Trowa was saying something -- I think -- but the words just weren't registering; I was only vaguely aware when Wufei took Trowa's elbow and pulled him out into the corridor. The door swung closed behind them. I did not see it. I only saw the final, damning words. The body was cremated within a few hours after the autopsy was completed. The ashes were scattered in space. Nothing was left.
An echo of the emptiness I'd felt from Heero came back to me then, and I shivered in the chill bright air of the base. Slowly, I folded the autopsy report back to the first page, and then placed my shaking arms on the table and laid my head down on them. My fierce denial to Trowa earlier, all my confident certainty that Duo was not dead -- could not be dead! -- seemed suddenly thin and weightless in the face of this cold, solid evidence. Duo could very well be dead, could easily be cold and lifeless and turned to ashes and scattered into nothingness because that was what happened when you died, and it didn't matter how bright and lively and special you'd been before that. Trowa and Wufei believed me -- or at least, they wanted to believe me, that was what Trowa had said -- but all I had to offer in the face of this nightmare was hope. Hope that was based on a power I had always possessed but never understood.
The sound of voices in the hallway drew me out of my reverie -- not because they were loud, oddly enough, but because there was an odd undertone to them which nagged at my memory. Something about those voices reminded me of... of drifting in a half-daze and listening to people talk around me. Reminded me of a half-forgotten suspicion, and I pulled my head out of my hands and cautiously stood up. Stepping lightly as a ghost, I made my way over to the door and pressed my ear against it. I could barely pick out the words, but enough of the meaning filtered through to fill me with a cold dread.
"Why did you give him the autopsy report?" Wufei's voice, a trifle angry.
"Because he deserves to know," I heard my lover respond, and he made no attempt to disguise the frustration and bitterness in his own tone.
"He does not need to know everything," Wufei countered, reasonableness filling his voice. "Don't tell him about the raid, Trowa. It will only upset him further."
"Damn right it would!" Trowa's voice rose slightly, but he brought it down again quickly. "It certainly upsets me, and I was there for the whole thing. We need to tell him. He needs to know."
"He does not," Wufei replied quietly, unyielding.
"He'll figure it out on his own, if he starts matching dates," Trowa bit out.
"Then he does not need us to tell him." There was a long moment of silence, and I used it to pull away from the door and return to my seat. I reached over and pulled the calender in front of me, pretending to study it while my mind raced. Before, I could dismiss the half-heard conversation as a product of my own paranoia; now, there could be no doubt. Trowa and Wufei weren't telling me everything. But what could they have to hide? And why?
I had to push my questions aside for the moment as the door opened again. I looked up, expecting to see my lover in the doorway and ready to confront him and do whatever it took to get the truth out of him. Wufei entered the room alone, though, and his eyes when he met mine were calm and closed. "Where's Trowa?" I asked.
He raised one eyebrow slightly at my suspicious tone, but simply replied, "He has things that he needs to take care of."
Damn. Wufei was the one who hadn't wanted to tell me whatever-it-was. "Then maybe you can answer some of my questions," I said, with just a hint of challenge in my tone.
"Maybe I can." He didn't twitch an eyebrow. There was probably no real chance I could force him to be straight with me if he was determined to keep me in the dark, not without touching off a major confrontation. Which we couldn't afford right then.
I sighed slightly and leaned back in my seat, eying the papers in front of me distrustfully. "So... now I know what happened to Duo." I swallowed convulsively as I spoke, but managed to keep my voice steady.
"Yes." Wufei retook the chair across from me and folded his hands in front of him, waiting patiently.
I pushed aside the papers and took a deep breath, looking up to meet him squarely in the eyes. "Now I need you to tell me what happened to Heero," I continued. I had to trust in him, trust that he would understand what I was saying and tell me what I needed to know without misunderstandings or evasions.
There was a long moment of silence, but I could tell from the expression on his face that he was not refusing to answer the question, but merely trying to decide how to begin. I waited as patiently as I could, tapping my fingertips nervously against the desk. The hollow clicking sound that evoked jarred my nerves, and I forced my hand to be still as Wufei finally stirred and spoke.
"It started when Howard returned to us," Wufei began, "and reported that Duo had stayed behind at Sentenal. Howard didn't know if he had been captured or killed or what, but when Heero heard, he... collapsed into himself. From that moment and through the weeks that followed, he sank steadily into a deeper and deeper depression that nothing could snap him out of. He wouldn't speak until spoken to, and sometimes not even then. He continued to do his duties, but it was obvious that he was forcing himself, and whenever he had nothing else to do he would retreat to the room that he and Duo shared and brood for hours."
Wufei grew quiet for a moment, as if lost in memories, and I could see him struggling for words. Slowly, he continued. "When we... raided the base... for a time it was almost like he was alive again, but although his energy had returned, he was struggling so hard with his own emotions that he was ready to explode at any moment. And when he saw... Duo's... body, something happened to him. I cannot describe it. I hope I never feel such things that would enable me to understand it. I believe he went mad, for a time, because he started killing the base personnel. Including -- I'm afraid to say -- the ones that had already surrendered. One of the men tried to stop him, and it is only through God's grace and Trowa's reflexes that Heero did not kill him too.
"Heero stayed with Duo's body from then on. Through the autopsy, the cremation and the minimal service that we had time for, and until we scattered the ashes. Then he locked himself into his cabin and did not come out for days. I expressed to Trowa my concerns that he might do himself some harm, but Trowa believed that there was nothing we could do, and I did not want to break down his cabin door while he still had a loaded gun with him. By this point, you see, I was beginning to believe that there was nothing he would not do."
He paused again, black eyes gazing into the empty space above the table. Although his story was painful to hear, none of it particularly surprised me, and it did not give me all the answers I needed. I knew there was more. There had to be more, and after a long silence Wufei began to speak again.
"When he finally came out, something inside him was broken. This was not the same as the despair he had fallen into before; it was darker, colder. Less human. He moved out of his old quarters; what he did with his and Duo's old things, I don't know. He certainly doesn't have them now.
"He returned to his duties with a vengeance, pushing up the pace of the war exponentially. Whatever was driving him, he became a demon on the battlefield. The troops, frankly, are terrified of him -- yet every mission he set out to undertake, he completed, with a ruthlessness I have never seen before. There was a darkness growing about him, and it continued growing for the last three weeks in December. And then..."
Wufei trailed off, a deep frown on his face. I nearly held my breath; whatever he was getting to, it was important, I just knew it. All my attention was focused on Wufei's half-shadowed face as he picked up the trail of his dark story, his words no less powerful for the quiet, matter-of-fact tone he used. "One day at the end of December, someone delivered a box to him. Not very big, not very noticeable. I remember seeing it when the man brought it into his office and put it on his desk; I didn't really think anything of it until later. That night, though, something very strange happened. I was awakened in the middle of the night by one of the security officers; a good and brave man, but he was terrified half out of his mind. He told me that half of the crew were suffering from intense nightmares, and that half of the rest were nearly mad with fear. He was not overreacting. There was a crawling terror in the air which I cannot rightly describe, and the environmental controls were not working properly -- the temperature was rapidly dropping no matter what the engineers tried to do. I went to Heero's cabin to inform him of the situation, but the door was locked and I was unable to initiate an override. In the end, I hacked into one of the security cameras in Heero's room. And as soon as I saw him, I knew that whatever madness had overtaken the base, Heero Yuy was at the heart of it.
"He was standing in front of the box that had been delivered to him that day, looking at it; the lid was up, but the angle was such that I could not see what it was he saw. His expression was not one ever meant to cross a human face; some of it might have been rage, or terror, or pain, but calling it that is like comparing a candle flame to a bonfire. There was not very much in the room that wasn't bolted down, aside from the box, but everything in it was shaking as if in an earthquake or a high wind, with no apparent cause. Whatever went on in that room unseen by human eyes, the audio recorded nothing but static.
"I am not ashamed to tell you that I was afraid. I shut down the security camera, destroyed the recording, and wondered if I should try to evacuate the base. I was just entering the communications center to issue a station-wide alert, when all of a sudden a chill ran down my spine, all the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and then it was over. I did not need to look at the camera again to know that it was over; the madness was gone from the air, and the men began to calm down. It never happened again after that one night."
He stopped then, watching my face as I took in this fantastic story, and I nodded, slowly, as I digested it. I knew that he was neither lying, nor overreacting; if Wufei believed he saw something, heard something, or even that things had occurred which could be neither heard or seen, then he was correct. I had no doubts. My mind clicked backwards, to the ridiculous New Year's Eve party I had attended, playing ambassador to the colonies for more than two dozen of Earth's most important diplomats. I remembered how, as the evening wore to a close, I had fled to an uninhabited corner of the garden. Tired, slightly drunk , thoroughly sick of playing word-games with bitter old men, and very lonely, I had watched the stars and reached out for my friends with my Spaceheart. It was a long way, but I could still seek and touch the distant luminous soul that hummed in time with my own heart, Trowa. I could still see the flickering bonfire glow of Wufei's fierce pride. And I could feel the bright sparkle of Duo's cheerful, vivacious spirit. I missed them, and for a long time I had remained in the garden, content to be with my friends in spirit, if not in body. That was the reason Trowa's announcement had caught me so off guard; all those times over the past months I had reached for and found my friends' presences had given me no reason to suspect anything was wrong. If anything, I would have been concerned for Heero, not for Duo, because it was his presence I missed. Only now did that absence begin to make sense; how could I have seen the black void that Heero had become against the cold nothingness of space?
"And now?" I said at last. Wufei shrugged slightly, and spread his hands to show his own helplessness.
"Now, I cannot say for certain," he sighed. "Since early January I have spent more time out of the base than in it. It was necessary for me to join with the troops; someone had to maintain loyalty and morale, and the troops continue to be terrified of Heero. I cannot in good conscience blame them; although he is no longer growing worse in his darkness, neither is he healing, and his eyes..."
Wufei broke off, and looked up to meet my gaze. "You, of all people, do not need me to tell you what is in his eyes," he said dryly. "So: You tell me. When you looked into his heart, what did you see?"
"Nothing." I shivered involuntarily, just remembering it. "I could see nothing."
"Empty enough for the wind to howl through..." Wufei murmured, more to himself than to me. I shook my head, and he raised an eyebrow at me in puzzled inquiry.
"I didn't say he was empty..." I struggled for words to describe it, the feeling of heart-to-heart transfer that human language never made words for. "Only that whatever is there, I can't see it. It's like you said, Wufei -- the darkness. It's like a living thing."
Another moment of silence passed, and then Wufei pushed back his chair with a sigh of regret. "I'm beginning to think I should not have left," he almost whispered. "Perhaps if I had stayed, I could have broken through to him, somehow let him know that he was not alone. But he seemed to be getting stronger..."
The agonized doubt in his hooded eyes made my heart clench. "Don't," I said, impulsively reaching across the table to place a hand over his. "You couldn't have known, and that's not where your strength lies. You and Trowa both did what you could, there's no need to feel guilty..."
"Maybe not," Wufei said quietly, pulling his hand away from mine. "But the truth remains that I abandoned a comrade in need, and it will be a long time before I can forgive myself for that."
I bit my lip and nodded; there wasn't anything I could do to change his mind, really. "Let's go find Trowa," I said instead, wanting to get moving as soon as possible. I pushed back my own chair and stood, stretching the stiffness and chill out of my muscles. "And then I think we should find out all we can from Heero's quarters before he comes back."
"Heero's quarters?" Wufei blinked in surprise as he, too, stood. "He keeps them quite thoroughly sealed -- he is a terrorist, you know..."
"Wufei," I reminded him gently, "so are we."