By: Spooks
~ ~ ~ ~
Understandably, when I discovered that frightening line, I gasped in shock…Terminated. My breathing was hitching in my chest as the flashlight in my hand trembled, causing the shadows inside the tree to quake and dance around us, and eerie little sprite spawnlings of the shadows demons bounced around obscenely, pointing and laughing at me.
I was too shocked to even cry, and I was biting my lower lip so hard that it was almost bleed. I was afraid that I was going to start just crying or laughing or worst of all, screaming. I was afraid that if I started, I'd never stop…that I'd just keep screaming, and screaming, and screaming…until my throat bled and my vocal chords burst…until I would have screamed myself to death. This was not the way I wanted to exit this world, so I just bit down and held on to my mind, forcing some control into myself.
The world swirled around me, and my vision tunneled down to stare at those words "Status: Terminated." Oh, God, it makes me sick to think about it even now. Hold on… Okay, I'm back. I had to gather myself together again (as if you noticed, for all you know I could be dancing a jig as I write this. Well, I suppose you'd notice the shaky handwriting as I danced…uh-oh, I'm going off on a tangent again, aren't I?).
After all that happened, this was one of the worst things I could actively imagine. Of all the shocks we had experienced, of all the shocks I myself had received before and since, this was by far the most brutal. My parents were good people. Good. People. They died, no, they were murdered…and no matter what I'm told I will always blame myself. Always. And from that moment on, I knew that I would forever carry that terrible guilt.
It was about this time that I realized that the other guys were poking me and asking me what was wrong. Wordlessly, I laid my parents' file down in the middle of our circle and pointed to the bolded words.
"I thought it was an accident," I heard myself say distantly. "I was wrong."
"Oh my…" I heard Wufei's voice whisper, and as I blankly watched, he glanced over at Meiran with a tortured look. I knew what he was thinking. If they had killed my parents, maybe it was so they could take me. After all, they had never tried to keep my second sight a secret.
What if… what if they had known about Wufei and killed Meiran? This thought almost made me want to start screaming again. But now, on later and more careful consideration, we came to the conclusion that this was not the case. At the time we were all very shocked and scared, so our minds were off and running with any little inkling or possibility that we could latch onto, so I think our reactions were actually reasonable. We were panicked.
"Well," Trowa said. We all waited for him to go on as we watched his eyes glaze over as he considered and listened to a little worry. "This is not good."
I almost laughed. Well, that was very true. This was not good. Nope…not at all. I felt rising hysteria creep up in my soul. It threatened to bubble up and spill out of my mouth in a never-ending tirade of maniacal laughter that would surely send me over the edge once and for all. Right when I'm sure I looked particularly nuts, I felt a hand on my shoulder. Looking over at Heero, I nodded my thanks at the gesture. Then I just blinked at him for a moment, took a deep breath and swallowed the panic. This could be dealt with later.
"Okay, guys," I said, clearing my throat in an effort not to sound so damn pathetic. "We only have about an hour of rec time left to work with these files and get them back, or we'll lose our window of opportunity. If we try and return these files tomorrow, we might get caught."
"Duo, are you okay?" Quatre finally asked after a moment of silence.
"It doesn't matter," I answered. I felt Heero's arm circle around my back and pull me slightly towards him. Leaning on him gratefully, I closed my eyes for a moment and gathered myself together. "I will be fine. I'm just shocked."
It was the truth. All that learning the reality about my parents had really done was add another layer of seriousness to our situation. Before it had just been us, but now it involved much more morbidly interesting possibilities. Just what the hell was going on and how far spread were its roots? I was overwhelmed, but I was going to be okay.
Honestly, though, it didn't really matter if I was all right or not, anyway. None of us were going to be truly okay until we were all free and away from here. Until then, nothing mattered except getting out and staying together. Of course, being sane and alive were both a couple of pluses that we were hoping for.
Silently we started leafing through our papers again, and I picked my parents' file back up and started to flip through the few remaining pages. One thing that I noticed was that my parents' old bureaucratic/corporate affiliate, their sponsors and collaborating company for their government research, also owned good old Bryce, our current not-so-sweet home. Back when I first moved in, I remember this place being a total shithole. Well, a shithole with a good reputation for rehabilitation. At least, that's what I had been told.
In the time since I moved here, since Romefeller Pharmaceuticals had taken it over, they had slowly been pouring more and more funding into this place. I guess it made sense for them, as part of the bureaucracy that had to pay for my care anyway, to stick me in something they owned. Probably made for easier paperwork. At any rate, it made all the renovations, all the new paint work and the new orderlies start to make a bit more sense. If they were using this place for ulterior motives, then all that funding would make good sense to them, wouldn't it? And since Romefeller Pharmaceuticals was a government-related corporation, then maybe the government was involved, too. Oh, there's a great thought, the authorities are in on it, too. Cheerful.
Anyway, I finished with my parents' file and started to flip through mine. I had sneaked a couple of peeks at it in the past, so not too much was all that new and shiny to me in the front few pages. As I flipped through, my now cynical eyes started to pick up on the roundabout way the psyches had avoided speaking directly about my condition. It was always just that, a condition, or a "fantasy," or even just described as elaborate lies to bring attention to myself. Then I got to the section from the doctor that had recommended that I be enrolled in this asylum, and I noted with very little surprise that he was a Romefeller recommended therapist. 'Big shock there, the big name assholes wanted to keep their shit in a neat little pile,' I reasoned.
Finally I skimmed my way to Dr. Quinze's notes. They were collective notes on all five of us, because I guess he hadn't bothered to separate them after our group sessions, instead opting for the lazy approach of just sticking everybody's files with the same crap. Flipping through the neat photocopied papers of the lined notebook and ink scrawls, I wasn't terribly amazed to see the way Quinze's neat little handwriting went seamlessly from margin to margin, with minimal spaces between each meticulously scribed word and sentence. He was so anal retentive.
As I scanned the beginning notes on the first page I skimmed over the expected drivel about our attitudes and such, but on the pages that were copies of notes made during our so-called standard physical testing, I realized that he had taken more notes than seemed necessary. There were a bunch of strange little comments like, "compatible with objectives," and "physical standards met." In fact, on the final page of the notes about the testing, there was an underlined little scribble in the margin, "Subjects are go for the St. Dymphna Project." This gave me a bit of a start, because I recognized that name, that saint.
Right when I was about to open my mouth and ask the other guys about this little note, Wufei beat me to the punch. "Anyone know what the 'St. Dymphna Project' is?" He asked, a perplexed look upon his noble features.
"Yeah, I've got a couple notes on that from the very beginning of my doctors' notes," Quatre added.
"Okay, did anyone else notice anything about a few of your doctors being under Romefeller pharmaceutical's umbrella of companies and doctors?" I jumped in, starting to make a few connections in my mind. "They own this place, after all, and my parents were affiliated with them in their government research," I paused for a second, swallowing hard. "In fact, my bills and care are paid for by them, since they are part of the bureaucracy responsible for my parents', uh, deaths."
"That doesn't sound like a mere coincidence," Trowa said quietly. "And yes, my last doctor was employed by one of their subsidiaries, now that I think about it."
Heero had been writing during this little conversation, and he handed me his note to read to the other guys.
--I have no memory of my childhood, but I have always been in Romefeller's care.--
"My father works with them on several of his business ventures," Quatre said thoughtfully, his eyes widening slightly as he looked at all of us in turn. "One of his business associates there recommended the psychiatrist that put me here."
Wufei nodded. "I'm not sure about my doctors, but this is too much of a coincidence to be completely innocent. What about this St. Dymphna thing?" He finished, wrinkling his brow in impatience. Meiran gently put her translucent hands on his shoulders and rested the point of her chin on his head. Immediately Wufei relaxed a bit, and he leaned back a little so that their auras mingled a bit more.
"Well, I can answer that," I replied. "St. Dymphna is the patroness of a whole lot of stuff, and most of it has to do with mental illness and things like that. I'm talking insanity, mental asylums, psychiatrists, and just about anything else to do with mental health. She's also a patroness of lost parents, a coincidence that never fails to amaze me with its irony in my case. Oh, and martyrs too, since she was one." I rattled off the information quickly.
"How do you know about all that?" Quatre asked curiously.
"Well, my father's brother was a priest, and so I knew a little bit about saints in general just because of my contact with him. He died when I was about ten, though," I dropped my gaze for a moment, then looked back up at my friends. I found myself leaning more heavily into Heero's side, though. "So when my parents were gone, and I was starting to be diagnosed with all sorts of mental disorders, I looked up the patron saint for that kind of stuff and read up on her. I needed some sort of distraction, and besides, I was curious. It's some interesting reading, let me tell you." I rambled for a little while, trying to erase the tiny twinges of memory and pain with a torrent of words. I have a tendency to do that, a fact that I'm sure you've noticed by now. I don't know why the guys picked me to write down our account of what happened here. I swear, Trowa probably could have written three pages and successfully put down our entire story.
I guess the other guys picked up on that little rambling habit of mine, though, and they let me go on for a while, despite the ticking away of our precious time. I suppose it didn't really matter, anyway, because after Quinze's notes there was nothing worth looking at. I'm sure the others were thinking the same thing that I was. Anything more interesting would be found in a more secretive location than the general file area.
After I finished my little narration of my wandering thoughts, our conversation went in the expected circles of discussing the various notes and such. The important stuff was already finished with, and now we were just killing the time and trying to stumble across some sort of revelation. Of course, we weren't really expecting too much, but none of us wanted to leave the tree before we absolutely had to take back the files. It was our little sanctuary, after all, the only place any of us really felt safe.
But soon free rec time was about to draw to a close, and people were going to be heading back to their rooms once they were shooed away from in front of the communal TV area. Therefore we had to get our asses in gear and get those files back. Trying to keep them overnight would have been asking for a truckload of trouble, since we wouldn't have another chance until tomorrow evening to take them back. If we were really were such a hot commodity, then they might miss our files before then. That would have been really just asking to get our balls placed in a vice grip, which undoubtedly, would have been quite an unpleasant experience.
So we headed back, planning to basically repeat our same modus operandi as when we had taken the files to begin with. We'd load me up with the files in a bathroom, send Trowa and Quatre ahead of us, and then the rest of would follow, with me leaving Wufei and Heero to guard their end of the hallway while I returned the files. As before, Meiran would pop in and let me know if there was any trouble or if I needed to hide.
Thankfully, everything went well, and I was able to return the files without too much trouble. As we met up again after leaving the administrative area, we happened to pass Otto. He nodded politely to us as we passed, and we all gave our own versions of acknowledgement in return. He really wasn't such a bad guy, he had helped us today and there was just something about the guy. I don't know, but I felt like off all the people here, he was one of the few we could trust. This was a huge turnaround from my earlier misgivings about him, but it felt more right to consider him as a potential ally instead of a potential threat.
But anyway, I'm rambling again. We got back to our room about the same time that the other patients were returning from their rec activities, so we didn't really look too out of place. Entering our little room and going about our usual routines for getting ready to sleep, we fell into a contemplative silence, each considering the day's revelations and this evening's new information in our own minds. Finally we lay down to sleep, all together in our large combined shrouded lower bunk.
As I drifted off, snuggled up and breathing deeply of Heero's scent, I could feel the subtle tremors of the other guys' movements as they tried to fall asleep. After a few moments, I felt my conscious mind begin to recede. I tried to prepare myself, because I had a hunch that Heero was going to try and send me a vision tonight, rather than simply guarding my dreams from the demons. I was hoping he would.
After all, who knew how long we'd be able to communicate like this? Tomorrow, they might come for me.
~ ~ ~ ~
For awhile I floated in a featureless void, pulled up and tightly within myself into a little ball of arms and legs as I drifted in a comforting oblivion. This was rest. This was the nice and lovely, a treasure that Heero reserved for me instead of having to fend off the dream demons. Any moment now, I knew in the back of my mind that I was either going to be in this restful state for the rest of the night, or that Heero would send me a vision. As I floated in the void, I really hoped that any moment now that I would be captured in a vision of my love's making.
Suddenly I felt a tugging sensation at my shoulders, and I uncurled from my tight posture and stretched out, allowing the familiar twitch of new muscles to contract and let me spin my way through the void. Acting on pure, mindless instinct, I allowed my silence wings to carry me in the direction of a spinning, soft white light that had appeared in the darkness. In moments, I was engulfed. The further into the tunnel of swirling sensuous light I flew, the weaker my unseen wings felt. As I whisked along, I started to feel myself bob slightly, getting lower and lower in the void, towards an unseen ground.
In the blink of an eye, I found myself touching my bare feet down on a cool gray surface. Blinking in surprise, I surveyed my new surroundings. Turning around in all directions, I could not see anything but a flat gray plane, going far off into a slightly curved horizon that met with a soft, darker gray sky. Looking up I saw that this sky was featureless, as though I were in a domed room with a perfectly painted and maintained ceiling that was just out of my field of vision.
Finally looking down at myself, I realized that I was only wearing my soft shift cotton pants, and I watched my bare toes curl and wriggle against the soft smoothness of the plain cool floor. Deciding to save my dream wings until last, I was shocked to see that they were much larger than they had been in other visions, but instead of sitting proudly on my shoulders, ready for flight, they drooped weakly, dragging the floor. Testing them, I groaned as the sore muscles protested with violent cramps. It was as though I had used my giant wings too much, as though I had not gotten used to their new power and had over extended myself. They thrummed with a hidden vitality and power, but the energy was not under my control.
I felt a presence in front of me, and looking up I was not disappointed to see Heero standing before me. He was only dressed in cotton pants, and his pale muscled form was almost enough to make me blush. My gaze traveled up to take in his overlarge wings, and with a shock I saw that one of them had been brutally broken. It dripped crimson blood behind him, but the wings stood proudly, as though Heero was used to using them. There was a new power pulsating from his dream aura, and it was clear that he was in full control over it.
At that moment, I heard that terrible shrieking start in the distance. Glancing around, I noted with mounting trepidation that far off in the featureless horizon there was a distant dancing of orange and scarlet flames. With my eyes widening and my wings dragging behind me, I hurried over to stand in front of Heero, just as he raised a hand in my direction and spoke into my mind.
You and Wufei will be next. This might be the last time that we have together, like this. This may be the last time you can hear my voice.
I managed to leap forward as best as I could and threw my arms around Heero, grateful to feel his arms circle around my back and return the gesture. In the distance, the flames were getting higher and the screaming was getting closer. Judging from how quickly they were approaching, I knew that they would be upon us in mere moments.
'Then let's not be torn apart by this,' I thought back as I pressed my face into Heero's neck. I awkwardly managed to maneuver my huge wings around us, and I felt drops of wetness hitting one of them as Heero wrapped his giant ivory wings around my ebony ones. Then we pulled our arms tighter around each other, and I felt Heero's hair brushing the back of my neck. It was so real, that if I didn't know better, then I would have thought this wasn't a dream, but an alternate plane of reality. Before I could think another thought, though, the flames and the shrieking were all around us, engulfing us with the burning fire and deafening roar of Heero's mental blocks.
It was unbearably hot as the dancing inferno surrounded us. I felt the feathers on my black wings burst and melt together into a painful parody of their former glory. In spite of it though, they protected my body enough that the flames couldn't reach my skin, and even with the torrents of wind that were buffeting us painfully, our wings were managing to shield us and keep us together.
The agony started to get worse, though, and the shrieking was starting to beat a terrible cadence in my eardrums. Any second I expected them to burst, to feel that familiar explosion of blood and fine bone in my inner ear, to feel the trickling sensation on either side of my neck. Not breaking my embrace, I eased my face away from Heero's neck. I had a sudden urge to look him in the eye before we were inevitably broken apart. Our gazes met and fused together, our cool violet and blue fire drowned out the dream fire surrounding us. When our eyes caught each other, all the pain disappeared, and the wind became irrelevant. The shrieking died down to a whisper, and time slowed for a few breathless moments as I lost myself in that deep blue gaze.
It was strange, I could feel the heat of the fire all around us, but suddenly it didn't hurt anymore. Leaning my head forward, I caught Heero's lips with my own and we kissed easily, our tongues sparing sweetly within the confines of our deliciously cool mouths. As the pleasant sensation held me, I managed to keep my eyes open. I wanted to watch Heero, and I had a feeling that if our eyes left each other, the agony would return. Evidently he had the similar suspicion, because as our mouths worked gently against each other and our arms tightened slightly, his eyes never closed.
Eventually we broke apart, and the dull roar of the mental block had burst my eardrums. I felt that now familiar trickle of blood and gore ooze down the sides of my neck, but again, it didn't hurt. I blinked, feeling a slight wetness at my eyes. I noticed as I continued to stare into Heero's deep eyes that he was once again leaking tears of blood. I pulled myself towards him suddenly, not breaking our gaze, but moving close enough that I could rest my forehead against his. I felt wetness drip from my eyes, and the tears fell onto Heero's cheek. Surprised, I leaned back slightly, and I felt horror mount within me. My tears were bloody scarlet.
Finally Heero broke our gaze and eased his hand to rest at the back of my neck. I allowed myself to be pulled forward, my chin resting on his shoulder, and his chin resting on mine. We were wrapped together as tightly as we possibly could be, and there was still no pain. As the fire surrounded us, having at last burned through our shrouding wings, it started to work on us. The shrieking had long since ceased to be a nuisance when we lost or hearing. The driving wind prickled the fire against our mostly bare skin.
I'm not going to lie here, because what happened during the rest of the vision was decidedly unpleasant, despite the lack of real pain. I felt my skin melt, and my eyes begin to boil beneath my closed and melting eyelids. I felt my hair catch on fire and burst into a bright, but short lived inferno all of its own. My muscles twitched and began to liquefy right off my red hot bones when my skin was gone, and the harsh wind added its own little unique pricks as it contacted my now exposed bloody flesh.
Finally, the wind became strong enough to lift us, but we were still not separated. As we melted into and onto each other, and faded into the orange and red oblivion, we were never parted.
It was the first time we were not separated by the mental blocks, and the first time they had not caused pain. There had been terrible damage, yes, but no pain. It was because we had faced it together. Of that I have no doubt.
~ ~ ~ ~
I woke up gently, despite the gruesome aspects at the end of the vision. Buoyed by the hope and numb bliss that had taken away the pain, I fluttered my eyes open in the darkness. The shadows were thick around me, and everything was in varying shades of gray. Nothing was absolutely black, and nothing was completely dark. There was a faint glimmer from the soft lights of the artificial moonlight seeping around the edges of the curtained window and sneaking in the shrouded confines of our large combined bed. The world was without extremes in this deep still place. Everything was tainted, but nothing was absolute.
Blinking in the odd shadows, I let my gaze travel inevitably to settle on Heero's face. Just as I expected, he was awake and looking up at me with bleary eyes. In the gloom his eyes shone with a light of there own, a deep sapphire sparkle unto themselves. I realized that we were tangled together comfortably, and that I was half lying on top of him. In fact, we were clutching onto each other in the same way we had been in the dream. Smiling at this, I rested my head on the crook of Heero's neck and shoulder and whispered into his ear so as not to wake the other guys.
"That was from you, right? Thank you," I smiled at the Japanese boy's apparent surprise at my words. Smoothing his dark messy hair back from his forehead, I continued. "We weren't torn apart. That's all I could ever ask for."
That said I buried my head back in his warm neck, blushing hotly. I could not believe I had said something so damn mushy! It was true, though. Even though we had been through hell in the vision, we had been together. I felt my heart patter within my chest, thumping against my ribs frantically. Half underneath me, I felt Heero shift onto his side and slide his arms up and more comfortably around me. Ever so slowly I curled my neck up, not lifting it from the pillow. When our eyes finally met, I felt relief flood through me. Heero was smiling that tiny little smile of his. The play of the shadows made his face seem surreal and chiseled in the darkness, the flash of his eyes was breathtaking.
Not able to help myself, I snuggled forward and shifted to be closer to him, curling up and against him as close as I could be without lying completely on top of him. Even though that might have been fun, it was surely not the time or the place for such stuff. In the back of my mind, I still hoped to one day be able to get away from here and be free with my friends. Just be people, you know what I mean? And I wanted to save those more sacred acts for that time, when it truly would be beautiful and not just and act in desperation in the face of suspense and horror. So sue me, I'm a hopeless romantic.
At any rate, we ended up face to face, our eyes so close that instead of seeing twin blue eyes in front of me, I saw one. It might have been funny if I still weren't riding the psychological trip from the vision. I felt Heero's hot breath mingling with mine, and before I realized it, our lips had met.
Just like in the dream, the world focused down and came to rest on just the two of us. Instead of passion, this was a simple connection of souls, a melding of minds as our lips gently worked together. It was sweet and innocent, a kiss of friendship, something we needed more at that moment than anything else. I felt as though we fused into a single person. I felt my body melt from the pleasant sensations. I felt what could only be described as perfectly pure love and devotion, all from a person that couldn't speak.
When it was over we closed our eyes and drifted off into a dreamless sleep. I was content, for the moment, with the knowledge that I was not alone.
~ ~ ~ ~
The next morning, in case you lost track along the way, was Friday morning. Fridays always seem brighter and more exciting than any other day of the week. I guess it's because you know you have the whole weekend in front of you. It's ten times better than Saturday, because it's pure anticipation. Maybe it's just me, but Friday is my absolute favorite day.
Perhaps because I love Fridays so much, I usually sleep later than normal on them. This one was no exception, and I woke up with just enough time to rush around doing a damn good impression of a braided tornado swirling around and getting ready to go to breakfast in five minutes flat. Damn, I'm good.
We hustled our way in the direction of the smelly cafeteria, I made a valiant attempt to whistle. Ah, yes, I was feeling great, despite all the shit I was expecting to happen today. Never call me pessimistic, I was just trying to keep my spirits up as long as I could. I'm not one to lie down and just take things. If I was, do you really think those nasty little demons wouldn't have drove me to living in a padded cell by now?
As we sat with our trays of artificial bacon and synth eggs, I relayed to the guys the less private things from last night's vision. Wufei almost choked on his processed milk substitute when I mentioned the part about he and I being next on the hit list. Meiran wavered slightly and faded a bit at the news, too.
"Well, I can't say I wasn't expecting it," my Chinese friends said after he had regained his composure.
I shrugged. "Ditto. Sucks to be us."
Quatre rolled his eyes at that. "So, the wings were bigger in this one? Maybe that means something."
Heero just stared down at the floor and handed me a note.
--I don't really know where they come from. I'm not sure what it all means, either.--
"A shame," Trowa stated quietly as he pushed his eggs around with a piece of too hard artificial bacon. I swear, when they overcook this stuff you can almost build a house with it. It's good, don't get me wrong, but it's so tempting to play with instead.
That basically ended this line of conversation, because, well, it had nowhere else to go. We all needed to wallow in our own thoughts anyway, at least, I know I did. There seemed to be some nagging symbolism in last night's vision, something that I should have been catching. It kept dancing just out of my mind, though. Frustrating, but at least I'd have something to occupy me in class if I got bored.
~ ~ ~ ~
Morning classes flew by, I guess because I was dreading free period. Yup, call me crazy (you wouldn't be the first, I'm sure you realize that by now, right?) but I was really not looking forward to the possibility of being dragged away to be pricked and prodded. In light of last night's vision from Heero, I knew it was coming, and I was expecting it to be today.
In fact, in a morbidly sick sense, I hoped that it would be today so that I could get the unknown aspect of it out of the way. I'd feel better knowing what I was going to have to go up against, but since we could only get vague shadows of understanding, the wait was much worse on me. I am impatient.
At the same time, however, I was hoping beyond hope that they would never come for me and that this whole vast conspiracy theory was just a silly notion in my head. But of course, I realized that this was severely unlikely, and therefore I sort of wanted to just get it over with. It was either adopt this attitude or be a total pansy about it, and I am not a pretty flower (how unmanly).
Somehow, though, I was positive that today would be the day that I was going to face the unknown menace beyond the disguised door.
I was right.
Damned intuition.
Too bad the inevitable came just a bit too early for my taste. We were sitting in a little circle in one of the less crowded but still busy hallways as we ate our lunches. Trying to hurry, none of us was really talking very much. We were going to make a daring attempt at getting fed and getting somewhere hard to find. Now, remember I said I wanted to get this over with, I never said that I was looking forward to it.
One second we were sitting there, munching in various states of politeness and hunger, the next second there were two shadows cast over our group. Comprehension and dread flooded my veins, and I heard Heero's message echoing within my head, "You and Wufei will be next." Did that mean together, or did that mean we would be the next taken back? We were about to find out.
I guess you could figure out that the lovely, sweet, oh-so-ugly Thugs were the ones standing over us. They were always the ones to take us to our first sessions. I still don't know why, maybe fate is just simply one cruel bitch. To my surprise, however, a few feet back Otto stood, leaning against a wall and looking vaguely uncomfortable. He looked down at the ground when I glanced over at him.
Before we could say or do anything, Alex smirked down at us. "Looks like the last two of you are going to have some fun today. Chang and little Maxwell have one of those special sessions."
Wufei and I looked at each other in very mild panic and tightly controlled fear filling us. My friend's dark eyes were wide as saucers and his aura was flaking off shock and deep dread. We had been expecting this, but I, for one, didn't expect it until after lunch. I still wasn't completely steeled and ready for battle, so to speak. Looking over at Wufei, I got the same general impression from the look on his face. Evidently he wanted to get this over with, too, but just wasn't quite ready. I wonder if we ever would have been ready…probably not.
Numbly I nodded, set down my fork to the side of my half-eaten plate of food, and wiped my mouth on my napkin. Taking a deep breath, I stood up and walked a few steps away from Mueller and Alex, more in Otto's direction, before I stopped. Then I stared down at my feet, hoping to God that this wouldn't be as bad as I knew it was going to be. Hope is sometimes the most futile of all emotions.
"Oh, come on. It can't be that bad," Mueller snorted, gesturing for Wufei to hurry up. "You kids must be really messed up if you've got to have all these damn sessions. What's wrong with you?" The big man tapped his foot impatiently. Wufei glowered at him, squared his shoulders and stood up gracefully, gliding past the pair of Thugs to stand beside me.
"It is none of your business," Wufei retorted stonily, then sent his glare at Otto. "Let's go."
And so we went, Otto leading, me and Wufei following, Alex and Mueller trailing behind and snickering to each other. Neither of us looked back at our friends sitting in the hallway, neither of us faltered in our steps. I was rather proud that we were not simpering and quaking with fear. Maybe I was made of sterner stuff than I had thought. I always knew that Wufei was strong, but could I be strong as well?
As we walked, I filtered out all the peripherals I normally let edge into my vision and concentrated on the benevolent and good images that so often got lost in the shuffle. Starting with Meiran, I smiled when I saw how she had latched on behind Wufei, her celestially shimmering arms wrapped tightly around his waist. Her translucent toes skimmed the floor lightly in his wake as she let herself be pulled behind him. She was whispering in his ear, and as usual, he appeared to be fortified by her presence.
Moving my gaze along, I noted the small patches of creativity sparking from a few doors we passed, and sometimes we even passed a few people eating their lunches that shone brightly with that particular glean of friendship. Trying to take heart, I took a shaky breath and concentrated on walking. The closer we got to the renovated wing and the disguised door, the shakier and weaker my resolve became.
Finally we were there. Alex and Mueller peeled off and left us, and Otto turned around and gestured us forward.
"Go and stand in front of that door," he said, avoiding looking at us as he pointed at the disguised steel door. "Someone will let you in, and then you will be directed where to go for your session."
We nodded blankly and looked at each other. I don't know what my face looked like, but Wufei's expression was completely unreadable. His aura was wafting off a multitude of emotions, the most predominant of which was determination.
Together we walked the rest of the way into the wing. Glancing back, I saw that Otto had left us by ourselves. Unable to just turn around and run away, I mounted up my resolve again and continued towards the steel door pretending to be a normal little slab of wood on hinges. When we reached the door, we stood quietly, side by side and directly in front of it. This close to the portal, I found myself flinching involuntarily away from the black oozing pain and darkness that was slipping out of the cracks around the door. Meiran was again hiding behind Wufei, but she didn't move her arms from around his waist. I felt myself edging backwards the longer we stood, and Wufei was with me every inch of the way. I'm still not sure how much he could see, or how much he could feel, but a frog could have felt the tangible darkness coming from the seemingly innocent doorway.
With a soundless whoosh of air, the door opened smoothly, swinging outward. A wave of bile black ether washed over the three of us, and Meiran cried out silently at the contact. Wufei turned to check on her, so I was the first one to get a good look at the inside of hell.
Hell was surprisingly plain.
The floor was a light shining gray linoleum, and the walls matched the color with matte finish paint. The ceiling was a slightly darker grayish tone, and to my infinite surprise the only blackness and pain that had been hinted at through the doorway was running along the tops of the ceiling, as though it was guided there by an unseen force.
Most shocking off all, however, was not the anticlimactic first view of hell, but was the man standing in its portal. Right in front of us was the tall blond man that had saved me from Mueller during our first exploration of this wing. He much looked the same as before, his impeccable white lab coat spotless, his long pale hair held behind his head in a low ponytail, and his ice blue eyes glittered warmly. The man was smiling pleasantly at us. Damn, he looked so familiar!
"Hello," he spoke in a smooth voice, looking at first me, then Wufei. Instantly recognition flooded me, and my mouth dropped open in shock. I was so shocked by my revelation that I almost missed the blond nodding politely to Meiran.
"You're-- hey, Milliardo? Oh my God! I thought you were dead! Nurse Peacecraft is going to be so excited!" I heard myself say in a stumbling, excited voice. I felt Wufei's astonished gaze flicker from me to Milliardo when I said this, but I was too thrilled at recognizing him and seeing him alive. Mind you, Milliardo was one of the first friends I ever had here, and watching him go through all that crap when I first arrived probably was worse for me than any of the things I had seen at the beginning of my so-called insanity.
Seeing a twinge of pain flicker through Milliardo's otherwise blanked out aura, his eyes hardened. "No, I'm sorry, you are mistaken. I am Zechs Marquise," He spoke in a chillingly harsh congenial tone.
"Oh, I'm sorry," I whispered lamely, shock again coursing through my veins. Would they give us new names when they had used us up too? Would we end up like this man in front of me? In an instant, I realized that my old friend Milliardo truly was dead and gone. The person before me, the man who had acknowledged Meiran's presence and had managed to block out my recognition the first time that we had met, was simply Zechs Marquise. And who was he? He was what he was told to be.
Hopefully one day I could see Milliardo again, but not today. We numbly walked through the door, hearing it close automatically behind us with a soft thump. For some reason I had expected the hinges to squeak, but in hindsight that was probably a stupid idea.
We walked after Zechs, making our way through the gray, empty corridor. Suddenly we stopped, and Zechs told me to stand in front of a featureless door with no handle. Ever so slowly, the door opened…
That's all I can remember.
~ ~ ~ ~
My memory picks up again when I'm walking though the corridors of the asylum, and I'm almost all the way back to the room. It was if I were emerging from a fog, and a look at a wall clock told me I a hole in my memory about an hour long. There were about thirty minutes until I had to go back to classes. Funny thing was, I had no idea that this nice memory hole was a bad thing. Tra-la-la-la, happy little oblivious me was humming as I sauntered casually along beside Alex. I would have probably been skipping if my knees weren't so shaky. Blinking fuzzily, I rubbed my eyes. My vision was slightly blurry and out of focus, but this didn't strike me as odd.
We reached the room and I entered, leaving the blond Thug behind me without so much as a glance backwards. I grinned and greeted my friends, noticing that Wufei was already back. He was sitting in the very center of the middle mattress with his knees drawn up to his chest, hugging them, and his black eyes impossibly wide as he looked all around me. When the other guys jumped up from their seats on the giant combined bed, I felt a mild twinge of confusion. Why were they looking so concerned? I had just been in standard testing…
Maybe I was missing something? Hm. Whatever, I felt just fine…a bit numb, and I didn't really care about anything too much, so I didn't understand what the big froopy deal was.
I blinked, baffled with their strange behavior. Heero eased an arm around me and led me to the big bed to sit down. Grateful to take the weight off my weak knees, I sat cross-legged down at the head of the bed. Concerned, I looked at Wufei, who I was now sitting right in front of. He was still looking around the room with a weird look on his face.
"What's with you, Wu?" I asked him, poking one of his arms.
In response, Wufei looked at me with his overly wide onyx eyes. "It's incredible. How did you deal with seeing so much?" The expression of wonder on his face was easier to read at this distance, and I blinked at the blurring in my eyes that was still bothering me.
"What?" I was puzzled. "See what?"
"Duo, are you okay?" Quatre suddenly broke in. "Can you remember what they did to you? Are your abilities effected or anything?"
"Huh?" I asked stupidly, then brought my attention back to what I had wanted to know in the first place, squinting against the haze in my eyes. "Wait, I want to know what Wufei is seeing."
"I can see little hints of things, but nothing actually completely visible. It's like, it's like…movement out of the corner of my eye, a rippling in the shadows," Wufei responded, turning his head to stare a the blank corner. "And I see more than just Meiran, there's others."
I felt my eyes grow wider and wider as he spoke. I honestly had no idea what he was talking about. All of this was brand new to me, and I felt a feathering of fear and pain clutch at my chest if I tried to think about it too hard.
"Who's Meiran?" I heard myself ask from afar, curiosity evident in my voice.
Half the air got sucked out of the room as everyone else but me gasped in unison. The guys just looked at me with identical shocked expressions. It was kind of funny.
"What?" I asked nervously. What had I said, what had I done? Why were they looking at me like that?
"Duo, why are you here?" Trowa asked me quietly, his voice even.
"What do you mean? Why won't you answer my questions?" I returned, anger starting to fill me. What kind of weird game were they playing?
"Why are you in this asylum? What is supposed to be wrong with you?" My tall friend asked me patiently.
I considered for a moment. "I have depression, a severe case brought on by my parents' death when I was younger."
"What else?" Quatre asked, his pale brow knit in thought. I wondered to myself if I should answer. I couldn't figure out what they were getting at. Then the blond boy continued, "Please, just bear with us for a minute and think about it."
I frowned, completely out of my good, carefree mood by now. This annoyed me. I had been so happy, and now they were all making me have to think about things that made my chest hurt.
Suddenly I felt a cool hand on my forehead. Glancing over in surprise at Heero, he kept his face completely expressionless. The next instant, though, his face lost that tightly controlled slack expression and twisted in pain. I heard a voice in my head, the voice that I heard in the visions that Heero sent me.
THINK.
Wait, voice in my head? Visions? Huh?
Blinking, I obeyed the painfully delivered message and really thought. It all came rushing back in a flood, a deluge of information that left me gasping and panting for control over the sudden burning pain that seized my heart as I fought to remember. Losing most of the control in my muscles, I dimly felt myself slump sideways and be caught by Heero. My eyes cleared in one quick moment, and I was assaulted by images from all sides.
Unable to comprehend it all at once, the edges of my vision started to swirl around in a dizzying whirl of bright colors. The world was full of things crawling everywhere, ghosts danced around and through the floor and ceiling, demons of all shapes and sizes were staring at me, knowing that I could see them had sparked their attention. Everything was rushing through my skull at a breakneck speed, and horror that they had managed to make me forgot all of this, all that we had went through, and even the very existence of it all almost made me faint.
With a jolt I caught sight of Meiran, and I remembered her. Feeling terribly guilty for having indirectly betraying her, I mouthed an apology at her, since I was unable to speak from the onslaught of emotions and images. I could have sworn I heard a whispering reply, but I knew that was impossible, so I just ignored it and focused in on fixing my mindset.
Squeezing my eyes shut and clinging like a little baby to Heero, I fought for power over myself. Slowly, gradually, I started to win the fight, and in a few minutes I had my pain and my mind under control again. Full realization of what had happened was filling my mind. My head felt very full, and my brain felt strangely mushy, as though if I poked the side of my head I'd leave a dent.
I let my eyes open of their own accord, feeling the weight of time starting to press down upon me. It was insane, but we all still had classes to go to after our "free" period. I looked around carefully, taking all of the new in and comparing it with the old. The worry demons and shadow demons were much clearer now, as was Meiran. There were a few new entities, too, some that I had never seen before. I'd have to study those later and name them, I decided.
Letting my eyes shift to look at each of my friends, I smiled weakly. Their auras were brighter than ever. Faintly I could see the beginnings of wings feathering out from the backs of their soul lights. Like in the first sighting of the wings I had in a vision, Trowa's wings and aura were predominantly silver, and Quatre's were a bright bronze that shone softly, complimenting his golden physical features. Their wings and auras mingled greatly, melding together on the edges and binding together in a shining metallic alloy.
Next, I looked over at Wufei, and just as the vision, his aura was a light gray, with feathering wing shapes accenting against the color. Meiran's now visible luminescent aura shone with an identical light charcoal color, and she had wings of a slightly lighter gray that were well defined and arched from her shoulders strongly. The pair's auras were matched almost perfectly, in fact, it was almost impossible to tell where one person's aura stopped and the other's began. It was bittersweet, and it was beautiful. It was heartbreaking.
Finally, I pulled away from Heero so I could look at him. A brilliant halo of pure white surrounded his whole being, and he had the faint markings of translucent ivory wings starting to grow onto his aura. Light violet tinged the edges of his bright soul light, and for a moment I couldn't discern their source. Then I looked down at my lap to think, and I caught sight of my folded hands. They were shining with a faint, very pale violet color the same shade as my eyes. Curious, I glanced over my shoulder, and lo and behold, there were the beginnings of midnight black wings feathering from my aura. This was the first time I had seen my aura. It was surreal.
My momentary euphoria was broken, however, when I glanced over at the corner that Wufei had been eyeing earlier. There was something there, something large, something hulking. Something terrible. Something that I can't even begin to describe now without feeling like my insides are going to burst. Something horrible.
I screamed.
I fainted.
~ ~ ~ ~
When I woke up, I was still surrounded by the others. My rational thought process immediately took control.
"Shouldn't you guys be in class? We're going to get busted for skipping!" I tried to sit up from where I had been laid out while I was unconscious. Unfortunately, my vision swam and wavered, and I was forced to fall back down to lay comfortably down with my head resting on Heero's lap. Thankfully, the thing in the corner was gone.
Quatre smiled. "Naw, classes ended about thirty minutes ago. See, you kind of screamed. That brought Nurse Dorothy in here, and she wrote us excuses to stay out of class because you were unconscious. Of course, we just told her that you were asleep and not feeling well."
"Won't she tell the psyches, though?" I asked, frowning. "She said she was going to if something like this happened again. Remember when she kept her mouth shut about you?"
"Ah, yes, but she was referring to me, specifically, at the time," Quatre replied, winking. Well, guess that covered it. Now we had a whole weekend of freedom and torture ahead. Goody!
"What caused you to pass out like that?" Trowa asked quietly.
"I saw something. My vision has been…expanded," I replied, closing my eyes and shuddering at the memory of that thing in the corner.
"What was it?" Wufei asked. "Was it that bad?"
I just glared blankly at him. "Yes," I ground out, making an effort not to just start quaking at the recent memory. The image was burned into my retinas, and all I wanted to do was forget it. It still makes me break out in a cold sweat to even think about it, I feel like fainting again if I try and picture it in my mind, even now.
--Drop it.--
For once, Heero handed his note to Quatre to read. I guess because I was a bit indisposed at the moment.
For a little while we all just sat there, well, I guess I sort of lay there. Anyway, I was eventually able to sit up and look around. Cautiously, I surveyed the room, mentally steeling myself for any unpleasant surprises. Thankfully, I saw only the new things that weren't the personification of pure evil. Hurrah.
"You know, ignorance is bliss," I state absently. "I wonder how long I would have been so forgetful, walking around in that fog, if it wasn't for you guys being here and knowing about what was going on?"
Wufei shrugged. "Does it matter?"
"I guess not," I replied, sighing. "Now what? We have the whole weekend to look forward to with all its fun and exciting torture."
"Funny," Trowa smirked with just the barest hint of dry sarcasm.
"Oh, I know," I replied, grinning. At least I could still joke about it. Now that we had all been taken back and fucked with, all we really had to worry about was who would be next and how often we were going to be taken. Would we eventually be living back there constantly, like, Mill--Zechs? That reminded me, I needed to tell the others about that.
First, however, I wanted to get dinner. These things really shouldn't be discussed in here anyway, but out at the tree, so I used this as an excuse. When I expressed this idea to the other guys, my suggestion was met with the usual groans and lame jokes about me being the human black hole doomed to consume mass quantities of sustenance every five hours. Of course, this did not bother me, especially since they all wanted to go grab dinner, too.
Can't blame a guy for being hungry in the face of adversity, can you? I'm a growing boy.
~ ~ ~ ~
We made our way to the cafeteria, and let me tell you, I'm surprised my eyes didn't fall right out of my head. My new wider sense of sight was amazing, and at every turn I was catching glimpses of deeper auras, some with wings, some without, and new species of normally invisible creatures. Ever so often I'd catch a look at something terrible, but I was starting to adapt to those things, so there were getting less and less frightening with each sighting. It helped that none of these things were as bad as the one in the room, though. It, by far, was the worst I had ever seen.
Reaching the cafeteria, my newly discovered sight solved the mystery of why the place smelled so badly. Rising up from the floor in one of the corners was a bog.
Now, when I say bog, I mean it literally. A murky, dribbling mass of putrid, merrily bubbling thick shit-colored mud with lots of interesting nasty little demons staging a full-scale mud fight. They looked like they were having a great time, but the fumes that were being kicked up from the mud was so great that they managed to permeate the "real" world and make it smell like ass. Thus, the terrible smell.
Vaguely I wondered where the hell that bog had come from and why it was there. Oh well, the tiny mud-beings didn't look like they were mean or malicious, they just looked…unhygienic. A few people would walk through the muck, displacing it and causing little belches of vapor to rise from the sludge. None of it would stick to their feet for long, though, for which I was immeasurably grateful. (You wouldn't want people tracking that stink all over the place. Yuck.) As soon as a person would get to a certain spot, all the spirit mud would slough right off, as though there was an invisible barrier surrounding it.
The little mud-things playing in the bog would laugh and throw clawfuls of the mire at people passing by, but unless they were within a certain area the muck wouldn't fly far enough. It was sort of funny, and I giggled. The little happy demons noticed me as I walked by, and waved. I fought the urge to wave back, knowing that it would pull on the bandage put over the place where they had given me a shot on my inner elbow, and opted to wink at them instead. They rolled around laughing, clutching their little stomachs and making little trails in the bubbling muck. If it wasn't so damn gross, it might have been cute.
We got our trays, and I made sure that none of the guys walked through the stench inducing swamp in the corner on the way out. We settled down in one of the less crowded hallways, choosing privacy over safety for once. If someone came to mess with us, we'd just scream or laugh hysterically. Either one would bring people running.
I must say, I'm extremely glad that chicken is one of the few types of meat that can be raised here in the colonies. I love chicken. More specifically, I love chicken fingers with instant mashed potatoes. One of the few one hundred percent natural meals (well, powdered potatoes counts as real, doesn't it?) we get to eat here. Ah. It was wonderful.
Too mentally drained to bother with heading out to the tree as we planned earlier, we just sat around in the hallway in our little huddle and conversed. I described everything I could remember about Zechs, everything I could describe from entering the wing, and about the tendrils of directed ooze against the ceiling of the testing area. Then I filled them all in on exactly why the lunchroom smelled so terrible, which earned a few laughs.
Then it was Wufei's turn to catch me up on what he had already told the other guys. He remembered more than I did, all the way up to being strapped to a reclining chair and being hooked up to a weird machine that he could hear but not see. Then he said they gave him a shot, and the next thing he knew he was being carried back to the room by Otto. He was almost completely out of it for about ten minutes, but Meiran had done something that he couldn't explain fully that had helped him remember and recuperate. It evidently had been akin to how she had helped ease his headaches in the past, but I'm still not too clear on it.
Then he had started looking around the room. He could see a few more wandering souls, what most people would call ghosts. Along with a few glimpses of shadow demons and the minor ones that were always common to my particular vision, Wufei evidently saw lots of restless spirits, many more than I could see. It made me wonder about how many other things were out there that neither of our gifts covered. I saw demons, he saw spirits, and we overlapped a little. What else could there be that we never even dreamed of?
When we finally finished our dinner and our conversation, we actually decided to go join the majority of the other patients in the entertainment room for once. We clumped together with the rest of the kids our age in front of the big encased and bolted down television vid-set and watched an old movie from the precolony days. It was some nice, mind numbing, forgetful fun.
When it was over, we shuffled to our room and wandered about, getting ready for bed. We were all exhausted, and we didn't really talk much. When we finally lay down, snuggling our respective partners, living or not, it was as though someone had cast a spell on us. Within minutes, we all drifted off into a peaceful sleep.
We knew we needed our rest, because the next day, the next week, hell, the next year, we still might be trapped in this horror. We might as well take our rest when we could, and take our comfort from each other while we could still share it. One should always try to make the best of an unpleasant situation.
As bad as it had been lately, now that we had all experienced the horror beyond the door, we had no illusions. The worst was undoubtedly yet to come.
~ ~ ~ ~
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