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Kyuuketsuki Duo
Insidiae -- 3:4
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	"Duo!  Time to get up!"

	Duo blinked his sleepy eyes awake at the sound of the woman's 
voice.  A quick glance out the window said it was later than he normally 
got up.  He sat up and yawned widely, running his fingers through his 
sleep-rumpled hair.  Even when it was kept in a braid while he slept, 
the long tail still managed to get a bit mussed, but still, it was 
better than if he slept with it free.

	"Duo?"  Her sunny face poked in through the doorway, hair 
covered by the habit she wore.

	"G' morning, Sister," he greeted her with another yawn.

	"You're later than usual, this morning, Duo," Sister Helen 
remarked with some concern.  "Didn't you sleep well last night?"

	"You know, last night I had the oddest dream...."  He hadn't 
quite remembered it when he first woke up, but now that she spoke of it, 
he recalled it all dimly.  "It seemed to me that I was someone else 
entirely... that I was fighting, and that something very important was 
at stake, not just for me, but for everyone..."

	The light tinkle of the nun's laughter filled the morning air.  
"Well, young man, no more fantasy bedtime stories for you!"  Her eyes 
sparkled good-humoredly.  "It was just a dream.  I'm sorry to have to 
welcome you back to the boring old real world.  Now, in case you've 
forgotten all about your mundane existence here, let me remind you that 
you promised to help Tommy build his little fort this morning."

	"Oh!  Did I?  Of course, I must have...  I seem to remember...."  
He shook his head to clear it from the cobwebs of his dreams.  "Sorry.  
I hope I'm not too late.  If you'll excuse me, Sister?"  He threw off 
his covers and bounced over to his drawers, throwing a bright smile to 
the nun before she retreated to let him get dressed, closing the door 
behind her.

	He finished with his morning preparations with the strangest 
sense of disorientation, as if his mind were running just one step 
behind his actions.  He would turn automatically to do something, and 
then experience a brief moment of lag before his mind told him precisely 
what he was supposed to be doing.  However, the bright outdoors and 
morning sun erased all of his unease.  It had been far too long since 
the last time he had had the opportunity to relax like this.

	Tommy had arrived only minutes before Duo joined him.  Together, 
they spent a carefree morning piecing together a fort from scrap they 
had gathered around the old town.  Maxwell Church was barely prosperous 
enough to afford decent materials to patch up its own old walls, let 
alone allow the orphans the luxury of a more realistic simulation.  The 
children understood, though.  They were from the same area, after all, 
and smoothly slid it under the rug by asserting that it was much more 
fun to use more of their imaginations this way.

	"And now, the final piece!" Duo royally proclaimed, planting a 
tattered off-white shirt tied to a stick in the top of the fort.

	"Not quite yet, Duo," the boy disagreed.

	"Oh?  What have we forgotten?"  Duo made a comic display of 
poking his head into the corners of the fort to see what they might have 
missed.

	The child smiled beatifically.  "We've left out the fire."

	Duo halted his inspection and looked quizzically at the boy.  
"Fire?  What do you mean, fire?"

	"You know, fire.  Like this."  The fort suddenly burst into 
flames behind him, and Duo reared back from it, reflexively drawing the 
boy back with him.

	The small child wriggled out of his grasp and moved to stand 
between him and the fire.  "Tommy?  What are you doing?  Get away from 
there.  It's dangerous."

	The boy smiled once again.  His voice was the same, but somehow, 
different, when he spoke.  "Fire, Duo.  You like fire, don't you?"  The 
fire flared up, and Duo tried to get Tommy away from the hungry flames, 
but somehow, his legs just wouldn't respond, and he could only watch 
helplessly as the blaze reached out to embrace the boy.  When he had 
been taken, only then did the child's preternatural calm dissolve and he 
began to scream.

	A sudden boom and a rush of heat attacked him from behind, and 
Duo felt his body being turned unwillingly towards the orphanage, 
fearing what he would see.  The rotation was complete, and suddenly a 
darkness fell upon the morning, and the orphanage existed only as 
burning wreckage.  The ground was littered with the corpses of those he 
had greeted that very morning, mangled and burnt, and he recognized the 
scene.  How could he not?  It was the night everything had ended, and 
everything had begun.

	The lifeless bodies stirred, and each came to a tremulous 
upright position and began lurching towards him, as he remained still 
firmly rooted in place by some outside force that refused to let him 
flee.  His voice box has not held under the same paralysis, and he could 
only scream as the reanimated corpses pressed up around him, grinning 
horribly as they laid their bloodied fingers on him.

                              ************

	Heero was on the hunt.  As he had done once before, when Duo had 
gone missing, he had again opened his mind and soul to that presence 
which had become the center of his universe, and tracked him down 
through that mystical link that had formed between them the night they 
had met and had only strengthened since then.  The Shinma had hid his 
own tracks well, but there was nothing that could shield him from Duo on 
this deep a level.

	He had located him in a far off corner of that place between the 
human realm and the Shinma abode.  Had it been any normal, neutral 
place, Heero could just have slipped between the shadows easily and been 
there, but this was a place that the Shinma had thoroughly claimed as 
his own, and he could not so easily penetrate the Shinma's lair.  It was 
a large piece of 'land' he had staked his claim on and bent to his own 
desires, proving that this Shinma had escaped from the Dark quite some 
time ago, and that he was indeed powerful.

	He had arrived at the border of the Shinma's territory and had 
travelled a little ways when he felt another's heart twist in pain, and 
he hurried.

                              ************

	They were touching him.  There were hands, limbs, everywhere, 
trying to consume him and he tried to shake them off but they wouldn't 
let go and --

	"Duo!  Wake up!"

	He woke, his last scream catching in his throat.  There were 
hands on his shoulders.  Someone had been trying to shake him awake.  He 
looked up to the owner of those hands and saw a face he thought he 
remembered only from his dreams... or perhaps it had been from his 
reality.

	"...Mother?"

	She released her grip on his shoulders and instead wrapped him 
in a warm, maternal embrace.  "It's okay, Duo," she soothed in a voice 
he heard sometimes singing lullabies in his sleep.  "It was just a 
nightmare."

	"It... all that?  Just a nightmare?"  It had all seemed so 
real....

	She laid her fair-skinned cheek upon his chestnut tresses, her 
own honey-colored hair, the color of warm chestnut kissed by the sun, 
tumbling down to mingle with his.  "Yes, Duo.  It's alright now.  I'm 
here."

	He shook his head.  "But... the church... and the Shinma..."

	Her arms tightened for just an instance.  "The Shinma, you 
said?"

	Duo disentangled himself from her embrace and looked into her 
indigo eyes with his own.  "They're real, aren't they?" he asked in a 
small voice.  He seemed to himself to be asking for confirmation, 
expecting a positive answer, but whether his tone was fear or hope, he 
could not tell.  He wanted for them to be all just a bad dream, but then 
he would have been dreaming for so long that his dream had become his 
reality, that this reality seemed no more than a dream.

	She nodded sadly.  "I'm afraid so, little one.  Your father and 
I had hoped to keep you from them, but it appears as if it was not meant 
to be."  She stood and held out her hand.  "Come with me."

	He followed.  His mother brought him out to his father, saying 
only, "It's time", and together they led him to an empty room in the 
back of the house.  No sooner had they closed the door than reality 
dropped away around them and they were surrounded by a bleak landscape 
which Duo recognized from his hazy memories of another lifetime as the 
inside of the veil between the human realms and the Dark.

	A darkness solidified into a writhing mass of Shinma.  ::It is 
time,:: they informed them.  ::Bring him forth.::  On either side of 
him, his parents grabbed an arm and brought him forth into the darkness.

	"What... what are you doing?"  He struggled to free himself as 
they moved inevitably closer to the Shinma presence.  "No!  I don't want 
to!" he tried to protest, but they held him immobile.

	"Take him," his father said, all the hearty laughter gone from 
his voice now.  "We don't want him anymore."

	His mother agreed.  "Take him.  He's getting in our way.  He is 
useless."

	"No!  Mother, Father, please!  I don't want... Don't ... No! --"  
In tandem, they flung him into the Darkness.  The Shinma seized him 
greedily, and the shadows began to seep into his pores.  His cries now 
were swallowed by the horrible oblivion that had consumed him, as it 
remade him, stealing away his life and his humanity and making him 
irrevocably one of them.

                              ************

	The pace of Duo's pain, felt dimly within his own heart, was 
proceeding constantly when suddenly, his vision blurred a little around 
the edges, and the guardian's torment seemed to rush at him at twice the 
rate.  In response, Heero redoubled his own speed through the barren 
landscape.  There was little there to mark his progress with -- it all 
looked the same -- but the steady thread of Duo's life pulsing through 
his mind was all he needed as a compass.

                              ************

	He fed.  It had been a long time since he had last had the time 
to savor a meal.  His latest victim's blood ran rich with depth and 
passion.  The life energy was strong and vibrant, yet yielded readily to 
his own dominating power.  He drank deeply of it, quite aware that such 
fine dining came but rarely, but he was tidy as always.

	And when he had finally had his fill, high on the rush of energy 
and pleasantly sated in all his needs, his mouth finally relinquished 
its hold on the pale throat.  He drew back to admire the beauty he had 
ensnared, and saw lifeless, accusing prussian blue eyes looking back at 
him.

                              ************

	There were some obstacles in his way.  The Shinma stray would 
periodically send out squads of stray wraiths to hinder him in his 
passage, but they no longer reformed themselves after being sliced, and 
so they presented little trouble to the hunter.  It worried him a 
little, though, that they were less effective here in their master's own 
domain than they had been out in the real world.  It may have been an 
indication that their overlord no longer needed his wraiths to feed him, 
or that he didn't care if the guardian's guardian was coming for him.  
Both were not good.

	A chasm opened beneath his feet, but he crossed it with ease.  A 
succubus came to distract him with thoughts of dalliance, but it did not 
deter him.  A barrier of thorns rose up before him, but it melted away 
from a touch of his power.  The landscape shifted to confuse his 
direction, but he unerringly headed towards his guiding light, Duo's 
bright, shadowed, soul leading him through the darkness.

                              ************

	There was no one.  He stood alone in an jagged, icy field.  A 
dim, distant voice in his head told him that if he wanted to survive, he 
had best start moving.  And so he did.  His bare feet trudged 
pointlessly across the land, soles cutting themselves upon dangerous 
shards of ice as precious life and warmth bled away from him.  But any 
trail of blood was swiftly overwhelmed by the all-consuming whiteness, 
as if red had no right to exist in this monochrome landscape, and his 
passing left no mark.  The light reflected at all angles off the harsh 
planes and edges, but came from no single source.  Shadows were erased 
from the land, eliminating all depth and reinforcing the feeling of 
infinity from the frozen plain.  It wasn't really bright enough to cause 
him to squint, but if he didn't, then the comforting emptiness rose up 
to engulf him in its blank silence.

	He did not squint.  He welcomed the emptiness, the release from 
the pain.  The abrasions under his feet caused him no pain -- he didn't 
feel them anymore.  He no longer kept his arms wrapped around him for 
warmth, he had untucked his fingers from their hiding places.  His bared 
knees should have trembled in the chilly air, but the soothing numbness 
did not faze him.  The plain, white robe he wore matched his state of 
mind, for it melded his image to the land.

	So alone.  Blessedly alone.  No one to hurt.  No one to be hurt 
by.  No dreams to turn into nightmares.  No nightmares to become his 
reality.  No reality to mutate into a dream.  A large cleft in the earth 
opened before him, and he halted himself before he fell.  He looked to 
the left, looked to the right, and saw nothing different than what was 
in front of him.  Seeing no reason not to, he resumed his step and 
plunged headlong into the chasm.  He was numb.  If nothing was all he 
felt, then why go through the motions of life at all?  He need suffer no 
longer.

	But it didn't end.  He just fell and fell and fell, an endless 
journey straight down to nowhere, with nothing but his own lonely 
thoughts to keep him company.

                              ************

	The guardian's essence was so delicious.  Perhaps he had 
committed an error before, when he had killed this one's predecessors.  
Perhaps he had let his hatred of the guardian line overwhelm him.  He 
should have done as he was doing now, and kept them ensnared in his 
traps for all eternity, to suffer endlessly for his delight and feeding 
pleasure.

	He snorted to himself in derision.  These foolish guardians.  
They deserved to be kept in infinite pain.  They were weak.  As always, 
falling prey to their own humanity.  Only humanity could be tortured so 
exquisitely by such simple things.  This one was strong, though, 
relatively speaking.  He would have to take care not to break him too 
quickly.  If he played his nightmares right, this would one keep him 
well-fed for many, many promising years.

                              ************

	Something was wrong.

	It seemed to stretch forever, but he knew that was impossible.  
There was no way that the stray Shinma could have accrued and maintained 
this much territory and had it all go unnoticed.  The obstacles that 
were placed in his path seemed to be no more than token gestures at 
resistance.  If this were true, then the Shinma likely did not care 
whether or not he succeeded.

	Why?

	There was something wrong.

	Was he travelling in circles?  Given, the Shinma could alter his 
own territory at will, but no, that was not it.  Duo's presence at the 
edge of his mind remained constant, and he knew that he was heading in 
the right direction.  He knew most of the nuances of Duo's signature 
intimately, there was no chance that it could be falsified.  It was as 
strong as it had been all along...

	He froze.  Shimatta.

	It should have been stronger.  He had been making steady 
progress towards his partner -- decrease in distance should have made 
the signal stronger.  If Duo was suffering or being drained, anything at 
all that would have caused his presence to weaken enough to 
counterbalance the closing distance, then the timbre of the pattern 
would have changed as well, the distinct mental flavor would have been 
altered in response.

	But it was the same.  It wasn't being replicated, it wasn't 
being looped.  He checked for authenticity, but it was realtime, not 
frozen, not an echo or a reflection from somewhere else entirely.  And 
if there was nothing wrong on Duo's end, then he himself must be the one 
in a trap.

	He mentally reviewed the events leading up to his current state, 
and cursed at himself for missing it.  The moment his vision had 
blurred, he had attributed it to the sudden, lurching shift in Duo's 
mental presence, and he had assumed that the shift was a result of some 
greater punishment being pushed upon his charge.  He was wrong.

	He was angry.  Angry at himself, angry at the Shinma, and he 
channeled a great part of that rage into a single, concentrated, outward 
burst of power aimed at the net cast over his senses, and the illusion 
broke.  Quickly, he reoriented himself, and was swiftly irritated by the 
extent to which he had been tricked.  He had been caught in the stray's 
time-space distortion illusion, which had dilated time in his reference 
frame so that he had been travelling for a much longer time than he had 
thought he was, and had compressed space so that he had actually 
travelled much less than he had believed.  All in all, he had taken a 
very long time to make very little progress towards his goal.

	But now that the spell was broken, and he knew how to avoid it, 
he proceeded immediately to the center of the Shinma's lair without 
further delay, intense purpose filling his every step.

_________________________________________
This piece of fiction is the intellectual 
property of the little turnip that could.  
The basis for this fic, i.e. Gundam Wing, 
Kyuuketsuki Miyu, et al., is the property 
of someone else.  The author can be con-
tacted at jchew@myrealbox.com.  This has 
been an entirely automated message.
http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~jchew/misc/gw.html

last modified : 7/15/2001 02:06:28 PST