False Memories
Part 4
"Yuy! Are you insane?!?" Wufei screamed over the comm link desperate to avoid
the imminent battle. "You just blew up the other pilots, damn you!"
"Shut up and die, traitor!" Heero spat back, his mind unable to separate the
false memories from the real ones.
"That's *Duo* down there, you fool!" The Chinese pilot cried as Wing's
thermal blade connected with his own thermal glaive.
The two dueled in the sky for a few terrifying moments before alarms began to
sound in Wing's cockpit, a sound which carried over the open comm channel
into ShenLong's cockpit. Allowing his gaze to shift, Wufei noticed his tall
lover on the ground firing up at Wing in desperation and suddenly realized
what Trowa was trying to do.
Distracted for a moment, the small pilot was suddenly slammed against his
safety harness as ShenLong rocked back from another assault and he felt
something slice deeply into his left hip. Wufei felt the all too familiar
warmth of blood flowing and he systematically blocked the pain and promptly
forgot about it entirely. He had also forgotten the pair of good luck charms
he had bought in India for Trowa and Quatre which he had stuck in his pocket
at the airport. The two surprisingly sharp metal objects were still likely to
cut his flesh but he paid them no attention, a Gundam charging at him was a
far more significant threat.
Feinting with his thermal weapon once more, Wufei drove Wing back in an
effort to let the alarms penetrate Heero's awareness.
"Don't you hear that, Yuy?!?" He screamed in hopeless rage, Wufei was no
match for Heero in aerial combat and he knew it, but he was the other pilots'
last hope. "That's Trowa trying to get you to back off! Snap out of it, damn
it, or you're going to kill *all* of us! Is that what you *really* want?!?"
Growling at the inconvenience, Heero prepared to destroy the person firing at
him, but ShenLong interfered. Wufei threw all of his skills as a pilot into
protecting Trowa who had neither cover nor weaponry sufficient to stop the
mobile suit that seemed to have decided he was an enemy to be eliminated as
well as Wufei.
Utterly desperate, Wufei left himself visibly open to attack in the hopes of
re-directing Heero from obliterating Trowa.
A cry of rage left Heero's throat. "You traitorous bastard! Don't try to
deceive me! Trowa's already dead! And so are Quatre and Duo!" Heero refocused
his assault exclusively on ShenLong to Wufei's relief and Trowa's horror.
"*You* killed them, Chang! You killed them ALL!!! Now, *I'll* kill
*you*---AGAIN!!!" He punctuated his pronouncement with a slashing blow from
Wing's thermal sword, slamming Wufei against the safety harness and
indirectly adding more gashes to the bleeding Chinese pilot's body.
"Kill me--*again*?" Wufei asked, stunned as the terrifying realization hit
him.
"Yes! And *stay* dead this time!" Heero snarled across the comm link adding
in an agonized voice, "STAY DEAD!!!"
The Chinese boy now knew that Heero was deluded and stopping him would take
drastic action. Choosing self-sacrifice over the probable deaths of them all,
Wufei calmly stated, "Very well, I shall initiate ShenLong's self-destruct
system and spare you the suffering you would experience once you realized the
gravity of your error."
Quietly he added, "I hope you come to your senses soon, Heero, you are needed
here far more than I am."
Without hesitation, he initiated the system designed to obliterate not only
his Gundam but himself as well and set a trajectory to move the blast away
from the three teens on the ground. Wufei leaned back in his chair, arms
crossed and dark eyes closed, speaking silent good-byes to those he was about
to leave behind, hoping Quatre might pick up on it and tell Trowa and Duo
they were all on his thoughts at the end.
The HeavyArms pilot had no idea why the two metallic giants had stopped
fighting, but he had a strong sense of foreboding when the dragon-fisted
mobile suit began to move away. Profound sadness pierced Trowa's heart when a
keening wail poured forth from the exterior claxons mounted on ShenLong.
"Damn you, Heero! *Why* did you push Fei to this?!? WHY?!?" Trowa screamed in
futile fury.
Realizing there was nothing he could do from the ground, Trowa shoved the
guns into his waistband and hurried to attempt to move his fallen lover as
well as his wounded friend to safety. Duo and Quatre were separated by at
least 25 meters forcing him to choose between saving Quatre who lay stunned
or Duo whose previous injuries had been aggravated by the van explosion and
whose survival was already in question. If Heero had not ended his rampage
due to the sight of Duo's ravaged body, then perhaps Wufei knew what he was
doing, suicidal or not.
Trowa also knew he had no way to establish communication with either of the
combatants. With no way to speak to Wufei he had no way to dissuade his
beloved dragon from his lethal intentions. Worse, he had no way to determine
the Wing pilot's mental state. Clearly, Wufei felt he knew enough to make
this horrifying decision, but the quiet HeavyArms pilot didn't want to allow
either young man to fly free of the limits of life without his being certain
there were no remaining options.
Nothing Trowa Barton wished for or did, however, would make any difference
now and accepting this fact nearly destroyed him. He took a deep breath and
shouted in agony, "NO!!! STOP THIS!!!!"
It is doubtful in the extreme that either the strangled scream or the loud
warning claxons made any difference in the deluded world where Heero Yuy's
mind existed. However, nothing would ever match the impact of the familiar
strobing beacons emanating from ShenLong as it prepared for its last thirty
seconds of existence.
Was it the rhythm of the lights flashing or was it something more which
finally destroyed the false memories created by the OZ scientists? It didn't
really matter in the end. The barriers which had been established suddenly
shattered, leaving intense clarity unlike anything Heero Yuy had experienced
in his short life.
With a move which belied his previously deluded condition, Heero threw Wing
into the sky, rocketing after the retreating form of Wufei's Gundam. When he
was close enough, Heero quickly recalibrated his own thermal blade into a
fine point of white heat and inserted it key-like into the exterior controls
of the Gundam ShenLong, allowing him to override the suicidal sequence,
sparing a very surprised Chang Wufei's life. [1] [2]
*****
As the lights and noise died away, Wing landed and its cockpit flew open,
allowing the Japanese pilot to step out onto the hatch and see first hand the
damage he had caused.
Stunned, Heero Yuy looked down at the ravaged body of his lover, a blackened
and bloodied figure most identifiable by the charred chestnut braid. A quick
glance in the opposite direction allowed him to see Quatre, face down on the
Australian soil, also unmoving. Trowa, however, had launched himself towards
Wing, fury etched across his features.
"You lunatic! How many of us do you insist on killing?" He screamed as he
gracefully leapt towards his unprepared opponent.
"Stop, Trowa, please!" Wufei commanded abruptly through ShenLong's exterior
speakers causing the acrobat to transform his leap into a somersault, landing
with ease to stand and stare gratefully at the machine coming towards him.
"Wufei!" Trowa cried, "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine, angel. See to the others, please," Wufei answered with a sigh of
relief.
"You've got it," Trowa responded as he began to move towards Quatre. "Just
keep *him* away from me!" Without so much as a backward glance, Trowa
dismissed his now guilt-stricken friend in favor of going where he was needed.
This latest act of intervention on Wufei's part baffled Heero. Hands balled
into fists, the Japanese pilot stood in place as he watched ShenLong land
with precision, blocking Heero's view of his own lover laying motionless on
the grass.
Sweeping the ground with his sensors as he landed, Wufei had determined that
Quatre had begun to struggle to rise and appeared only minimally injured. As
he moved to his own now open hatch, he called out, "Trowa! Check on Duo!"
With a nod, the tall pilot struck out once more, headed towards the dark
figure leaving Wufei to confront Heero alone.
Heero was preparing to jump down to the ground himself when he heard a
command leveled at himself.
"Wait, Heero!" Wufei ordered, "You must face me first!" With speed and grace,
he sprung out of the cockpit to confront the boy he had been prepared to die
to protect only moments before. The Chinese pilot faltered momentarily on
landing as pain lanced through him, but he ignored it so he could face the
shaken teen.
Now face-to-face in mid-air on the open hatch, Heero asked simply, "Why?"
"'Why' what, Yuy?" Wufei asked calmly, arms crossed over his chest, refusing
to assume that Heero truly understood the enormity of what had just occurred.
Further, he refused to be a victim of his own rage and fear. Rage for
watching what his friend had done. Fear for the fact that Duo might lay dead
because of it.
The wild play of emotions across the cobalt eyes confirmed many of his
assumptions. As Heero searched his face for answers, the Chinese pilot stood
firm, refusing to volunteer information of any sort.
Finally, Heero found his voice once more. "I asked you 'why', Wufei," Heero's
voice trembled with barely concealed emotion, a true rarity in and of itself.
"Why did you try to kill yourself? Why are we here? What the hell is
happening, anyway?"
"Frankly, Heero," Wufei sighed as the exhaustion rolled back over him once
more. "I don't know why we're here as opposed to somewhere else, but you were
a captive at that OZ base," he gestured with his head at the smoldering ruins
behind them.
"Neither do I know exactly what was happening to you before we arrived.
However, you were acting abnormally, and it seemed that something drastic was
needed to stop you yet I had no intention of killing you, regardless. So..." He
trailed off and shrugged, he had no words to explain the self-destruct
decision that wouldn't simply aggravate things.
The Japanese pilot's brows drew together as he frowned. "What *are* you
talking about, Wufei? What did I do?" Somewhere in the back of his mind, it
registered that blood was now moving to stain an entire side of the usually
immaculate white silk pants of the boy facing him, but it didn't seem
important enough to mention at that moment.
"Apparently you destroyed an OZ base single-handedly, and while it is
perfectly normal performance for you to do so, you carried the battle past
that and attacked the four of us as well."
Again, Heero asked only, "Why?"
Wufei stood firm in his resolution to not speculate. "Truly, I have no idea,"
he remarked, letting the pain and sadness show in his tone, "However I'm
certain you were not in full control of your senses or your actions.
Otherwise I would never have expected you to attack the vehicle containing
Duo, Trowa, and Quatre or even myself, but you did."
Fighting for control, Heero asked, "What more do you want me to know here,
Wufei? What are you concealing?"
Trowa's distressed voice interrupted, "Fei! I need your help down here!"
Turning, Wufei shouted over his shoulder, "We'll *both* help you, Trowa."
Turning back to the boy in front of him, he stated simply, "Heero, come with
me now and you can help us deal with at least some of what you've done."
He was about to leap to the ground when an agonized voice asked him, "Is it
Duo, Wufei? Is it Duo who's hurt?"
Cobalt met onyx as the two men silently discussed the issue. Finally, Wufei
broke the silence and stated simply, "Yes, Heero, Duo *is* injured."
"My fault?"
"Unfortunately, yes," Wufei sighed yet tried to look confident, "But perhaps
it is not too late to do something about it nonetheless. Come on, let's see
what we can do to help Trowa."
The two pilots dropped gracefully to the ground and Heero sprinted towards
the tall youth who knelt beside the motionless figure to the west of the
smoking remains of a stolen van. Wufei followed a bit more slowly as blood
dripped from the sole of one shoe and soaked the Australian soil as he
passed.
A line of crimson footprints led away from the Gundam ShenLong as fate once
more had her cruel way with the Gundam pilots.
Authors Notes:
[1] This is based on Duo's move with Deathscythe to stop Wing from
self-destructing on the ocean floor at the very beginning of the series. I
have no idea how a thermal blade can do this, but if a scythe can pull it
off, so can a sword.
[2] Thus ends my very first "dog-fight" between Gundams. How'd I do?
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