Bound Part 2
Faith Shaken
They had taken something out of Duo, Heero thought. Something alive and vital had been stolen from the Deathscythe pilot. Dark hours had passed slowly after Duo was thrown back in the cell, but they neither came back to take him away again, or to lock him up on the far wall. He was sleeping hard and heavy, the kind of sleep that is a hiding away from things, passed out against Heero's chest, trembling slightly in his sleep. Heero could hear rain drumming on the roof of the base, a distant and dreaming sound. It seemed he listened to it forever before it stopped.
The door opened. The guards strided in. Duo got up, ready to fight them tooth and nail, swaying drunkenly with weakness, but he was pushed back. There was solid muscle behind the push, and it was hard enough to send Duo thunderstruck into the door, his head hitting the wall with an audible smack. He crumpled weakly into the corner, eyes glazed and confused. He watched helplessly as Heero was dragged out.
// Duo... at least it isn't you they're after this time, // Heero thought absently, half-delirious with hunger and thirst. // Thank your God for that. Kiss that cross around your neck and be glad it isn't you, Duo. Be glad for it. //
Heero was unlocked, yanked up, and half-carried under the arms of five guards to another room. The warden sat behind a desk in the back of the room, narrowing his eyes at Heero. "Why don't you go ahead and share some information with me and my friends here, boy. Anyone ever tell you confession is good for the soul?"
Heero stared at him impassively.
Suddenly, without warning, one of the guards holding him from the side sent a hard punch into his kidneys. Heero grunted, falling forward to his knees. But he would not cry out. And he was resolved that if he was forced to scream, it wouldn't be anything to help these bastards out.
"Get up."
Heero stood, his eyes as cold and full of contempt as before. "What's your name?"
"Heero Yuy."
"That's a code name. What's your real name?"
"Heero Yuy."
Another blow to the midsection. Heero went down again, but the guards held him up. Heero was braced this time, and didn't let out a sound.
"Which colony are you from, you pretty-assed blue-eyed piece of shit?"
"Fuck you." Two of the first English words that Heero had ever learned. They were universal.
More pain. Someone had struck him between the shoulders with a billy club. They pulled him to his feet again.
The warden took his cigarette out of his mouth and brought the lit end of it slowly towards Heero's face. Inches away. He could smell the cigarette smoke. Heat. He tried to jerk his head back. One of the guards pushed it foward. Involuntarily, his eyes started to water from the smoke as the cigarette was pushed closer to his face.
// Is this what they did to you, Duo? //
"Where?"
Heero was silent. The red-hot end of the cigarette was a quarter of an inch from brushing his cheek. His eyes were squeezed shut against the smoke, so he couldn't see it, but he could feel that it was there, searing his skin lightly. A quarter of a inch closer, and discomfort would turn to pain.
"Space."
The warden spat in his face, angry, and pulled the cigarette back. "Why don't they kill people like you at birth?" he growled, watching the spittle run down Heero's cold, expressionless face. "Why didn't your mother fucking kill you when she saw your wet screaming face?"
Heero could only hold it in for so long, and then he laughed. The laugh was mad, a little unhinged, but it was genuine. It was also frightening.
"What the hell do you find so funny, fuckface?" The leading OZ soldier smashed the heel of one hard hand across Heero's face, cracking his cheekbone. Heero kept snickering, a soft and rabid sound, even through the red haze of pain that clouded his vision. "What the fuck have you found to tickle your funnybone, boy? You think this is a laughing matter?"
"I... never had... a mother," Heero replied in a gasp, his shoulders shaking in silent laughter, blood like a red badge of courage running down his face from the skin split over his cheek.
The warden was taken aback. He didn't know how to react. He thought maybe three days and nights in darkness might have sent the blue-eyed Gundam pilot over the high side.
He gazed at the Gundam pilot code-named Heero Yuy coldly for a few moments, then made a waving, dismissive gesture at the men holding him. "Get him the fuck out of here."
"Can we have him?" one of the guards asked as they lifted him up. Heero was still convulsing with soundless laughter.
The warden raised an eyebrow. "Do you really want him?"
The guards threw looks at each other, then down at Heero, thinking it over. No, they didn't really want him. The other was fine; the long-haired one had started out kicking and yelling and went out sobbing and broken. This one, they knew, was already insane. He scared them. And they weren't really sure he could be broken anymore.
The one that had asked shook his head.
"Then get him the hell out of here." The warden looked at Heero's hanging head again, sweat-damp dark brown bangs concealing his eyes. His laughter had stopped; he hung now in their arms, worn and shattered. Blood dripped from his face to the floor in dime-sized drops, darkening on the smooth concrete floor. It'd never come up, one of the guards thought half- heartedly. The warden almost respected the boy for his silence. Almost. He would have respected him a lot more if the young pilot's clamming up wasn't so goddamned inconvenient.
"It won't do either of you any good to fight, you know," the warden said, flicking ash from the end of his cigarette. "I will get it out of one of you. By any means necessary. If not tonight, then tommorrow. If not then, then the night after. One way or the other. Why fight it? It's not like you're going to get a medal of honor. Not even a fucking pat on the back. Ya won't get no Purple Heart or no damned Silver Star. You're just a teenage terrorist, kiddo. Those colonists don't care if you suffer or not. Why don't you just make it easy on yourself? Make it easy on your partner."
// Duo...//
Heero was silent. He didn't even breathe. His arm was twisted up behind his back by one of them and and he heard it crack. Just a small greenstick fracture, bent just to the splintering point. He felt it. A soft, almost inaudible moan.
"Spit it out, kid," one of the guards holding him whispered. "Just tell him and you won't get hurt no more." The guard's voice sounded gruffly earnest, pleading, a voice that said, Please don't make me hurt you no more, kid. It's my job, but I don't like to do it and just give it a rest, willya? Just give it up. 'Cause it's killin' me to watch this.
Heero wanted to give up. He wanted to just catalogue all the information he'd ever memorized, all the safehouses he knew, all the targets he'd studied, all the blueprints he'd learned, list off all the names of every Superior he had ever known, the locations of Wing, of Deathscythe, of Heavyarms, of Sandrock, of Shenlong, of Trowa Barton, Quatre Winner, Wufei Chang. He wanted to give in not because he was being tortured; he had had it done before. He wanted to because Duo was being tortured, and that was somehow far, far worse.
Then he remembered Duo's voice, that hardened, streetwise voice, a voice that could be cheerful as a sunny day in civilian daylight, but in battle, when it was all about the shadows and Shinigami, that voice was tough enough to piss vinegar and shit cement; that voice was asking him what the hell he was doing, he was going to cry off and tell this sadistic son of a bitch everything he knew, everything they had ever worked for? No, he would not. Hell no, as Duo would say.
"No." Heero lifted his head, looking the warden in the eye. His gaze was infinite; it was the gaze of a fallen angel that could take a hundred punishments, a thousand degradations, if that was what was necessary. He would spend eternity in hell to keep the secrets he had, and he was willing. Mission accepted.
The warden shook his head in disgust. "Get him out of here."
TBC...
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