Bound Part 3
Last Straw

When Heero awoke again, he was alone. Utterly alone, and it seemed to him that he was more alone at this moment of his life than he had ever been before. He listened intently for the sound of Duo's voice in the stillness, ignoring the dim, hot throb of his cheek and arm and his uncomfortably full bladder, trying to hear.... nothing. Not a scream, not a sob.

He was in another cell, much much smaller, suffocating, barely big enough to turn around in. A feeling of claustrophobia washed over him so completely that for a moment he was sure he was going to drown in it. His hands were cuffed in front of him.

The door came open. Something soft and silky, like a velvet rope, being thrown in his face from the door of the cell, the shadow of a guard. It was only after he had had a few seconds to adjust to the change in light that he realized what it was.

It was Duo's braid. The Shinigami pilot was not attached to it.

"Thought you might want a little souvenir of your friend. In memory of him." The voice of the guard at the door was contemptuous, wanting to laugh and not quite daring.

Heero threw himself at the doorway like a wild animal, but the door was slammed in his face before he could bolt through it. He was shuddering violently, so overtaken with rage and grief that he felt the blood roaring in his ears, a dim dull red glare of fury falling over his vision. He let out a singularly bloodchilling cry, slamming his shoulders against the door, battering his bound fists bloody against the titanium walls, screaming until he thought his larynx would rupture. He felt warmth on his cheeks and face; he blinked it away. It could have been blood or silent tears, he couldn't see which in the dark and he didn't care.

Though he sometimes lacked for imagination, Heero had no problem seeing Duo in his mind's eye: lying on the concrete floor in the awkward grotesque sprawl of death, beyond dignity, beyond shame, beyond even the help of the Perfect Soldier. Beaten, battered, and violated. Welts made by men's strong fingers bruising Shinigami's thighs, his arms, his face. They had not even left Duo his braid, the one thing in the world he had seemed to care about more than anything. They had thrown it in Heero's face like some sort of hideous trophy, rubbing his helplessness in his face.

After a while, he was too weak to yell and fight and struggle against the grim truth anymore. He slumped into the corner, slipping back into the comforting solace of unconsciousness without any effort at all.

~*~

Waking up after a few blessed hours of precious, reviving sleep, Heero paced like a restless, caged animal, careful not to go beyond the perimeter of his small cell and accidentally run smack into the walls. Duo was not in there with him when he woke up, and he listened intently for sounds of the Deathscythe pilot, but there was nothing. He was started to brace himself for the merciless reality that the OZ soldier was not lying to hurt him, or bluffing to scare him. All evidence so far pointed to the logical conclusion that Duo had been killed. Heero knew that Duo would most certainly not allow anyone to cut his hair while he was conscious and living. They would have to pry that braid out of his cold dead fingers.

A soft cry of pure, unadulterated misery passed from his lips, and he clenched his fists tightly, fighting back tears for perhaps the second or third time that he could ever remember.

When he had gotten control of himself, he walked shakily over to the far wall--his hands were cuffed in front of him, some poor soul pitied him enough not to jerk his broken arm behind his back, obviously--putting his ear against it. Noises, just none that would indicate Duo was there; scrapes of chairs, keys clattering on a table, file-cabinet doors being shut hurriedly.

// What in the hell is going on? //

Words.

"Is His Excellency coming to look him over?"

"Don't worry about it. That ain't your job. Shut your trap and get this place cleaned up. Khushrenada and Marquis get here in about three hours and this place is a fucking pigsty. We have to get it ready."

The person that had asked made a muffled reply, but Heero didn't hear it. He had backed away from the wall at the name of Khushrenada. // Treize... // he thought, his eyes widening almost imperceptibly. A feeling like a shockwave pounded him back, forcing him to back towards the opposite walls. He struck it and slid down, surprise finished, concentration and survival cunning kicking in, furrowing his brow as he lowered his head and thought. His bangs fell irritatingly into his face, and he blew them away.

// "Hello, Your Excellency. I hope I'm not interrupting anything, but I have in my custody two boys I think you'll be interested in... does the code-name 'Heero Yuy' mean anything to you...?" //

Heero could imagine exactly the way it had gone down. It made him furious.

// Who the hell is Marquis? // That name was familiar to him, entirely too familiar, but he was tired. So tired, and hungry, and dying of thirst. Damned if he could remember what the name of his operation was, much less who some random OZ soldier named Marquis was.

He stared at the door, a trapped expression crossing his face. But under it, there was something else. Something cold and alien, a sort of battle- haze. Something that would chase a man until that man had pissed himself in sheer terror, until that poor unfortunate soldier begged and cried and pled for his life. Something that would laugh as Heero killed him.

Duo, when he ever saw that expression cross Heero's face, only thought of one thing. Shinigami.

If he was going to die, he decided he'd just as soon go with plenty of these soldiers to keep him company. Treize Khushrenada even, if he could get him. He sat back and waited, mentally preparing himself for the ordeal ahead. He unconsciously ran his fingers through the length of severed braid in his lap, then wrapped it around his neck like a scarf so it wouldn't be lost in the darkness.

After what seemed like hours, Heero stood up. A chilled, different wrath stole through him, quietly and completely, engulfing him. He stepped slowly towards the door.

~*~

{Boom.}

"What in the fuck was that?" one of the soldiers, Andrews, walking through the prison asked.

A guard, the one in fact that had begged Heero silently not to fight anymore, looked up slowly. "What was what? I didn't hear nothin'."

"Me neither," another guard said, slinging his semiautomatic casually over his shoulder.

{Boom!}

"Are you guys fuckin' deaf? How could you not hear that?"

The others only shook their heads.

Andrews was suddenly, and for no explainable reason at all, terrified. He had been sweeping before he first heard the noise, and his hands tightened on the handle of the broomstick until his knuckles were dead white.

He knew exactly what those sounds were. Those sounds were coming from the isolation cell the terrorist Heero Yuy was being held in. There were a lot of rumors going around about him. That he could kill any man with just his bare hands, that he was the one who had assassinated the real Heero Yuy, even that he was a genetically altered super-soldier raised in an L1 lab. That was all grapevine bullshit, of course, it couldn't be true, but--

{BOOM!}

This time even the others looked up.

"What the fuck..." one of them muttered, looking down the still corridors. Even the longhaired pilot had shut up. The silence was deafening.

{BOOM-BOOM!!} Andrews dropped his broom, turning in the direction of the prison ward holding the isolation cells. Those cells were for high-security prisoners, dangerous or insane or particularly strong. As for what Andrews had seen, the blue-eyed Gundam pilot seemed to be all three.

// But those are titanium doors. No normal human being could possibly-- //

{BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!!}

// What the hell does he think he's gonna do, break the door down, for God's sake?! //

{BOOM! BOOM! BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!!!}

Andrews backed down the opposite end of the corridor, then started walking. By the time he hit the main hall, he was almost sprinting. He ran to his quarters, threw most of his stuff in a large duffel bag, and hightailed it for the entrance of the base.

He had been drafted from a small town in Alabama. The economy was shot in the United States, times were hard, and it wasn't easy to get a job in the Old South during the war unless you went military.

Still, Andrews was thinking it was time to get the flying blue fuck out of here and find a job picking cotton back home in Dixie. OZ deserters may be shot, but Andrews wasn't a fool, and if they thought he was going to stand guard over a fifteen year-old who could break down a titanium door, then His Excellency Treize could shove this job up his excellent ass.

He was getting the hell outta there.

TBC...

 

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