Sacrifice 2
Home Sweet Home
The man next to Heero was smiling. Heero felt the urge to slam his fist all the way through that stupid grin and out the other side, and he would have done it too, if it wasn't for Straub. Straub scared the hell out of him. But then again, Straub had been scaring the hell out of him since he was five years old.
March or die. Bad dogs get shot. That was Straub's motto.
Heero felt an awful wave of homesickness for the other pilots, but at the same time he felt a horrible sense of relief. Going home. He was going Home. Back to the labs. It was terrible, but it was all he had. What else was he going to do? The War was over. He didn't have a home, he didn't have a name, he didn't have a job or a school to go to. He didn't have a family. He didn't have a life.
When he got back to the Labs, the men in suits took him to the real scientists. He vaguely recognized the first one that spoke to him, but he had never been given a name for the man, and he had never asked. The man was simply a Superior, to be obeyed. And that was it.
"Strip, 2457." Heero obeyed, taking off his tennis shoes and socks, shucking his black biking shorts and the worn forest green tank top that was the one thing he wore more than anything else. He considered tank tops to be the perfect piloting accessories. Comfortable and easy to move in.
"Open your mouth." Heero opened it. His tongue was depressed. One of the doctors looked into it with a penlight, then made a note on his reports. Then he peered into Heero's pupils with the penlight, and then his ears. More notes.
He placed a cold stethoscope against Heero's chest. "Cough hard." Heero coughed. "Take a deep breath and hold it. Exhale." Heero let his breath out in a rush.
His blood pressure was taken. His temperature was taken. They took blood samples, urine samples, semen samples. He took sight and hearing tests. He was weighed. X-rays were taken.
~*~
When he was finished with his physical examinations, Heero was brought before Straub.
"Why'd you fight us, 2457?"
"I didn't fight, Straub. I just didn't want-"
Straub swung hard and quick, catching Heero by surprise, not quite a fist. He never saw it coming. He tasted the salty metallic flavor of blood in his mouth. The blow threw Heero to the floor. He stayed there, even after his vision cleared and the ringing in his head abated. He knew better than to get up before he was told.
"You calling me a liar, 2457? You don't ever want to do that. And you're not in a position to want anything."
He looked down at Heero, his expression tight and knowing. "How many times did you fuck the Deathscythe pilot? He was ready to die for you. Seems like a pretty nice piece of ass. Didn't have much time for him, did you, but I bet you took advantage of what time you had. Never miss an opportunity, right? Come on and fess up to Straub."
Heero said nothing. He shook his head slowly, eyes lowered to the floor.
"You think you're dangerous now? You think you're bad?! Get up, you weak little bastard! I've been through the same Program you have. I'm going to show you what dangerous really is. Get up."
Heero got up. Slowly.
Straub watched him get up carefully. 2457, code-name "Heero Yuy," was a damned good soldier. But he was weak somehow. It was that weakness Straub worked with; that weakness that Straub preyed on. That weakness was the only thing that kept the Perfect Soldier until his control; the boy's inability to think for himself, his unwavering obedience. 2457 was a transformed human being when he was not on a Mission, not in an operation. His eyes moved restlessly, always lowered to the floor, never quite meeting the eyes of whoever talked to him. He crossed his arms defensively across his chest.
But when 2457 was fighting... damn. He was a boy who really came alive at all when he was killing someone; fighting. Each of those times, Straub had seen a soldier on the edge, on the brink of madness. The Soldier who came out in times of combat was strong and fearless, but completely unpredictable. It was that unpredictability that concerned Straub the most.
He felt his control over the boy slipping, even more so now that he was back from Earth. And the Perfect Soldier was too dangerous for him to ever let that happen. Not if he wanted to survive. That psychological grip was the only thing he had that kept the boy from killing him. He was the only one at Apocalypse who had the ability to regress Heero, to turn him back into the uncertain little boy he was. Only he could use that childlike weakness to tame the Perfect Soldier. The boy always fought tooth and claw against any of the other scientists, besides Straub and J. He always had.
J used compassion. Straub used force and fear. It was his personal opinion that his own method worked better at keeping the Perfect Soldier in line.
"If you can obey your Superiors, 2457, fine. Great. If you can't, I won't make you. But I will blow your goddamned brains out and send you to hell, because that's where you'll be going."
Heero said nothing.
Straub softened his voice into the old buddy-buddy. "Let's be serious now, shall we, 2457? Even if I let you go, where in the hell would you go? What would you do? Nobody wants weapons like you now. You're lucky we're even taking you back. You don't have anyone. You don't have anywhere you could go. You're nothing, 2457. Just a ghost in the machine. Not even a fucking name of your own. Do you really want to do what they do? Those candy-ass civilians?"
Heero thought of his days in the schools he had used as safehouses. When he had gone into school for the first time, he had looked around, waiting for some kind of excitement to hit him. Nothing.
// That's not what I want. Not at all. But what do I want? Where do I belong? And who in the hell wants to go to the same school and the same classes, day in and day out? // The boarding schools had felt like prisons to him. He thought of his brutal training, the excitement of it all. The months of hand-to-hand combat; learning to kill with every conceivable kind of weapon.
And there was the thing that Heero did not want to admit to himself. Ever. Some dark part of him enjoyed it all. The killing. The battle.
// There's no more war, now. No more fighting. //
And then: // There will always be war. Because there will always be people training soldiers like me. We're just on reserve for awhile. //
What if he got in a fight while he was a civilian and killed someone? Who would protect him? Nobody!
Heero clenched his fists.
Straub's gun was suddenly in his face. "You want to get out of it all, kid? Okay. It's all right, kiddo. Just fine. I gave you your options and you picked. So you want to end it all? Fine. What the fuck, right? Ours is not to wonder why, ours is but to do or die, right? And if you're done doin', dyin' is all that's left. And die is what you're going to do, 2457. Do you want me to finish it? Answer me soldier!"
Heero closed his eyes. The steel muzzle of the gun was cold against his forehead. "No."
"What? I can't hear you, kid? You better speak up." The gun cocked loudly.
"No... I don't want to end it."
"What, you forget how to talk, brat? This is your last chance, 2457. You speak up so I can hear you: do you want me to shoot you, or do you want to rejoin the Project?"
"I want to come Home," Heero said softly, head bowed, hands clenched and shaking at his sides. He thought of Duo again. Duo's face as he was taken away.
// Oh Duo. I'm so sorry. //
"Fine, kid. But you're going to say this for me. You say, 'I'll never talk back to you again, Straub. I'll never forget my Mission.' You say it."
Heero looked up, speechless. His eyes were hurt, pleading, wordless: You can make me do this, but please don't. Don't, I'm Home, I won't do it again, can't it be over?
"Say it. Or I'm going to pull this goddamned trigger, and we can start from scratch with someone who isn't so weak."
"I'll never talk back to you again, Straub. I'll never forget my Mission."
"Good. Now say, "Never again."
"Never..." Heero's voice stuttered. "N-n-"
"Say it!"
"N-never again."
~*~
"It's not his physical wounds that concern me," the doctor said. "He's completely recovered from those, thanks to the nanotechnology. But... he's been assigned to training for Operation Meteor for ten years."
The military psychiatrist of Apocalypse raised an eyebrow. "So it's 2457, then?" He was very interested in speaking with 2457, code-named "Heero Yuy."
"We are discharging 2457 from quarantine on L1 Station tomorrow. He'll be driven here and assigned to your section. It's going to be up to you and your men to down-train him and get him ready to be retrained."
"Is he going to be honest with me in his debriefing?" the psychiatrist asked.
"He's been ordered to tell the truth."
"What did he say to that?"
"He told me to go fuck myself. In seven different languages."
"Interesting."
~*~
Heero sat on the other side of a wall of impenetrable glass, strapped to a chair. There was a scientist on the other side he could see. White walls everywhere, and the astringent smell of antiseptic and rubbing alcohol. The white jumpsuit hung baggily on his frame. Everything was so white, it almost blinded him.
// Honey, I'm home, // Heero thought, and smiled a little.
"Something funny, 2457?" The doctor's voice blared through the room, mechanic, emotionless, voice disguised and as merciless as the voice of God.
"Yes. Just thinking of how I would kill you if I wasn't strapped down."
The scientist's expression didn't change, but Heero thought he saw fear swimming behind those dark eyes, and he was glad for it.
// Let them be afraid. //
"Word association, 2457. Ready?"
"Yes."
"Doctor." "Bastard." "Red." "Blood." "Silver." "Knife." "Rifle." "Sniper." "Win." "Kill." "Money." "Weapons." "Sex." "Distraction."
They continued for more than fifty words before the doctor stopped. "Good." He shuffled through papers on his side of the room. "Soldier 2457, current code name: Heero Yuy. Born August 7, AC 180 in Lab 4. Finished Phase 1 Training in AC 185. Phase 2 finished in 190. Advanced training completed from 190 to 195. Punished twice in Phase 3 of Training, for failure to respect authority. I believe you took a scalpel from one of the scientists?"
"Bullshit. I tried to blind him with it."
"And you killed two guards in an escape attempt in AC 191."
Heero said nothing. The doctor flipped through more pages of his report.
"You have referred to Straub repeatedly as a 'bastard' and 'a motherfucking son-of-a-whore' since you returned from Earth. Picked up a little gutter English, have you?"
"Hai."
"No doubt the influence of that American pilot."
"Hn."
"Your skills are still fairly excellent from what we've deduced, but you have been reprimanded seven times since you returned for such things as insubordination, insulting Superiors, abusive criticism of authority, and assault."
Heero glared through the glass and said nothing.
"In short, 2457, you've become antiauthoritarian and rebellious. You've become a deviate who is too well-trained to fit into normal society and too knowledgeable to fully accept your Superiors. You have performed your Missions with outstanding efficiency and effectiveness, yet still managed to disobey orders by associating yourself with those other pilots. You have maintained your physical conditioning, but your attitude needs a little... revamping. We view your responses to reentry into the Program with extreme disquiet."
// You're so afraid now. Afraid of me. That's why I'm strapped down. //
"Did you think you were a hero now, 2457? Did you think that now the people knew you and felt your plight, felt sorry for a teenage terrorist like yourself? Do you even realize how many people you've killed? They're not going to empathize with you, boy. In the end, they'll always hate you."
// So what? I hate myself. //
"People weren't rooting for you in the War, 2457. They didn't pity you. They weren't gathering in front of their TVs, watching the news and fervently hoping you would get away. You kill their sons and daughters, their mothers and wives and husbands and fathers in the military force. They wanted to see you and your kind wiped out. And now they have. You're nothing now, 2457. A gun in a world that supposedly doesn't need them anymore."
// I know. //
"I hope you said your goodbyes to your old bosom comrades, 2457. Because you're never going to see them again."
TBC...
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