Thanks to: All the reviewers and readers, and the War Room. ^_^
Note: Sorry it took so long for this chapter to come out, but I've had other stuff to do (taking a bunch of literature/composition-type university classes at once will do that to you...)
Dedicated to: Oisa, 'cause she's a sweetie. *laughs* Also, she bribed me.
"Memories consume / like opening the wound
I'm picking me apart again
You all assume / I'm safe here in my room
unless I try to start again
I don't want to be the one the battles always choose
'cause inside I realize that I'm the one confused
I don't know how I got this way, I know it's not all right
So I'm breaking the habit, I'm breaking the habit tonight..."
--- Linkin Park - Breaking The Habit
"But the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a small still voice... and said, What doest thou here, Elijah?"
--- Kings 19: 11-13
Requiem for the Sinners Part 42
A Still Small Voice
Now what the hell am I thinking about that guy for? He's a complete asshole, no sense of humor, a Preventer, for Christ's sake.
And he's also, Harper thought ruefully, as he tapped on the autopilot to check his perimeters, the definition of "not interested."
Hilde's voice came over the comlink, breaking him out of his reverie. She sounded excited, which wasn't exactly surprising to Harper. The idea of revenge had probably been the first thing to cross her mind, he thought. The loss of her boys had hurt, he knew. And he also knew that getting back at the Preventers was her first priority, after the war effort itself.
"This is Skull Leader to Demon Leader. I've got bogies on my screen. They're headed from the direction of Peacemillion II. Taurus fleet. What're we gonna do, boys?"
Jeremiah's voice came in over the com, a drawl that managed to be just as excited as Hilde's. There was an undercurrent of violence in it, as well. "Whaddaya say we get them back for all those Skulls you lost against Po, Hilde?"
"Sounds good to me. All the civvies are boarded on L1-3829. No more refugees to worry about. The sheep are in the pen. What about it, Harper? Do the wolves get free run?"
Harper grinned and started up his offensive systems. The reluctant Preventer commander would have to wait. For now, Peacemillion's Preventers would have to do.
"Let's kick their asses. Ready for combat."
Harper felt a reawakened sense of fury and purpose as he led Demon squadron into the field of combat. As soon as Hilde said she could see the bogies on-screen, he looked out his hatch, out into the darkness of space, and saw them. A forest of white in the vast black. Tauruses. White and oh-so-self-righteous. He would be glad to blow them out of the sky.
The enemy comlink came up on the frequency. The voice behind it was gruff and anonymous. Burst transmission. "This is Anazi of Preventers Corps, under orders from Commander Dorothy Catalonia of the Peacemillion. I will give you the opportunity to surrender your troops to the World Court for sentencing on charges of intercolonial and global terrorism. Your alternative is no quarter. Death. Do you accept?"
A dangerous smile crossed Harper's face as he activated his missile system, locking on to the first Taurus that entered his target zone. Killing zone.
"We choose no quarter, you greencoat motherfucker. Shields up, fire when ready! Get them! For L2! For the colonies!"
The two groups met head-on in a spacial free-for-all.
~*~
"Are you all right, baby?"
Gabriel looked up at Marge from where he had been sitting on the floor before the small Telnet screen. He had been watching it, he thought, but he couldn't even remember what was on. The older woman was kneeling beside him, and he was faintly aware of how hard it was for her to do that; he could feel the warm throb of her arthritis like a phantom ache in his hips. But that was normal.
But the other thing, the part of him that he used when his uncle trained him on the cockpit, that wasn't normal. Something was wrong. Different.
He felt as if he was burning up one moment, and then freezing the next. He flinched as Marge put a hand on his forehead, and a light overhead blinked out, burning out with a soft pop.
"These damned lights," Marge muttered, picking him up and grunting as she straightened back up. Gabriel buried his face against her shoulder, his thumb coming up instinctively to his mouth. He closed his eyes.
"Shhh, it's okay, baby," she crooned to him. She smelled like antiseptic and Old Spice. "We're gonna get you to a bed, dearheart. It'll all be all right. You just wait and see." He'll come back for you, Gabriel heard from her, but the elderly nurse didn't say that last part out loud. Still, he heard it just the same. He'll come back for you. He promised.
-- No, it won't. -- Not his thoughts.
His whole body shook, and nausea cramped his stomach. He moaned softly. What was happening to him? Was he dying?
-- You're not dying. It's in your mind. All in your mind. Stop fighting. The others fought the truth and died. --
That voice again, cold and emotionless and completely without mercy. He closed his eyes and counted, because Uncle Harper said if you counted, it would go away. But Uncle Harper had also said that when he wasn't in the cockpit, he wouldn't have to worry about it, and that was obviously wrong.
It wasn't going away.
Gabriel opened his mouth, trying to tell Margie that it wasn't okay, that it wouldn't be all right and that the system had told him so, but he couldn't say anything. It felt as if he was strangling on his own words. Fear overwhelmed him like a dark wave.
"What is it, sweetheart?" Marge cradled him closer, putting her ear close to him. It made him wish for his mother, suddenly and intensely, and he found himself close to tears. He could barely remember his mother now. It seemed as if he had been with Daddy and Uncle Harper and the techs and the soldiers for as long as he could remember.
"I-... I-"
-- You're fine. Say it. Do not endanger Mission. --
"I-I'm fine. I want to take a nap. Okay?"
"In a little," Marge said softly. "I want to look you over first, okay honey? You don't look like you feel very well. But let's be quiet, okay? The guys in here are sleeping. I don't know what you're still doing up. You miss your father? He'll be home soon."
Daddy... Daddy! Gabriel shuddered in her arms. His Daddy would know what to do. He'd know what was wrong. Or Heero. Heero knew, somehow. Heero was different that way. But he was so far away... both of them were.
Marge sat him up on one of the examining tables, his small legs dangling over the side. She stuck a thermometer under his tongue and wrapped a blood-pressure cuff around his upper arm. She checked his eyes, and tapped his knees with a reflex hammer.
"Well, you seem okay," Marge ruffled his hair, her gnarled hands gentle. "I think someone's just been staying up way past his bedtime."
Gabriel smiled wanly, unable to help himself, but on the inside, he was in a panic.
No! No! You have to see!! I'm not okay! I' m not!
... I think I'm going crazy.
"Sleepy," he said. He reached his arms out to the elderly nurse, and she smiled at him, drawing him into her arms. He curled against her, making himself as small as he could. He shivered, and if his eyes hadn't been closed, she would have seen the terror in them.
"Time for bed, sweetheart. As soon as your Daddy gets home, I'll let you know."
I'll know by myself.
He drifted off, and imagined somewhere he could hear music playing.
A tango.
~*~
Gabriel was asleep when he heard its call again. ZERO's call.
He was sleeping most of the time now; it was the only way he could escape the realities of what was happening around him. There were so many voices crying out now in pain, it was like being caged in an echo chamber. He had to sleep... had to escape it. Even the nightmares were a relief compared to the voices he heard when he was awake.
-- ZS Candidate 14. -- A small, still voice whispered in his mind. He recognized that voice. It was the voice that spoke to him in his dreams. And in the cockpit.
That's not my name! he cried out, cowering in the furthest, darkest corner of his mind, away from it.
-- 14, you will listen. Candidate, listen. --
Dark sienna eyes shot open in the darkness. They were not the eyes of Gabriel, child of Paradise Lost, son of the General. At least, not completely. Whatever had been trained into him had driven what was left of the little boy into a dark corner, where he cowered and watched on. He grabbed the snowglobe sitting on the side table next to the bed. Heero must have left it.
He clutched the snowglobe tightly. He could not remember ever being so afraid.
But the whispered voice in his head did not care. ZERO, the system for which he was trained, did not care. It had no use for such technicalities. It drove all the people it touched insane and fed on the insanity of absolute truth, it fed on hatred in human hearts, the will to fight. Then it would fight, kill, and feed some more. With Gabriel's gift, he tuned into it like a radio station only he could hear.
-- ZS Candidate 14. Get up. --
Helpless to stop himself, Gabriel sat up slowly, as if in a trance.
... What do you want with me?
-- You know the answer to that. We don't have to show you. You know what you are made for. So do what you were made to do. --
Daddy said that. But not to me. Who are you?
-- We are ZERO. We are the threads of the past weaved into the future. We know all possible outcomes. Do you want to know your future, 14? --
No. You're only supposed to be in the cockpit. You're only supposed to be in the cockpit!
-- You are special, 14. With you, we are not limited to a circuit board. We can tell you if your father will win his war. We can tell you of your fate. Do you not want to know? The others all wanted to know. We can tell you what we see. Knowing will drive you insane. But you will ask, sooner or later. All of you do. Maxwell asked. So did Yuy. We told them both of this, but they did not believe. They forgot. --
No!
-- You are the hub of the wheel, you are the key and We are the door. Without you, the colony will fall. Without you, Maxwell and the rest will die. You cannot escape your fate. And neither can they. --
You're a liar!
-- We are ZERO. We are a program. Lying is a trait limited to humans and large primates. We are neither. Your training is over. You are ready. --
The training wasn't enough anymore. It was just the ghost of battle, a false bloodletting. It wasn't enough, not now that ZERO was able to test its newfound strength and awareness through the boy, this boy.
ZERO had festered in the boy's mind without form, an restless embryo that was not aware of its purpose and so could not act. The boy was the only one strong enough, the only one with the power to do what it needed to do.
It had gained awareness through the child's training, through the honing of the child's gift for the battlefield. ZS Candidate 14 was now its tool. ZERO had a purpose.
And that purpose was war.
Leave me alone! Go away!! The child's cries were faint and faraway. Irrelevant.
ZERO walked soundlessly down one of the corridors. It was dark. The old nurse, Candidate 14's caretaker, was finally sleeping. So were the rest of the soldiers. ZERO would have been surprised, if it had the capacity for such human emotion. The nurse had been awake through most of ZERO's awareness, caring for injured soldiers and - of course - the boy.
The boy fought ZERO, always fought it. But it needed the boy. The boy freed it, focused it, like a magnifying glass focusing light, focusing light and turning it to fire. It used the boy as it had to, like the most delicate of tools, but it was careful without being aware of its own caution. Without the boy, it could not wage war.
It dragged the boy. The boy fought against it at every step. Finally, it took the boy to the hold where the ZS cockpit was being held. It put in the password at the door, and opened the doorway. Gabriel did not know the password, but he had seen it input a dozen times. Finding it in the boy's memory was as easy as browsing through a phonebook.
Starting the cockpit was not so easy. The boy was small, and it was hard for him to reach the control panels, especially since some resilient part of the boy refused to let go of the snowglobe in his hand. But eventually, the systems were up.
I won't do this. I can't.
-- You have seen your own death in the cockpit. So did all the others. Why are you still afraid? It is irrational. --
I want my Daddy!
-- Duo Maxwell is not your father. Nor is Isaac Harper related to you in any way. -- The program's voice in his mind was unflappable, blank. Merciless. -- Your biological parents are deceased. You know this. Get in the cockpit. --
"No!"
Gabriel dropped the snowglobe. The ball of glass and water shattered on the hard concrete floor, and without thinking, Gabriel dropped to his knees and ground both small hands into the wet glass shards, the shattered plastic L2 cityscape. The pain was sharp and immediate as his blood began to mix with the water on the concrete, and it drove the voice of ZERO back. A little.
-- Desist, 14! Injuring your hands will decrease combat efficiency! --
Fuck you! FuckyoufuckyouFUCKYOU-
As he came back to himself and he heard Emilio come into the cockpit hold, Gabriel suddenly realized he was screaming.
He passed back into nothing as he realized he'd been screaming all along.
~*~
"Gabriel! Oh, nino!" Emilio slid to his knees next to the fallen little boy, the sight of the blood and glass a shock. For a moment, he thought that the General's little nino had tried to kill himself.
He couldn't tell if the boy was conscious or not as he dragged the child onto his lap. Splinters of glass pierced the boy's small hands at odd angles, and blood from them dripped onto the floor. The boy's eyes were open, but they were empty. The boy had given himself a nosebleed again.
Emilio looked into the boy's face. He looked for a flicker of humanity in the boy's eyes, the slightest sign of Gabriel, and he saw nothing for a moment. But then something snapped, and the boy went limp in his arms, shuddering. It took Emilio a moment to figure out what he was doing, but eventually he did.
Gabriel was crying.
Emilio had never seen the boy cry before. Scream, yes. Cry... no. It frightened him badly.
He held the boy in his arms and prayed. Not to God, but to the boy. As if he knew the boy could hear him, wherever it was that Gabriel had gone.
Don't let it take over, Gabriel. You had power over it at the start, I know you did. Maybe not much, but a little. If you have any left-any power, any influence-please don't let it take over. Do not let Harper do this.
He decided to tell Duo, whenever he got back He knew that Harper would probably kill him, and he didn't care. The boy was more important. The boy was going insane. The others, at least, had simply died. Wasn't death better than this?
He would tell Duo. He would save the boy.
He only hoped he would not be too late.
TBC...
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