Merrillian Part 14
He hung quietly in the darkness, feeling the warm and beating chains shift quietly around his skin. He didn't bother to open his eyes; it wasn't as if anything had changed. He knew exactly what he would see, and he knew how it would make his heart sink more and more with each look.
Duo sighed softly in hopelessness.
He wondered if he could even remember what the world outside his mind looked like anymore. The world he used to be a part of. The world outside the Merrillian's hold.
He'd given up struggling a long time ago. Whatever these chains were made of, they wouldn't break. At first he'd found it creepy and scary how they pulsated and glowed red just like a living body. He could feel an echoing heartbeat from the chains, gently thumping against his skin where the chains wrapped around his body. And every day another chain was added, lifting him slightly farther up; farther and farther away from everything.
He looked now and there was nothing below him. He used to be able to see the ground, but it was gone now, replaced by an abyss of darkness that completely engulfed him and closed in around and engulfed him. Of course, that floor had never been real in the first place. But rather a figment of his imagination placed there to help him feel like he still had a bit of control, in the beginning. It had disappeared a long time ago.
The chains shifted around him again, pulling tighter then normal, pinching his skin. This time, Duo opened his eyes and looked out in to the darkness around him, a small bit of hope lighting in his mind.
The chains were acting protective again, pulling at him as if trying to draw him closer and away from something. They rarely did that, in fact, it was a very recent action, that happened only when he was able to communicate through dreams.
He'd discovered that one small release by accident and luckily had been able to make use of it. Years upon years of hanging in darkness did leave one plenty of time to test every possible way of trying to reach the outside world. He'd lost count of the years and the times he'd tried different things. All he knew now was that somewhere along the line he'd stopped struggling physically and figured out that this prison he was in was actually somewhere in the deepest reaches of his mind. In a way everything about this was an illusion, but that didn't make the chains any looser in their grip.
About the time he'd noticed that, he also began to notice something else. Within the darkness around him, there were actually many other shadows. Shadows of people, young boys just like himself, their voices whispering incoherently as one, in many languages at once. He couldn't see them but he could feel them around him. They surrounded him and, to a point, were part of him, constantly whispering and murmuring in his mind things he couldn't understand.
How long had each of those boys lasted before they'd died?
Was he even alive anymore?
Duo had no way to even know that the other he'd managed to contact was real. Maybe he had just lost so much hope that he was resorting to making up chances of escape. That's probably what it was, him imagining everything with Heero, just making it up so he could comfort himself in this eternal darkness.
But he couldn't banish the small wish that it wasn't just a dream.
He didn't want to fade into the darkness and join the rest of those boys.
He didn't want to become one of the silently murmuring voices, that just whispered for eternity about the stone that had given them amazing powers, but had stripped their life away in return.
Oh the voices were incoherent all right, but at the same time he could hear their stories, feel their sadness at being shut out and yet always alive. Locked away from everything.
They all started the same, a boy who came across the same red stone and held it in his hand. From that moment the first chain linked, tying him to the stone. It was a small chain and not even Duo had noticed it at first. He'd carried the stone with him everywhere; not even thinking it was strange. He kept it in his pocket, often wrapping his hand around it to feel the smooth facets against his fingers. The stone was always warm, comforting even, and whenever it was in his hands he found he felt safe and in control.
It was like an addiction.
He'd started to suspect when the dreams began.
Duo had had dreams all his life, thanks to his shared genes from the Winner family line. Dreams scattered with small bits of déjà vu and other odd occurrences. But they were always small things that could easily be passed off as coincidence. Yet, when the stone came into the picture, they changed.
The dreams became hauntingly real, scaring him as they showed him visions of things that would happen to him and those around him. He saw flashes of his father sitting at the computer, angrily wiping away his tears as he printed out picture after picture of his son, surrounded by framing materials. He saw Quatre sitting in his room stonily, a dead look in his eyes as he held a small framed picture in his hands, too broken to even cry over something horrible that had happened. And those were the tame dreams.
They started small, then came every night. He had lost sleep over them, tossing and turning and crying out silently as they came over and over again in his mind. Image after image of what would happen in the future to those around him. And even more frightening were the images of himself, lying in a hospital bed, cold and pale, looking nearly dead with machines hooked everywhere. Those images had made him curl in on himself and cry from fear, somehow knowing that the stone wasn't lying to him.
He had tried to get rid of it. Tried to let go and leave things be, but by then he couldn't. The chains were just too numerous and tight. No matter how much he struggled the visions kept coming and he couldn't stop them. And then...
Then somehow he'd ended up here.
He couldn't remember how it had happened, but he figured he'd fallen asleep and just never left the dream that the stone pulled him into. So here he was, hanging in an abyss of darkness, the same voices whispering over and over in his ears, crying to him about their similar stories and how their lives had been destroyed.
At least the visions had stopped.
Duo shuddered quietly, the chains around him shaking and clanking with the movement. Opening his eyes more he scanned the darkness, feeling the chains shift again, tighter and tighter.
Yes, something was definitely here. Or rather, someone.
At that thought, the darkness below him shimmered and a floor appeared with three shadows sitting in a circle, their hands clasped together. Duo watched silently as one of the shadows stood up and moved toward him. The other two shifted into wisps of air that danced around both of them, lighting up the darkness with an eerie light.
Heero smiled at Duo in reassurance.
"I figured it out," he said quietly and Duo gave a nod.
All he could do was nod and show his happiness with his eyes. He'd lost his ability to talk a long time ago. Or so he thought.
Heero moved closer to him and touched his face gently, and Duo leaned into the touch, basking in the actual feel of another human's skin. It had been so long...
Heero's arms wrapped around him, holding him in a protective embrace that Duo only wished he could return. Letting his eyes close, he concentrated on the arms around him, trying to give the other boy strength to do whatever he needed to do to stop this. Anything, anything to be free again.
All around him, he felt the chains shift again, jerking tightly this time, twisting his skin and causing him to cry out softly. To his surprise, his pained voice echoed around the darkness, mingling in with the whispers of pain.
Duo's eyes opened wide in fear. No... he was becoming one of them... No!
The two wisps of air materialized and Duo recognized one as faintly resembling Quatre, while the other was a female he's never seen before. Both wrapped their misty arms around him, while the chains responded with another jerk.
Duo cried out, the chains pulling at him tightly. Tears slipped down his cheeks from the pain and yet also from happiness. The chains never acted like this before, so they must be close. So close.
"Don't stop," he whispered softly, his voice melding with those around him. He only hoped the others can hear it before it faded into the darkness around him. "Don't let go."
A red light appeared in the distance and grew brighter around them. The voices lifted in to a roar, working into a high pitched screeching like an approaching storm. Duo closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Summoning his strength he pulled with his arms, physically fighting the chains again as the others held on to him tightly. He could feel them doing something, but he wasn't sure what. And all around him the red light grew brighter, screeching louder in rage at being fought.
"You can't keep him!" Quatre's voice rang out around them.
"Just shut up and go away!" The girl's voice follows, yelling back at the roaring around them, almost like she's scolding a young child.
Duo's eyes snapped open at that thought and he finds Heero starring back at him, almost as if he's realized the same thing.
"A child?" Duo murmured softly.
Heero responded with a small nod and a light filled his eyes. A light of realization.
That's it! Duo proclaimed loudly in his mind.
"Stop resisting it," Heero's voice is soft at first, then grows louder for the others to hear. "Don't resist it, listen to what it wants."
Duo nodded to himself and watched the others relax around him, letting the red light roar and wash over them in waves.
The voices around him roared loudly, and then seem to fade, shifting and dropping into one voice.
A voice that is crying softly.
Duo's eyes widened in realization as he finally understood the thing that had eluded him all the years he'd been a prisoner. The one voice he'd never been able to hear and the cry that had never reached him.
All at once, the chains around him faded away and he was no longer suspended in the air. All four of them drifted down to the ground, landing gently.
Red sparkled through the air, raining around them like a small storm. As the sparkles drifted down, they swirled over and created a small shape. The gentle crying voice grew louder, but not horribly so. Instead the shape seemed to take form, becoming that of a child who was curled in upon himself, crying gently.
Duo watched silently as Heero let go of him and stood up. Heero stepped over to the small crying boy and knelt down next to him, a small smile crossing his face.
"Shhh," he said softly.
The red form lifted its head, the undefined hands moving up in a motion of wiping away his own tears.
Heero smiled again and reached his hand toward the boy.
Moments pass, all of them watching quietly in anticipation.
Then, slowly, the boy-shape responded, moving his own hand forward. The red hand rested lightly in Heero's, touching it timidly then settling there comfortably.
Around them the sound seemed to die out and Duo closed his eyes, feeling a light breeze flow over and around his entire body. He could literally feel the darkness around him melt away, to reveal blinding but welcome light.
Duo closed his eyes and turned away, bringing up a hand to cover his eyes from the light, his body screaming out in pain from the sudden movement. The light burns his eyes and his entire body tingles as if it were just now waking up. The entire process hurts and he wants nothing more then to make it stop and crawl away from the light. But more then that he wants to see the world again.
So he fights it and finally manages to open his eyes, letting the light flood in and wash away all the darkness.
Forever.
TBC...
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