[Fic] Inside (1/?)
Fandom: Gundam Wing
Category: drama
Pairing: 3x4
Setting: post-EW
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: violence, torture, angst, yaoi, romance
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, or the setting. Just non-profit fanfiction.
A/N: This fic is a birthday gift for lovely rea_la_diable. It was originally intended as a one-shot, but the plot ran away with me a bit. Also, I meant for it to mainly be a romance fic. *cough* I promise though, that it will get there eventually. The beginning is bleak, I know, but hang in there, there's still hope. If for no other reason, give this fic a chance to watch me juggling all the elements in the warnings, while trying to stay clear of bad fandom cliches.
My current estimate is that this fic will stretch into two or three parts.
* * * * *
The walls were cushioned, and there was no single sharp object to be found in the room. Stupid people. They must think that he wanted to hurt himself. They should be much more concerned about what he might do to them for keeping him locked up here.
His original plan had been to sharpen a spoon against the steel frame of the bed, slowly honing it to something that could be used as a lethal weapon, for someone who knew where the arteries were close to the skin. But they always watched him while he ate, so he would be hard pressed to embezzle a utensil without them noticing. His second plan had been the toothbrush. If groomed properly, the handle could become a stabbing weapon. Of course, it turned out that St. Theresa's mental health care facility were cheap enough not to invest in quality toothbrushes for their patients, and the damn thing broke in the process. He deemed it useless to begin on another; it would never hold together enough to be able to pierce a human rib cage. With these improvised weapons, one dig not have a very large margin for errors.
So he had eventually succumbed to one of the oldest tricks in the book: pretending to have a sudden seizure, so that when the medic personnel rushes into the room, they were not at all prepared. He had been able to grab the frap stick one of them were carelessly keeping attached to his belt. He had gotten all the way to the cafeteria, before anyone managed to stop him. He would probably have gotten out too, if it wasn't for one of the inmates. He had totally not expected resistance from that direction. The crazy fuck had thrown himself in front of him, grabbing a hold of one of his legs and biting down into his calf. He still had the bite mark to prove it, and he suspected that it would scar.
That was the first week. After the frap stick incident, they had started dosing him heavily with various opiates, to keep him unable to resist much. It was okay, he was used to it. Only, where he came from, people didn't pretend that it was 'for your own good'. Slave trade existed, whether the high shots of the ESUN government liked to admit it or not and drugged slaves were a whole lot easier to deal with. A will of their own wasn't encouraged in those who belonged to someone else. They paid good money on the black market for a young, healthy body. Made for excellent free labour.
At first, he had tried simply hiding the pills in his cheek. When they caught him doing that, he made a habit of shoving his fingers down his throat as a bed-time ritual. Unfortunately, there were surveillance cameras in all the rooms. They didn't watch you all he time - but occasionally, when you were out of luck, or if you'd been troublesome, they might keep an eye on you. After that, he always received his medicine intravenously. In the delirium that followed, he would sometimes forget why he was there, or even that he needed to get out. He could stare at a crack in the ceiling for hours on end, dreaming up a life that had never been his. At other times, he would just get caught up in a memory loop, waking nightmares from which there was no escape until the drug started to wear off. And then it all began anew.
They had been made to stand guard at the entrance to the old bunker while a team had ventured inside to recover what weapons had been left inside, neglected since the days before the Alliance. There were many such facilities spread out over the world, and especially in the desert on the Persian peninsula. Desert storms had hidden many of them, allowing them to fall into oblivion. Until someone came looking for them again.
He had taken his five most talented recruits; Omar and Mehmet, who were local kids, Tatiana, a grim girl from a bit up north who had the budding womanly forms to go with that dead look in her eyes - no one ever asked her what had happened to her and she never told - Jawahar from New Dehli whose fingers were the deftest ones in the area and then there was Eric. No one knew where he originally came from, including himself, only that he had been mostly everywhere, never staying in one place long enough to risk attracting the wrong kind of attention. Why Eric had decided to throw in his lot with them, he had never quite understood; what had possessed such a restless soul to care enough about anything to risk his skinny hide over it. No one had ever promised salvation. Just a chance to take control of one's own life. It was no coincidence that he had been put on charge of the unit that consisted of young soldiers who had not yet entered their teens. The Second Line did not shun anyone who wanted to make a difference simply because they were young. Children had a right to defend themselves too. And with his history, he could relate to their situation in a unique way. From a tactical vantage point, there was the fact that children were small and could more easily hide, or fit into narrow passages, combined with that they did not attract as much suspicion as grown men. The current mission required outmost discretion.
Something, however, had gone wrong. As the sound of incoming birds of prey; two of them. How could they know?! They weren't supposed to be here... He shouted at his units, waving directions for them to spread out and seek cover, his voice drowned by the roar of the airplanes. If they fell back into the bunker, they would be trapped. Repeating the message that they had been compromised over and over again into his comm, he couldn't get through to the people underground; layers of concrete blocked the radio signal.
Omar was right by his side, shouting and pointing at something. A cloud of dust suddenly blurred his vision. Instinctively, he threw himself to the left in a somersault, already running when he landed on his feet. Stinging grains of sand bit into his cheeks. No time to look back.
As his sight cleared, he barely managed to duck into the cover of a rock before another air strike hit nearby. If he could make it to the next one... His path was intercepted. Had to backtrack. He didn't see the paratrooper until too late, his body twisted halfway around. For a split second, he realized that he would never be able to dodge in time.
Then someone from behind him fired a single, well aimed shot, puncturing the parachute. As the trooper was sent falling rapidly, he narrowly missed his mark. Spinning around, he saw Omar, kneeling and wavering, about to fall, machine gun in one hand, the other hand blown clear off. Half Omar's face was dark with blood. In the agonizing eternity of a moment, he realized that if he tried to carry the boy, they would both be dead. Also, it was unlikely that Omar would survive until they got back to base anyway.
The escape vehicle was hidden nearby. It was each to his own now; those who could make it there might live, the others, not. It was a rat race there; there could be no waiting for anyone. He dashed between rock formations, occasionally firing back. It was almost impossible to hit a bird of prey from the ground, but he got in one lucky shot, damaging the engine. In war, it was sometimes dumb luck more than skills that determined the difference between life and death.
There was the hovercraft, concealed with a camouflage net. Night invisible from the sky. Was he the only one who had made it? No, there was someone else, maybe a hundred meters away, a small figure hunching behind a sharp cliff. This whole place was hostile and barren; why anyone would want to live here was beyond him.
The hovercraft started smoothly, just as the small figure came running towards it. He set it moving, trusting his soldier to be able to jump aboard while it was in motion. It was Eric, ashen, dirty strands having escaped from the head shroud, red nose blistering in the harsh sun. His delicate skin never could take the exposure very well. Eric was clutching something in a bloody hand. It was a long lock of dark brown hair. He gave the boy a grim expression.
"The others?"
Eric shook his head once. He wanted to tell the boy that they would avenge them, but he didn't think that things such as vengeance meant anything to the rootless youngster. He couldn't quite tell why he knew. He just did.
An incessant tugging at his arm eventually brought him back to the present. He felt heavily disoriented and the smell of gunpowder and blood still stung his nostrils, even as he slowly came to recognize the face in front of him as the kind nurse who would sometimes bring him extra treats for dinner.
"Trowa?"
Finding to his surprise that his lips actually obeyed him, he half-heartedly snapped back.
"Told you not to call me that."
"Sorry. You have a visitor."
Blinking, he had trouble focusing, his mind prone to wander. He didn't want it to, but it was so hard to stay awake.
"Don't want to see anyone."
He could sense that the kind face was getting a bit exasperated. He didn't really want to upset her, so he made an effort - it required a tremendous amount of will - to be nice to her.
"Tired. If it is that woman Une, she can come back another day. She will anyway."
Kind face shook her head, smiling.
"It's someone else, this time. It's someone I think you may want to see. And he travelled a long way to get to meet you."
He could hear the hopeful tone in her voice, but he wasn't hopeful. There was no one he wanted to see who would do something as stupid as walk into a government facility - if any of them were still even alive. He had tried to inquire after them, but had received vague answers at best. Newspapers and TV channels weren't allowed in the facility. Supposedly the patients needed a break from the world and the news might upset them. Also, of course, people who were cut off from the rest of the world were easier to intimidate and eventually brainwash.
He must have zoned out, because he didn't remember agreeing to seeing the visitor, but when next he woke up again, he found himself being led through the yellow corridors to the reception room. He might have cared that he looked like shit, hair not tended to in many days, dressed up in those ridiculous pyjamas outfits they made every patient wear - probably to keep them from feeling like individuals - and having to be dragged around like a fucking invalid. But the drugs made him too tired to care. It just seemed irrelevant.
Kind face hadn't been lying. The person sitting in the reception room, wearing a tailored granite coloured suit, golden hair looking like something straight out of a poster was indeed someone new. Or... wait.
The blond was standing by the window, the evening sun hitting the hair at just the right angle to make it look like a golden halo. The room appeared to be a hotel room of some sort; the fancier kind, judging by the furniture. It wasn't really in focus, though. It was all about the blond.
Closing in on the other man, he slipped his arms around a familiar waist, nuzzling into the nook where shoulder met with the neck. The skin was warm, smelling of sun and a discreet cologne. The blond shook him off, taking a few steps away, turning around to face him, hands held out slightly on each side of him.
"Don't... Just don't. You can't fix it that easily."
Easy? The other man thought it was easy? He retreated into a defensive position, frowning slightly.
"Why are you doing this?"
"Because I can't take this running hot and cold thing of yours anymore!"
"I'm here, am I not?"
He retreated further into his shell. Never, ever let anyone see your pain.
"That's just not enough any more, Trowa! You're all over me one day and you shut me out the next. And whenever I try to talk about it, you do this!"
"I'm not sure what you're referring to."
The blond sighed, turning away again, glancing out the window once more.
"So you keep telling me."
His eyes narrowed, jaw set into a stubborn line as he tossed his head slightly, long bangs rustling.
"It'd be fine if you didn't keep inventing problems."
The other man stared at him in anger and disbelief, soft voice pitching.
"Oh is that what you think I'm doing? I'm the paranoid one?"
Something cold was spreading at the pit of his stomach. His expression became blank as he grew numb inside. He didn't speak. He didn't move. The voice inside him that screamed 'Please see me!' was drowning in a sea of nothingness. He knew that the blond could sense it. Making a sound of exasperation, the other man threw his hands into the air.
"You're an emotional cripple, Trowa! I love you, but I can't live with you. I'm not a fucking handhold you can just cling to to avoid dealing with your issues. This is a cul-de-sac, can't you see that?"
"You've made your point perfectly clear," he responded tonelessly, not watching for a response as he spun around, making for the door. The dying hope inside him that longed for the blond to follow him, he snuffed out like a candle.
He didn't remember stumbling to his knees and he couldn't hear himself screaming. At some point he must have lunged at the blond, however, because he had vague memories of people pinning him down to the floor. It took four of them to hold him down as he was thrashing wildly at nothing and no one in particular. If at that moment, he had been able to tear the whole world into pieces, he would have, without a second thought. His mind went blank as someone injected him with a tranquilizer of some sort, knocking him out cold within seconds.
What eventually woke him up was the eery feeling of the drugs starting to leave his system. It was the clearest his mind had been in... he couldn't really tell. The days tended to just meld together, when under the influence. In a place like this, it was easy to lose track of time. It could have been just a few days, or many months. As far as he was concerned, it was an eternity.
He had been tied to the bed. Another precaution that was supposedly 'for his own sake', he imagined. His skin was damp from perspiration, but it was cold sweat. Much of what he recalled from before he had passed out was a blur, but there was one unpleasant feeling somewhere in there that he couldn't shake, no matter how much he tried to write it off as the medication. The sense of wrongness.
In the semi-darkness of the room, foreign substances weren't required for the mind to play tricks on someone. He chased the elusive feeling through a mind maze, never quite catching it, always one step behind as it mocked him, disappearing behind another bend. For hours on end, he writhed slowly in a feverish state of semi-wakefulness, the bonds chafing his wrists and ankles raw. Even the humiliation of the catheter they had inserted, of his utter helplessness, could not distract him from his mental downward spiral, as he ensnared himself further into the unsteady boundaries between what was real and what wasn't. It was almost morning when sleep finally claimed him due to pure exhaustion.
"Tell me your name."
He slowly traced a line with the tip of his army knife from the hollow of the other man's throat, up all the way to the chin, leaving a narrow trail of red. The prisoner stared wildly at him, but still stubbornly refused to answer the question.
"I'm thirsty. Can I have some water?"
A quick, hard punch to the face was the response to that particular insolence. The prisoner groaned and he could feel when his fist connected with the nose that he had broken some bones.
"When you've told me what I want to know you can have all the water you want. Let's try it again. Tell me your name and rank. I know you're a Preventer."
He had to give the guy that he had courage. The other man shuddered visibly, but he still pulled himself together, facing him, apparently deciding that that particular piece of information was one he could afford to give up.
"For all that it's worth to you, I'm agent Pierrot, clearance yellow, first pilot in this operation."
Nodding slowly, he could see that for a moment, the prisoner had been hoping that it wouldn't mean anything to him. It did. He knew perfectly well what clearance yellow stood for. If the man was telling the truth, it meant that he didn't have the authority to take control of an operation. Basically, their prisoner probably didn't know anything of importance. Of course, he had to make sure.
"Someone provided you with the information of where we'd be. You need to tell me who your source is."
A tense silence followed as the other man averted his gaze. So. The hard way, then.
He gave no prior warning this time either, as he struck the prisoner in the gut. The man tried to double over but failed, as the ropes that held his hands suspended over his head also kept him upright. There was a gagging sound, but apparently the pilot hadn't eating anything very recently. He didn't give agent Pierrot the chance to recover from the blow. With one sharp rip, he tore open the prisoners belt with the knife, making short work of the underwear as the pants fell down to pool around the man's feet. Firmly grabbing one leg just above the knee with his left hand, holding it in place, he sliced up a flap of skin on the inside of the thigh. The scream that reverberated in his ears made his skin crawl, but he shut it out - he had to, to be able to do this. And do it he had to.
He had never before had to actually 'interrogate' anyone before, but that didn't mean that he didn't have a pretty good idea of how to do it. With the technological advancement of the current day and age, the threat of losing fingers or teeth weren't as handicapping as they may once have been, as they could just be replaced with cybernetic ones. And a Preventer agent that was sent on this kind of mission could probably be expected to be able to withstand a bit of pain. There were things one could do to a person's mind, given some time. Unfortunately, he didn't have time. He had to have the answers now.
Slowly, he started pulling at the skin flap, hand delicate to avoid deepening the cut. That wasn't the point. Although the room was awash with wordless screams, echoes bouncing off the walls creating a macabre symphony of pain, he thought that he could still hear the slurping sound of skin parting from the flesh. He didn't pause to ask his questions again. He wanted to make sure first, that the prisoner was truly broken.
Having shaved the insides of both thighs red, bare and bleeding, he finally looked up, facing the blood and tear stroked face of the Preventer agent, face constricted into a mask of pain and terror. It was pitiful to see a grown man, especially someone who was usually strong and confident, cry witlessly like a baby, but it was nothing new to him. He wiped his hands on his own pants.
"Skin grows back. There are some things that don't. I'm only going to ask you one more time." He harshly grabbed the other man's sack with one hand, placing the edge of the knife at the perineum. "Tell me how the Preventers found out that we'd be there."
Agent Pierrot was sobbing and hiccupping now, head shaking frantically. "The Commander wouldn't tell us, she just said... that there was new intel. New weapon stash located. We were to inter... intercept." The man sniffled loudly, gasping for air. "The captain even asked, but sh' said we're working on a need-to-know basis. I swear, I don't have the clearance to be given classified information of that... security level. Just don't... please don't. Anything else, anything I know, anything you want..."
The begging went on for a little while, incoherent ramblings. It was the last sense he'd be able to get out of the man, he suspected. So he did the prisoner the only kindness he could, hitting him hard over the back of his head with the handle of the knife.
"I believe you," he whispered, closing his eyes for just a moment.
The fact that this had been necessary to maintain his cover - he couldn't take the chances that the man actually did know something and then have let someone else interrogate him - didn't make him feel any less like a monster. Nor did the fact that the man would likely have suffered worse at one of the other rebels' hands.
He started into wakefulness, eyes snapping wide open, tearing wildly at his bonds, body spasming as he screamed, screamed until his throat was raw and the screams dissolved into broken croaks and the personnel rushed into the room, fussing over him. Someone snapped something about him having a seizure, but the word didn't mean anything to him at the time. His mind was falling apart, and for the first time since he had been brought to the institution, making a noose of his sheets sounded like a tempting idea. When the sedatives were starting to kick in, his head lolled to one side and he stared vacantly at the wall, mumbling the same mantra over and over again.
"I'm not him I'm not him I'm not him -"
How could he trust his mind when they were messing with it, trying to make him believe that he was someone else? He had endured imprisonment, pain, humiliation, degradation... That, at least, he was reasonably sure of. Unlike the man he had tortured - might have tortured - he could resist that kind of methods of persuasion. His body was a tool, it mattered little to him as such. But how was he to fight people who were robbing him of his mind?
Drewling on the pillow, gradually losing any consistency to his thoughts, he whispered with a broken voice the only word that came to mind:
"Quatre..."
Category: drama
Pairing: 3x4
Setting: post-EW
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: violence, torture, angst, yaoi, romance
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, or the setting. Just non-profit fanfiction.
A/N: This fic is a birthday gift for lovely rea_la_diable. It was originally intended as a one-shot, but the plot ran away with me a bit. Also, I meant for it to mainly be a romance fic. *cough* I promise though, that it will get there eventually. The beginning is bleak, I know, but hang in there, there's still hope. If for no other reason, give this fic a chance to watch me juggling all the elements in the warnings, while trying to stay clear of bad fandom cliches.
My current estimate is that this fic will stretch into two or three parts.
* * * * *
The walls were cushioned, and there was no single sharp object to be found in the room. Stupid people. They must think that he wanted to hurt himself. They should be much more concerned about what he might do to them for keeping him locked up here.
His original plan had been to sharpen a spoon against the steel frame of the bed, slowly honing it to something that could be used as a lethal weapon, for someone who knew where the arteries were close to the skin. But they always watched him while he ate, so he would be hard pressed to embezzle a utensil without them noticing. His second plan had been the toothbrush. If groomed properly, the handle could become a stabbing weapon. Of course, it turned out that St. Theresa's mental health care facility were cheap enough not to invest in quality toothbrushes for their patients, and the damn thing broke in the process. He deemed it useless to begin on another; it would never hold together enough to be able to pierce a human rib cage. With these improvised weapons, one dig not have a very large margin for errors.
So he had eventually succumbed to one of the oldest tricks in the book: pretending to have a sudden seizure, so that when the medic personnel rushes into the room, they were not at all prepared. He had been able to grab the frap stick one of them were carelessly keeping attached to his belt. He had gotten all the way to the cafeteria, before anyone managed to stop him. He would probably have gotten out too, if it wasn't for one of the inmates. He had totally not expected resistance from that direction. The crazy fuck had thrown himself in front of him, grabbing a hold of one of his legs and biting down into his calf. He still had the bite mark to prove it, and he suspected that it would scar.
That was the first week. After the frap stick incident, they had started dosing him heavily with various opiates, to keep him unable to resist much. It was okay, he was used to it. Only, where he came from, people didn't pretend that it was 'for your own good'. Slave trade existed, whether the high shots of the ESUN government liked to admit it or not and drugged slaves were a whole lot easier to deal with. A will of their own wasn't encouraged in those who belonged to someone else. They paid good money on the black market for a young, healthy body. Made for excellent free labour.
At first, he had tried simply hiding the pills in his cheek. When they caught him doing that, he made a habit of shoving his fingers down his throat as a bed-time ritual. Unfortunately, there were surveillance cameras in all the rooms. They didn't watch you all he time - but occasionally, when you were out of luck, or if you'd been troublesome, they might keep an eye on you. After that, he always received his medicine intravenously. In the delirium that followed, he would sometimes forget why he was there, or even that he needed to get out. He could stare at a crack in the ceiling for hours on end, dreaming up a life that had never been his. At other times, he would just get caught up in a memory loop, waking nightmares from which there was no escape until the drug started to wear off. And then it all began anew.
They had been made to stand guard at the entrance to the old bunker while a team had ventured inside to recover what weapons had been left inside, neglected since the days before the Alliance. There were many such facilities spread out over the world, and especially in the desert on the Persian peninsula. Desert storms had hidden many of them, allowing them to fall into oblivion. Until someone came looking for them again.
He had taken his five most talented recruits; Omar and Mehmet, who were local kids, Tatiana, a grim girl from a bit up north who had the budding womanly forms to go with that dead look in her eyes - no one ever asked her what had happened to her and she never told - Jawahar from New Dehli whose fingers were the deftest ones in the area and then there was Eric. No one knew where he originally came from, including himself, only that he had been mostly everywhere, never staying in one place long enough to risk attracting the wrong kind of attention. Why Eric had decided to throw in his lot with them, he had never quite understood; what had possessed such a restless soul to care enough about anything to risk his skinny hide over it. No one had ever promised salvation. Just a chance to take control of one's own life. It was no coincidence that he had been put on charge of the unit that consisted of young soldiers who had not yet entered their teens. The Second Line did not shun anyone who wanted to make a difference simply because they were young. Children had a right to defend themselves too. And with his history, he could relate to their situation in a unique way. From a tactical vantage point, there was the fact that children were small and could more easily hide, or fit into narrow passages, combined with that they did not attract as much suspicion as grown men. The current mission required outmost discretion.
Something, however, had gone wrong. As the sound of incoming birds of prey; two of them. How could they know?! They weren't supposed to be here... He shouted at his units, waving directions for them to spread out and seek cover, his voice drowned by the roar of the airplanes. If they fell back into the bunker, they would be trapped. Repeating the message that they had been compromised over and over again into his comm, he couldn't get through to the people underground; layers of concrete blocked the radio signal.
Omar was right by his side, shouting and pointing at something. A cloud of dust suddenly blurred his vision. Instinctively, he threw himself to the left in a somersault, already running when he landed on his feet. Stinging grains of sand bit into his cheeks. No time to look back.
As his sight cleared, he barely managed to duck into the cover of a rock before another air strike hit nearby. If he could make it to the next one... His path was intercepted. Had to backtrack. He didn't see the paratrooper until too late, his body twisted halfway around. For a split second, he realized that he would never be able to dodge in time.
Then someone from behind him fired a single, well aimed shot, puncturing the parachute. As the trooper was sent falling rapidly, he narrowly missed his mark. Spinning around, he saw Omar, kneeling and wavering, about to fall, machine gun in one hand, the other hand blown clear off. Half Omar's face was dark with blood. In the agonizing eternity of a moment, he realized that if he tried to carry the boy, they would both be dead. Also, it was unlikely that Omar would survive until they got back to base anyway.
The escape vehicle was hidden nearby. It was each to his own now; those who could make it there might live, the others, not. It was a rat race there; there could be no waiting for anyone. He dashed between rock formations, occasionally firing back. It was almost impossible to hit a bird of prey from the ground, but he got in one lucky shot, damaging the engine. In war, it was sometimes dumb luck more than skills that determined the difference between life and death.
There was the hovercraft, concealed with a camouflage net. Night invisible from the sky. Was he the only one who had made it? No, there was someone else, maybe a hundred meters away, a small figure hunching behind a sharp cliff. This whole place was hostile and barren; why anyone would want to live here was beyond him.
The hovercraft started smoothly, just as the small figure came running towards it. He set it moving, trusting his soldier to be able to jump aboard while it was in motion. It was Eric, ashen, dirty strands having escaped from the head shroud, red nose blistering in the harsh sun. His delicate skin never could take the exposure very well. Eric was clutching something in a bloody hand. It was a long lock of dark brown hair. He gave the boy a grim expression.
"The others?"
Eric shook his head once. He wanted to tell the boy that they would avenge them, but he didn't think that things such as vengeance meant anything to the rootless youngster. He couldn't quite tell why he knew. He just did.
An incessant tugging at his arm eventually brought him back to the present. He felt heavily disoriented and the smell of gunpowder and blood still stung his nostrils, even as he slowly came to recognize the face in front of him as the kind nurse who would sometimes bring him extra treats for dinner.
"Trowa?"
Finding to his surprise that his lips actually obeyed him, he half-heartedly snapped back.
"Told you not to call me that."
"Sorry. You have a visitor."
Blinking, he had trouble focusing, his mind prone to wander. He didn't want it to, but it was so hard to stay awake.
"Don't want to see anyone."
He could sense that the kind face was getting a bit exasperated. He didn't really want to upset her, so he made an effort - it required a tremendous amount of will - to be nice to her.
"Tired. If it is that woman Une, she can come back another day. She will anyway."
Kind face shook her head, smiling.
"It's someone else, this time. It's someone I think you may want to see. And he travelled a long way to get to meet you."
He could hear the hopeful tone in her voice, but he wasn't hopeful. There was no one he wanted to see who would do something as stupid as walk into a government facility - if any of them were still even alive. He had tried to inquire after them, but had received vague answers at best. Newspapers and TV channels weren't allowed in the facility. Supposedly the patients needed a break from the world and the news might upset them. Also, of course, people who were cut off from the rest of the world were easier to intimidate and eventually brainwash.
He must have zoned out, because he didn't remember agreeing to seeing the visitor, but when next he woke up again, he found himself being led through the yellow corridors to the reception room. He might have cared that he looked like shit, hair not tended to in many days, dressed up in those ridiculous pyjamas outfits they made every patient wear - probably to keep them from feeling like individuals - and having to be dragged around like a fucking invalid. But the drugs made him too tired to care. It just seemed irrelevant.
Kind face hadn't been lying. The person sitting in the reception room, wearing a tailored granite coloured suit, golden hair looking like something straight out of a poster was indeed someone new. Or... wait.
The blond was standing by the window, the evening sun hitting the hair at just the right angle to make it look like a golden halo. The room appeared to be a hotel room of some sort; the fancier kind, judging by the furniture. It wasn't really in focus, though. It was all about the blond.
Closing in on the other man, he slipped his arms around a familiar waist, nuzzling into the nook where shoulder met with the neck. The skin was warm, smelling of sun and a discreet cologne. The blond shook him off, taking a few steps away, turning around to face him, hands held out slightly on each side of him.
"Don't... Just don't. You can't fix it that easily."
Easy? The other man thought it was easy? He retreated into a defensive position, frowning slightly.
"Why are you doing this?"
"Because I can't take this running hot and cold thing of yours anymore!"
"I'm here, am I not?"
He retreated further into his shell. Never, ever let anyone see your pain.
"That's just not enough any more, Trowa! You're all over me one day and you shut me out the next. And whenever I try to talk about it, you do this!"
"I'm not sure what you're referring to."
The blond sighed, turning away again, glancing out the window once more.
"So you keep telling me."
His eyes narrowed, jaw set into a stubborn line as he tossed his head slightly, long bangs rustling.
"It'd be fine if you didn't keep inventing problems."
The other man stared at him in anger and disbelief, soft voice pitching.
"Oh is that what you think I'm doing? I'm the paranoid one?"
Something cold was spreading at the pit of his stomach. His expression became blank as he grew numb inside. He didn't speak. He didn't move. The voice inside him that screamed 'Please see me!' was drowning in a sea of nothingness. He knew that the blond could sense it. Making a sound of exasperation, the other man threw his hands into the air.
"You're an emotional cripple, Trowa! I love you, but I can't live with you. I'm not a fucking handhold you can just cling to to avoid dealing with your issues. This is a cul-de-sac, can't you see that?"
"You've made your point perfectly clear," he responded tonelessly, not watching for a response as he spun around, making for the door. The dying hope inside him that longed for the blond to follow him, he snuffed out like a candle.
He didn't remember stumbling to his knees and he couldn't hear himself screaming. At some point he must have lunged at the blond, however, because he had vague memories of people pinning him down to the floor. It took four of them to hold him down as he was thrashing wildly at nothing and no one in particular. If at that moment, he had been able to tear the whole world into pieces, he would have, without a second thought. His mind went blank as someone injected him with a tranquilizer of some sort, knocking him out cold within seconds.
What eventually woke him up was the eery feeling of the drugs starting to leave his system. It was the clearest his mind had been in... he couldn't really tell. The days tended to just meld together, when under the influence. In a place like this, it was easy to lose track of time. It could have been just a few days, or many months. As far as he was concerned, it was an eternity.
He had been tied to the bed. Another precaution that was supposedly 'for his own sake', he imagined. His skin was damp from perspiration, but it was cold sweat. Much of what he recalled from before he had passed out was a blur, but there was one unpleasant feeling somewhere in there that he couldn't shake, no matter how much he tried to write it off as the medication. The sense of wrongness.
In the semi-darkness of the room, foreign substances weren't required for the mind to play tricks on someone. He chased the elusive feeling through a mind maze, never quite catching it, always one step behind as it mocked him, disappearing behind another bend. For hours on end, he writhed slowly in a feverish state of semi-wakefulness, the bonds chafing his wrists and ankles raw. Even the humiliation of the catheter they had inserted, of his utter helplessness, could not distract him from his mental downward spiral, as he ensnared himself further into the unsteady boundaries between what was real and what wasn't. It was almost morning when sleep finally claimed him due to pure exhaustion.
"Tell me your name."
He slowly traced a line with the tip of his army knife from the hollow of the other man's throat, up all the way to the chin, leaving a narrow trail of red. The prisoner stared wildly at him, but still stubbornly refused to answer the question.
"I'm thirsty. Can I have some water?"
A quick, hard punch to the face was the response to that particular insolence. The prisoner groaned and he could feel when his fist connected with the nose that he had broken some bones.
"When you've told me what I want to know you can have all the water you want. Let's try it again. Tell me your name and rank. I know you're a Preventer."
He had to give the guy that he had courage. The other man shuddered visibly, but he still pulled himself together, facing him, apparently deciding that that particular piece of information was one he could afford to give up.
"For all that it's worth to you, I'm agent Pierrot, clearance yellow, first pilot in this operation."
Nodding slowly, he could see that for a moment, the prisoner had been hoping that it wouldn't mean anything to him. It did. He knew perfectly well what clearance yellow stood for. If the man was telling the truth, it meant that he didn't have the authority to take control of an operation. Basically, their prisoner probably didn't know anything of importance. Of course, he had to make sure.
"Someone provided you with the information of where we'd be. You need to tell me who your source is."
A tense silence followed as the other man averted his gaze. So. The hard way, then.
He gave no prior warning this time either, as he struck the prisoner in the gut. The man tried to double over but failed, as the ropes that held his hands suspended over his head also kept him upright. There was a gagging sound, but apparently the pilot hadn't eating anything very recently. He didn't give agent Pierrot the chance to recover from the blow. With one sharp rip, he tore open the prisoners belt with the knife, making short work of the underwear as the pants fell down to pool around the man's feet. Firmly grabbing one leg just above the knee with his left hand, holding it in place, he sliced up a flap of skin on the inside of the thigh. The scream that reverberated in his ears made his skin crawl, but he shut it out - he had to, to be able to do this. And do it he had to.
He had never before had to actually 'interrogate' anyone before, but that didn't mean that he didn't have a pretty good idea of how to do it. With the technological advancement of the current day and age, the threat of losing fingers or teeth weren't as handicapping as they may once have been, as they could just be replaced with cybernetic ones. And a Preventer agent that was sent on this kind of mission could probably be expected to be able to withstand a bit of pain. There were things one could do to a person's mind, given some time. Unfortunately, he didn't have time. He had to have the answers now.
Slowly, he started pulling at the skin flap, hand delicate to avoid deepening the cut. That wasn't the point. Although the room was awash with wordless screams, echoes bouncing off the walls creating a macabre symphony of pain, he thought that he could still hear the slurping sound of skin parting from the flesh. He didn't pause to ask his questions again. He wanted to make sure first, that the prisoner was truly broken.
Having shaved the insides of both thighs red, bare and bleeding, he finally looked up, facing the blood and tear stroked face of the Preventer agent, face constricted into a mask of pain and terror. It was pitiful to see a grown man, especially someone who was usually strong and confident, cry witlessly like a baby, but it was nothing new to him. He wiped his hands on his own pants.
"Skin grows back. There are some things that don't. I'm only going to ask you one more time." He harshly grabbed the other man's sack with one hand, placing the edge of the knife at the perineum. "Tell me how the Preventers found out that we'd be there."
Agent Pierrot was sobbing and hiccupping now, head shaking frantically. "The Commander wouldn't tell us, she just said... that there was new intel. New weapon stash located. We were to inter... intercept." The man sniffled loudly, gasping for air. "The captain even asked, but sh' said we're working on a need-to-know basis. I swear, I don't have the clearance to be given classified information of that... security level. Just don't... please don't. Anything else, anything I know, anything you want..."
The begging went on for a little while, incoherent ramblings. It was the last sense he'd be able to get out of the man, he suspected. So he did the prisoner the only kindness he could, hitting him hard over the back of his head with the handle of the knife.
"I believe you," he whispered, closing his eyes for just a moment.
The fact that this had been necessary to maintain his cover - he couldn't take the chances that the man actually did know something and then have let someone else interrogate him - didn't make him feel any less like a monster. Nor did the fact that the man would likely have suffered worse at one of the other rebels' hands.
He started into wakefulness, eyes snapping wide open, tearing wildly at his bonds, body spasming as he screamed, screamed until his throat was raw and the screams dissolved into broken croaks and the personnel rushed into the room, fussing over him. Someone snapped something about him having a seizure, but the word didn't mean anything to him at the time. His mind was falling apart, and for the first time since he had been brought to the institution, making a noose of his sheets sounded like a tempting idea. When the sedatives were starting to kick in, his head lolled to one side and he stared vacantly at the wall, mumbling the same mantra over and over again.
"I'm not him I'm not him I'm not him -"
How could he trust his mind when they were messing with it, trying to make him believe that he was someone else? He had endured imprisonment, pain, humiliation, degradation... That, at least, he was reasonably sure of. Unlike the man he had tortured - might have tortured - he could resist that kind of methods of persuasion. His body was a tool, it mattered little to him as such. But how was he to fight people who were robbing him of his mind?
Drewling on the pillow, gradually losing any consistency to his thoughts, he whispered with a broken voice the only word that came to mind:
"Quatre..."