Goodbye LJ...

[windandwater]

This is just to make it official for those who don't know, but I'm leaving LJ completely. For the rest of this week at least. Tomorrow is the Bar Exam and it runs for three days, so don't expect to see me about at all until Thursday night. Or even until the weekend since I plan on spending Thursday after the Bar drunk and crying. No online time for me at all. *whines* It will be hard, but I know I can do it.

So, because I'm a total h0r like that, I am declaring this to be a spam post. Go ahead. Run wild! Give me fics, give me links, give me pics, just babble to your heart's content and rape my inbox so I have something to see when I finally DO come back to the wonderful world of LJ. I don't even care if you write me a drabble and post it one word at a time. XD;

Though, I've tried to make a spam post before and it failed a bit miserably, so I don't have very high expectations this time around. Feel free to prove me wrong though!

♥

Comments

Re: Torn 1

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

"I just need to touch base with you," I began, then had to clear my throat against a mouth suddenly gone dry. "We've been practically incommunicado for nearly five months. There are things I need you to do, and I have to know what you want us to do. Relena might not understand, but Zechs knows that it's all part of the same war -- so we can't cut ourselves into pieces."

His eyes burned cold fire for a moment, and then abruptly he looked away, leaving me to wonder if perhaps my choice of words had been a bit awry. "Fine," he replied, his flat voice devoid of any hint of what he was really thinking. Whether he thought I was right or wrong, he wasn't showing it.

...Or did he care at all?

The question nagged at me all throughout the debriefing session that followed, the commander and tactician in me taking over and leaving the rest of me to puzzle over my friend's eccentric behavior.

Maybe, if I could really have accepted the concept of Duo being gone, I could have also accepted the drastic changes that had overtaken him -- I knew through my Spaceheart, more than any of the others, how close Heero and Duo had been. Whenever Relena started going on about her "little prince," I had to strangle the urge to either laugh myself silly or grab the girl by the throat in an effort to shake some sense into her. But there was just so much I didn't know, so much I hadn't seen -- and Trowa, who had known of Duo's... death, and been at Heero's side ever since, had refused to share what he did know of Heero's downward spiral. Of course, Trowa couldn't see what I could see...

I focused on Heero, currently absorbed in whatever it was Trowa was saying. I couldn't shake a sense of foreboding as I braced myself, and opened my inner vision on Heero.

It hit me like a wall -- opened before me like the doorway into a pit. The world suddenly fell away sideways and I felt and then heard him, heard him thinking as if he were speaking aloud. Except it wasn't his voice in my head -- it was me in his.

Re: Torn 1

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

The wrong side of the table. Blurry. Things are shaking...

::The prime minister's being stubborn, he refuses all contact with the Sank Federation. If he continues to assist OZ, he must be eliminated. Quatre's Maguanacs are in position to do it. The Peacecrafts can open negotiations with his successor.::

Inside Heero's mind, looking out, listening in...

(What's going on? Why can I see so clearly?)

The world fades away. All around is the buzzing whispering noise of he thinks and he feels, I can hear it and I can feel it --

::The mission it's for the sake of the mission, must not fail already failed once NO DON'T THINK ABOUT THAT...::

But I can't see anything... it's dark... so dark...

(It's never been like this before... it's like I'm inside his mind...)

Deeper.

::can't let them know can't let them KNOW or they'll leave me empty so empty alone alone alone in the cold and the dark and the empty no don't leave me::

Oh, it hurts, it hurts. Deep, tearing cold -- the arctic winds of the frozen wasteland -- the deathly chill of outer space, void of all heat or light or life...

(I... I can't -- let me go --)

It pulls me down, I can't get away -- razor-sharp keening winds that drag me down to an endless core of emptiness in the middle.

Re: Torn 1

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

::he's gone, gone, gone...::

(What is this? What is this! It isn't human! No-one has space for their soul!)

There! In the darkness -- I can't see it, but I know it's there. Something, no, someone... Someone's there!

(Heero? Is that you?)

A scream rips through the dark hungry void, a scream of unbearable agony.

DON'T LEAVE ME ALONE! DON'T LEAVE ME! DON'T LEAVE ME!

(No! Let me GO!)



I felt myself being drawn down, into that endless morass of hunger and pain, and barely remember that it wasn't my own pain in time to wrench myself away, to close my inner vision, to shut myself off from the other -- from Heero -- and I suddenly found myself thrown back in my own body, staring at Heero and Trowa across the table, muscles frozen in place and voice locked shut. Only a second had passed when I was lost in Heero's pain. Only an instant.

Neither of them looked up or even skipped a beat in their conversation. Thank Allah, I hadn't moved, or made any noise -- or anything that might indicate to Heero what I had just done. Because I knew, I knew that he didn't want anyone to know. He was trying to seal everything away inside, turning on himself like a serpent devouring its own tail -- and that if Heero had any idea how much my inner vision could see in him, he would never allow me near him.

My body unlocked just enough that I could shudder. I couldn't reach out to Heero again, not without risking my own sanity. My sanity? By Allah, if a moment's exposure could leave me shaking like a child awakening from a nightmare, then how could Heero have such strength to live with it in his head, every moment of the day?

It didn't bear thinking about. Trowa was beginning to steal worried glances in my direction, I realized, and I hastily cleared my throat slightly and captured his gaze, jerking my head in Heero's direction slightly. He returned a barely perceptible nod -- thank you, Trowa! -- and we both turned to Heero, who had fallen into another silence, his face illuminated from beneath with the electronic notepad's sickly green glow. "Heero, Quatre and I have something we need to tell you," Trowa said quietly.

Re: Torn 1

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

I had to suppress the urge to giggle -- the way he phrased it, it sounded like we were announcing our marriage plans, or a new baby, or something. There was not a trace of humor in Trowa's voice, though, and when Heero looked up and scanned his face -- and moved his eyes over to search mine -- there was a barely concealed suspicion in his demeanor. "Nani?" he growled.

Trowa looked at me, raising one eyebrow slightly, but I just looked back at him beseechingly. So soon after my vision, I wasn't strong enough to get it out, and Trowa saw that in my face and let out a soft sigh. He folded his hands on the tabletop, met Heero's piercing blue gaze steadily, and said, "We believe we may have some proof that Duo is still alive."

Heero's hands stilled on the keypad, and a moment of dreadful silence descended. I had shut off my Spaceheart as tightly as I knew how, but I didn't have the slightest trouble reading the flash of emotion hidden in the subtle widening of those blue eyes. Something too dark to be rage, too cold to be hate -- it wasn't a pretty feeling, and to tell the truth I wasn't entirely sure it could be called human. But not a sliver of hope, not even an instant of doubt.

"Uso." He shoved himself out of the chair, hands pushing the notepad flat against the desk. "He is dead. Do not lie to me."

"Not a lie," I blurted out, backing up Trowa with all the sincerity I could muster. The despairing finality of his words burned like acid, eating away at my resolve. "Heero, do you think I would lie to you about --"

"You are lying," he rasped, his hands trembling slightly where they gripped the tabletop, "or you are mistaken. Either way you waste my time." He unclenched his fingers from the table with an effort, and jerked around to face the door. "Never speak of this again," he snarled over his shoulder. He did not spare a glance at either of us as he tore from the room.



"Quatre?" Once again, Trowa's voice drew me out of my stunned stillness, and I focused on him with some difficulty. "Are you all right?" Worried green eyes studied me from beneath his bangs, and I gladly reached out and took the offered hand. It wasn't enough, and after a moment I gave into the temptation to crawl into his embrace.

"I'm fine, Trowa," I replied quietly, giving some reassurance I wasn't sure I felt. The hug felt nice, chasing away the lingering traces of Heero's devastation. "I just... looked too closely."

"What did you see, Little One?" he asked quietly, offering his presence and support, something I badly needed right then.

Re: Torn 1

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

"I'm not even sure what I saw." I raised one shaking hand and rubbed it across my eyes. "Darkness. Cold. Pain. An awful lot of that. And something... I can't really describe it... Whatever it is, it's horrible, Trowa. If we don't do something, he might... we may lose him."

"To tell you the truth," Trowa began, then hesitated, unsure. "Back when -- when we first lost Duo... I thought Heero might try and follow him. I... was ashamed to think it, because I know that he's so important to the war, but part of me would have been glad to let him go. Later, he seemed to get stronger again..."

"But Duo's NOT dead," I snarled, fiercely denying that idea. "And it's more important than ever that we find him. Because he might be holding onto his sanity by throwing himself into the war, but there's one thing I can tell you. Whatever it is that's in Heero isn't just unhealthy, it's poisonous -- and there's no way I can go up against it by myself!"

Trowa stared at me for a second, then nodded in acceptance. He had to have wondered, all this time, if there was maybe something he could have done to make things different. "What do you suppose we should do?" he asked finally.

"I..." I started, then stopped, thinking. Trowa was right; we needed a plan. But my wits were scattered by the emotional turmoil I'd just been put through, and the moment of silence stretched out painfully long before I stuttered, "Well... first I need to know what happened. How Duo was captured. When... you next saw him after that. About Heero since then."

He nodded. "I can call up the mission logs from that month. Somewhere in the raw data we should be able to find what we need."

"Right. Right." I rubbed at my temples, and tried to make my brain work again. "And then, when we find Duo --"

"If we find Duo," Trowa corrected flatly. "You're getting ahead of yourself."

That stopped me. For a long moment I couldn't think what to say, and then I couldn't have said it even if I'd wanted too; misery closed off my throat and settled over me like a cloud. Trowa didn't believe me. He was only humoring me, treating me like a spoiled child who didn't understand the concept of death. As though I'd never seen a friend die. As though I didn't know how painful false hopes could be. "You... you don't believe me," I choked out, and looked up to meet his gaze. "Do you, Trowa. You don't trust me."

Re: Torn 1

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

He turned away, falling once again into the stillness that is his strength and his curse, and then I heard him sigh. "It isn't that, Quatre," he said, and I heard a note of pleading in his normally inflectionless tone. "I... I want to believe it. I'm not sure I can be sure I'm thinking straight, I want to believe it so much. I trust you, Little One, and I understand that you know things the rest of us don't. But... I saw his body, Quatre! I saw it, and that image has haunted my dreams every night since then. The image of the friend that I failed. The friend that I -- that I -- I don't... I want to erase that picture, but I don't trust myself not to fail again. And I don't want Duo's image to be replaced by your own."

Trowa had never spoken so much at a time, nor so openly of his feelings and fears. Not even to me. Slowly, it dawned on me that Heero wasn't the only one who had changed over the past dark months. Cautiously, still shy from the burning I'd felt earlier, I opened my Spaceheart to Trowa, and was appalled by the toll I felt the strain was taking on him. "No, it's me who should be sorry, Trowa," I pleaded, suddenly feeling beset from all sides. "I didn't even think of how you must feel through all this mess. You --"

I surprised myself with a sudden yawn. "Sorry," I said again. "It's been a strange day, so many surprises..."

"How long have you been awake?" Trowa's voice was back to its normal tone, and through the linkage I could feel him making an effort to pull himself together.

"About," I glanced at my watch, "twenty-eight hours. There was the conference this morning, and I spent all night checking security, and then the flight up here was a nightmare and then all this happened..."

"I think you should get some sleep, Quatre," Trowa said. He was watching me closely now.

Mm, sleep sounded nice. Especially now that Trowa was here, I wouldn't have to sleep alone any more. But, no... "Are you sure? Heero... and Duo..."

"It's waited two months for you to get here. It'll wait a little longer." Gentle hands wrapped around my wrists, and pulled me down onto the couch. Warm arms surrounded me, blocking out the worst of the chill, and my body automatically rearranged itself to fit around Trowa's. I closed my eyes, and felt myself already beginning to drift. "Sleep, Quatre."

Re: Torn 1

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

"Thank you for coming on such short notice."

"It is no problem, Trowa. There are no battles right now, and my presence was not needed there."

I heard the voices, but couldn't attach any meaning to them. Something was nagging at the edges of my mind, and after a long time I realized the absence of a warm body beside me. Someone had dimmed the overhead lights -- good thing, they'd been giving me a headache. But the dimness and the chill combined to form unpleasant associations, of a dark emptiness I couldn't escape from, and I began to grow nervous.

"It's certainly needed here. Please speak quietly, Quatre's asleep."

Oh. So I was asleep. That made sense. I settled down to listen to whatever the voices had to say.

"I saw Wing exiting the docking bay just as I was coming in. In quite a hurry, too. Has something come up?"

"Something has, but not like you might think. Quatre brought up some very alarming issues when he showed up today. It's about Heero... and Duo."

There was a moment of silence, punctuated by the soft hiss of an indrawn breath. "What does he know about Duo?"

"Very little. Until I told him, he had not even known that Duo was captured three months ago, much less what happened after that."

Wait. What was going on here? Drawn back to wakefulness by my name, I had been about to open my eyes enter the conversation, but something suddenly held me back. I waited, keeping my breathing deep and regular, listening.

"And Heero? How could he know what's going on with Heero?"

"Remember his Spaceheart. From what he told me he saw in Heero, the situation may have progressed even further than we thought."

"This is truly bad, Trowa. I see why you called me back. We cannot wait any longer; we must act."

"Yes. But that was only part of the reason I called you. I need to ask you an important question."

"What is it?"

Another pause, this one punctuated by the slight sound of cloth stirring.

"Wufei... do you believe in ghosts?"