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 4

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

"What I want..." Heero looked away from me, his arctic blue eyes fastening on a patch of nothingness. "What I want is irrelevant to the mission. I must not fail."

"Everyone fails sometimes, Heero," I began, a trifle desperately, taking a step towards him. "It's a part of being human. You survive, you pick yourself up and go on..." No response. He wasn't ready to listen to this. "Trying to kill yourself isn't the answer, Heero."

His eyes snapped back up to mine, and I registered a brief moment of undisguised panic before the barrier slipped down over it once more. "I did not try to kill myself," he snapped, a raw edge of tension to his voice.

I knew better than to press the issue about the wound on his wrist. I took another step forward, then another, and lowered my voice so that the other two pilots couldn't easily hear, giving him some semblance of privacy. His excellent hearing would pick up my next words, I was sure. "But you are, Heero. Did you think nobody could tell? You're freezing yourself, choking yourself, cutting yourself off from everything. Something's eating you from the inside out and it will kill you, sooner or later. And you're letting it happen, Heero."

He stared at me, his features drawn tight, eyes impossibly wide. I knew I'd said something important, something that cut a little too close to home. I watched him carefully, trying to feel my way to the heart of the problem judging by his responses. But there weren't any -- he didn't move, didn't make a sound, and I wasn't even sure if he was breathing. He didn't say anything -- he didn't deny it, either. I drew in a deep breath, and took a chance. "Heero. Talk to me. Tell me. Whatever it is, let it out. You can trust me. Please?"

One frozen second passed, and then another, and I then I saw him draw in a ragged breath. My heart leapt wildly into my throat as he sagged against the wall, letting it support him, and I leaned forward as he began to say something. A name.

Something passed through the air then, drawing across my taut nerves like a rasp, slicing off the beginning of whatever Heero had been about to say. Alarmed, I blinked and twisted my head around, to see if the other pilots had felt anything; Wufei looked unsettled and uneasy, while Trowa just seemed confused. In my moment of inattention, Heero pushed himself away from the wall and retreated step by step away from me. "Heero?" I demanded sharply.

"I need to go," he said, from between clenched teeth. "I need to leave now." He saw me about to speak and shook his head, a snarl peeling back his lips. "Don't ask, Quatre, just don't. It has nothing to do with you. You are not involved." His voice had returned to the cold threat I had learned to dread, and I felt the doors I had struggled to open slam shut once more. He swung his freezing gaze past me, raking across the other two pilots, and then turned and nearly ran down the corridor away from us.

Re: Torn 4

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

A long, deep silence fell as the echoes of his rapid stride slowly faded from the hallways. I wanted to scream, or hit something, with frustration. Just as I thought I was finally reaching him, getting somewhere... Trowa's voice called me out, his soft words jerking my attention back to the remaining two Gundam pilots. "Quatre, what just happened?" he wanted to know.

For a moment I gave into the frustration, slamming my fist against the corridor wall. "Damn it, I don't know! For a moment, I thought, I thought... He was going to say something. And then something happened to stop him. Couldn't you feel it?"

Unexpectedly, Wufei stirred and spoke. "I felt it," he said, almost inaudible. "I have felt it before. But, I do not understand what it means."

I closed my eyes, trying to steady my thoughts. "I am so sick of all this," I groaned. "Talking, and going in circles, and getting nowhere. There's so much happening that I don't understand, so much going on between the lines that I'm just not getting. Something was going on in the hangar just now -- why did he shoot that man five times before killing him? It's not in Heero's nature to be that cruel, even against enemies. And there was something when he said the word traitor..."

As I trailed off, a palpable silence fell. Startled, my eyes blinked open, and I saw the look that Wufei and Trowa exchanged. More insider information. More things I didn't understand. "And..." I began, looking between the two of them; my gaze finally settled on Trowa. "And you two are hiding something from me."

Trowa flinched, visibly, and refused to meet my gaze. Wufei would, but his own face mirrored his troubled thoughts. "It does not matter, Quatre," he told me, his voice just a little too full of conviction to be certain. "It is something best left in the past. There is no need to dig up old ghosts with all of the troubles we have now."

A thought, an idea, a suspicion -- something flickered ephemerally through my mind, then was gone again in an instant. It might even have been a stray emotion I picked up through my Spaceheart, and just for that instant, connections formed in my mind. They broke an instant later, but left me with a slowly growing uneasy suspicion I could not quell. "I don't think so, Wufei," I said, and my voice was not as steady as I would have liked. "There is something that you are not telling me, and don't even try to pretend that it isn't important. It is. It's got something to do with Duo, and with the raid on Dixon, doesn't it? It's got something to do with Heero, and it's got something to do with the man he killed today. Doesn't it?" My voice was rising steadily, until I finally nearly shouted those last words.

Wufei, too, dropped his gaze and turned slightly away. Furious, I turned on him, barely in control of myself. "Answer me, Wufei! Damn you, how are we supposed to fight this war if we can't trust one another? One of us is missing, another is going mad; every day OZ is stronger and the deaths pile up and you are letting this tear us apart! ANSWER M --"

Re: Torn 4

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

"QUATRE, STOP!" Trowa shouted, breaking into my half-hysterical rant. I stared at him in shock as he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. I wanted to reach him, I wanted to get past his barriers and make him talk to me. So I unsealed my Spaceheart, and instinctively reached out to my friends --

-- and fell to my knees as the shock hit me, as I felt something that all common sense told me could not be true. I heard rather than saw Trowa and Wufei rush to my side, the question of the secret momentarily pushed aside in the face of whatever this sudden new development was. It couldn't be, it couldn't be, couldn't be but it was...

"Quatre?" Trowa's hands were on my shoulders, shaking me gently, and I forced my eyes to focus on his worried face. "Quatre, what is it?"

I felt so far away, but I managed to get my voice working. I swallowed, attempting to moisten my throat, before I could get the words out. "It's Duo," I said, scarcely able to believe my own words. "He's here. Now. And he's nearby."



They followed me as I stumbled along in the daze, once again not really seeing where my feet took me; homing in on Duo's presence like a beacon. Trowa and Wufei followed me closely, brushing aside the occasional soldier that approached us with business. I scarcely registered them, no more than I realized when I was standing in front of Heero's room again. Having broken in once already, it was a small task to hack through his security again; he hadn't changed any codes since the last time.

As if in a dream, I passed through the sterile outer room and once more sought and found the hidden door in the closet. It hissed as it cycled open, and I raised my eyes and blinked as my vision cleared to the room within.

This time, the room wasn't empty. A teenaged boy sprawled across the couch on his stomach, legs crossed at the ankles kicking idly in the air. His chin rested on his fists, elbows propping his head up as he read from a comic book lying open before him. A short, heavy chain ran from the handcuffs around his wrist to the stout metal bar at the end of the bed. I stared, disbelieving, and a single word escaped my lips.

"...Duo?"

The boy on the bed looked up. His eyes flashed violet as they met mine, and widened, and a huge grin split across his face. He pushed himself to a sitting position, bouncing slightly on the couchbed. "Yo, Q-man!" he greeted me enthusiastically. "Long time no see!"

Duo's smile.

Duo's voice.

Duo's eyes.

Heero.