Kracken
Disclaimer:I don't own them and I don't make any money off of this.
Warning:Male/male sex, graphic, violent, language, Prison!Duo, Mentally unstable!Duo.
"Duo?"
Heero came up behind Duo, trying to see what he was seeing as he stood and stared off into the forest.
Duo frowned against the sunlight as if he had forgotten something. "Quiet," he whispered. "I'm not listening to you."
Heero frowned and put a coat onto Duo. Duo twitched away from his touch, but seemed grateful for the extra layer in the cold. When Heero drew his hair back to rebraid the loose strands, Duo looked almost panicked.
"I'll take care of it," Duo choked out. "I will. Don't cut it. Don't..."
"I won't cut it," Heero promised as he finished the braid. It wasn't good, but it was better than the loose strands everywhere. Letting it go, he saw Duo visibly relax. "The cabin needs some repairs," Heero told him. "Maybe you could help me with them?"
Duo very slowly looked aside at him. "Why would I imagine that?" he asked quietly.
"You didn't," Heero assured him and then grunted as he continued, "You hate the snow, the woods, and nature in general.You'd never imagine fixing a cabin, falling out of an airplane, or standing in a patch of snow. Tell me, what have you been imagining up until now?"
Duo winced and hugged himself, hunching away from the sunlight as it rose higher and became too intense. "The war."
Duo turned and went back into the cabin, but he stood there as well, lost. He had slept fitfully throughout the night, working the drugs out of his system. Heero hadn't expected him to rise before himself. Finding Duo's bed empty had panicked him, until he had seen the open doorway and the lone figure standing out in the cold.
"I don't know what to do," Duo whispered and his eyes looked at nothing, wide and unfocused.
"Anything you want," Heero replied as he closed the door and stamped snow from his boots.
Duo flinched at the sound.
"It will take time, for the sensitivity to go away," Heero told him."But, once you accept that this is reality, you can begin to heal, Duo."
"Why?" Duo asked as if he wanted to catch his hallucination not making sense."Why you, now? I dreamed that Quatre got me out..."
Heero began making breakfast. "It wasn't a dream and I had to take charge of you, for your own good."
Duo frowned and sat on his bed, looking as if everything was too much for him.
"Slowly," Heero told him. "We have supplies for a month. After that, you can decide what you want to do next."
"I'm... not used to talking," Duo said and then rubbed at his throat. "The guards don't like it..." He shivered and hunched into a tight form. He didn't say anything after that, but his eyes were everywhere, trying to understand what was happening to him.
"Humane, safe, imprisonment," Heero scowled. "The name changes, but the inside of a prison never does."
"Do you know what I wanted the most?" Duo asked as if he were being ridiculous, talking to his own hallucination.
"What?" Heero wanted to know, curious as to what was most important to Duo.
"Pizza," Duo replied with a weak grin that was quickly lost. He closed his eyes as if imagining it clearly. "Pepperoni, extra cheese, peppers, olives, onions... with that really thick,gooey crust." He went quiet for a long moment and then covered his face with his hands as if hiding tears.
Heero went over a mental list of their supplies and came up short of being able to make even something remotely like a pizza. "I'm sorry that I can't make you one," he said.
Duo made a gesture, a wave of one hand that reminded Heero firmly of the old Duo. "Whatever...Not like I expected to get it anyway."
"We're a little too far out for delivery,as well," Heero snorted.
Duo wiped at his face and then shrugged. "Mountain climbing Pizza delivery boys... I guess they're hard to come by."
"Unless they use rescue dogs, like in the alps," Heero chuckled.
"With pizza strapped to their backs..." Duo laughed and then looked at Heero, his eyes bloodshot with tears. He looked torn, suddenly, caught on the cusp of something."I haven't laughed, that I remember, in... forever."
"It's a start," Heero replied as he broke eggs into a hot pan.
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It was hard, allowing himself to believe, but Duo found it harder not to, when Heero coaxed him outside and had him help gather firewood. It wasn't pleasant and it wasn't something that was better than a warm, sterile jail cell. His dreams had been far more comforting as mental escapes. When Heero layed out small tools, and placed a broken relay box into Duo's hands, he found himself automatically taking it apart and fixing it.
"Good," Heero grunted after he had finished. "What was wrong with it?"
"Ants trying to keep warm," Duo replied and nursed a bitten finger. He stared at Heero over it as he sucked at the painful bump.
"They have to sacrifice their home so that we can have hot water, " Heero said as he hooked the unit to a water heater.
"Everyone sacrifices," Duo muttered. He glared at his finger, wincing. "This hurts wrong."
"Wrong?" Heero took his hand, ignoring Duo's twitching attempt to avoid it, and studied the bite. "It looks all right."
Duo shrugged and managed to pull away on the second attempt. "It hurts up here," he said as he pointed to his head.
Heero understood then. "It will probably take some time for the sensitivity to pass. Your brain needs to rewire for it."
Duo felt confused.
Heero sat at the table beside him and tried to explain. Duo tried to follow it, but it was hard, still, to pay attention when he had tried so long to avoid acknowledging the world around him; a world full of hallucinations.
"When a person loses his hearing," Heero was explaining, as he carefully replaced his tools in their case,"the brain atrophies. It also loses the ability to interpret those sounds. When hearing is restored, it takes time for it to learn to recognize those sounds again."
"I'm tired," Duo replied, wanting Heero to stop talking, and the uncomfortable mental pain to go away.
"Why don't you rest?" Heero asked, motioning to Duo's bed. "You're not used to so much activity."
"Not time," Duo replied automatically and huddle in on himself, hating himself for being afraid to do what he wanted.
Heero shrugged, "Out here, time isn't important."
"I..." Duo struggled. He looked at the bed and felt the bone weariness demanding that he go there. "I want to sleep."
"Then sleep," Heero insisted as if he did have a choice, as if the shocks wouldn't come as a result, as if the world had become 'normal' and sleep could be taken for granted.
Duo stood up, stared at the bunk, and then slowly shuffled towards it. He starred down at it, feeling the tremble of anticipation over his skin, the anticipation that a guard's voice would shout angrily and the pain would follow. The hand on his shoulder startled him, as did the pressure that made him first sit, and then lie down.
"Sleep," Heero urged as he draped a blanket over Duo.
No pain, just comfort, and a warm presence bending over him, trying to gage his mind.
Duo reached up tentatively and felt Heero's shirt, clasped it in his hand, and felt the reality of it. He let the hand drop and curled tighter in his blanket.
"I'm going out to clear brush from around the septic," Heero told him. "If you need me, just call out."
Duo nodded and then asked, "Heero... do you mind..."
"What?" Heero prompted.
"Do you mind if I think of you as my friend?" Duo waited in anticipation and then, when Heero looked troubled, "I've always wanted to.If you aren't real... it doesn't matter. If you are... I owe you."
"We are friends, Duo," Heero told him. "We always have been."
Duo blinked and clutched his blanket tighter. "Really?"
Heero nodded. "Of course.I'm the one who didn't understand that during the war."
Duo's eyes searched him with some desperation."I hope... I hope you're real."
"I am," Heero assured him and then left Duo to sleep.
Duo stared at the closed door for some time, though, trying to sort out the quagmire his mind had become, trying to make sense out of his feelings for Heero. Whether he was real or imagined, it was more than friendship that he was feeling. It always had been, even during the war. It wasn't something that he could ever admit to the real Heero. Simply trying to be his friend had been dangerous enough.Now that he was confronted by a man who was open, honest, and clearly worried about him, those feelings were coming back stronger than ever.It wasn't something that he was sure that he wanted to deal with.
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Stepping into the cold again, outside of the cabin, Heero wasn't prepared for the blow to the back of his head that brought unconsciousness with it. He never felt himself hit the ground, but, when he finally came to, he found snow melted underneath him and a sickening headache making his eyesight blurry. Someone was crouching by him, a hand twisted into his hair.It came to him then, that waking hadn't been by his choice.
"I want answers!" a voice demanded and the hand in Heero's hair tightened as it jerked up his head.He found himself looking into the face of an older man, his cheeks rough and red from the cold, and his eyes narrowed and dangerous. In one hand he held a gun pointed at Heero's head.
"Answers?" Heero pulled the ragged edges of his consciousness together as his eyes took in the fact that he was surrounded by other men in heavy coats, who looked as if they had traveled a long while in that rough country.
"What happened to Maxwell?" the man snarled and jammed the gun against Heero's head. "We heard he was released from prison. We also heard that you'd kidnapped him and taken him out into the woods. Do you know how long we've been looking, trying to pick up the faintest energy signatures?"
"A long while," Heero replied tightly. "I hid them very well."
The gun prodded his forehead. "The only thing I want to hear out of you, is why Duo Maxwell is hiding under his cot in your cabin."
Heero slowly sat up, feeling the world reel and the ache of his head grow in intensity."Prison wasn't all that it promised," he replied. "He's... damaged."
"Fuck!" One of the men exclaimed and spat aside. "We should take him out of here."
"Why?" the gun lowered but didn't cease to aim at Heero as the first man stood up. "He's no good to us now."
"We owe him!" Another man snarled.
The first man snapped back, "He's dead weight,now, no matter what he's done for us in the past."
"This doesn't feel right," the second man grumbled.
The first spun on him glaring. "If you want to stay and wipe up his drool, you go ahead. I have better things to do." He shouldered a pack and strode off into the woods. His other men reluctantly followed him.
The second man pointed a gun at Heero and warned. "You take care of him or I'll come find you after this is over."
"G-get away from him!"
Heero and the man looked around, startled, and then saw Duo in the doorway of the cabin, a handgun trembling as he held it ready to fire in both hands.
Duo flinched and cowered, as if the sun burned his skin, his eyes trying to track them with seeming difficulty.
"Shit!" the man exclaimed, wiped at his face as if disturbed, and then held out his hands. "So'kay, Maxwell. I'm leaving."
"Go!" Duo ordered.
"Going," the man affirmed as he backed up and then followed his comrades into the forest.
Duo slumped against the doorframe and then went back inside, the gun dropping at his feet.
Heero stifled an urge to make certain that the men were really gone as he entered the cabin at a run, ignoring the way the world whirled and lights danced behind his eyes. He saw Duo huddled with his arms around him, eyes vacant and breath panting. The cabin looked as if someone had tried very hard to overturn everything.
"Guards weren't going to get you," Duo mumbled and shivered all over.
Heero rubbed at the bump on his head, trying to understand. "They... They weren't guards, Duo. You didn't recognize them?"
Duo frowned and made motions with his hands as if he were trying to bat something away, and then he curled up on the bed, pulling the blanket over his head.
Heero sat beside him. "I have to know who they were, Duo. Try to focus."
Duo ignored him. Heero gritted his teeth to stop himself from pursuing it further. He knew that Duo was too disturbed at the moment. He rose, instead, and picked up his gun. The safety was off. Duo had been prepared to fire on 'guards', to save him, reality mixing with his hallucinations.
"We have to go," Heero said as he put aside the gun and began putting supplies into a pack."They know where we are now. They might come back."
TBC
On to Chapter five