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OPEN & CLOSED event catch-all with the Gundam Wings
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heeroics & braidedwonder & zerofive & YOU?
WHAT: three former military teenagers establish a base of operations in the play area of the abandoned mall, while they investigate the mall and the knife-wielding clown apparitions (among others) that are "haunting" them
WHERE: the mall
WHEN: during August event
WARNINGS: child soldiers doing their thing, will add as needed
Throughout the mysterious mall lockdown, Heero, Duo, and Wufei will keep the play area of the mall beside the food court secured and well-stocked with: food court pretzels, bottled drinks, as well as walkie-talkies and nerf guns scavenged from the Toys R' Us. Feel free to tag in with a wildcard @ the play area, or PM for an individual starter.
heeroics & braidedwonder & zerofive & YOU?WHAT: three former military teenagers establish a base of operations in the play area of the abandoned mall, while they investigate the mall and the knife-wielding clown apparitions (among others) that are "haunting" them
WHERE: the mall
WHEN: during August event
WARNINGS: child soldiers doing their thing, will add as needed
Throughout the mysterious mall lockdown, Heero, Duo, and Wufei will keep the play area of the mall beside the food court secured and well-stocked with: food court pretzels, bottled drinks, as well as walkie-talkies and nerf guns scavenged from the Toys R' Us. Feel free to tag in with a wildcard @ the play area, or PM for an individual starter.
closed: walkie talkie chat
text, sent April 19
- which is unusual in and of itself, but then he doesn't come back.
When (perhaps if) his compatriots come looking - or maybe they entered the mall with someone else, who knows - they'll receive this incredibly helpful message the moment they step through the threshold, allowing Heero's device to finally connect with theirs: ]
the mall is a trap.
status?
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[unwritten, but likely still very visible: you phenomenal moron. But then, Wufei's always been the quickest to anger, and to express that anger.]
Does anyone have any useful intelligence to offer?
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There was a nice food court and now I can't find it anymore.
I'm disappointed, the pizza wasn't great but it was pizza.
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or you got lost?
[ the odds are 50/50 here ]
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It's gone.
Asshole.
I know how to navigate a few halls when they don't change every time.
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You always assume the worst anyway, so what does it matter?
The weird mall is weird, the sky is blue.
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You’re even harder to not think about fashioning a ligature for now that you’re normal, you know that?
I’m more prepared for a low food, hide out lifestyle than either of you two by a mile if that’s what this comes down to.
(raunchy choking joke)
empty threat. you can't even hold me down.
😛
Whatever you gotta soothe yourself with while we sleep in the same place, Heero.
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there's something wrong with the security cameras
[ obviously he's already broken in "backstage," so to speak. the problem: the something wrong is that the cameras make you think you're crazy ]
voice, sent Aug...22? Just after Duo dies.
[He sounds very calm about it. A little bit too calm. It's the trauma.]
I'm bringing the body back to base. [Their little hideout, he means. It's no fitting rest, the little printed carpet with its cartoon depictions of smile-faced flowers, but it's the closest they're going to get.] Then I am leaving. The emergency exits seem... intermittently accessible. It's time for this to be done-with.
I'm going to meet him by the train station.
@ Wufei
He'd gone out to check the perimeter, and though Duo had been whittling away his time in their little encampment, it hadn't escaped him just how much longer Wufei's been away than he should've been. Duo Maxwell is not one to let his fellow pilots deal with their own possible problems and demons all on their own, and after a few minutes of turning restlessly to watch for the dark-haired man's return stands to see what exactly is going on. If Wufei is in trouble he isn't going to just leave him to whatever the hell was going on in this place, after all.
"Yuy, going to check on Chang." Check-in performed, Duo sets out in to the darkened and repetitive hallways of the mall. Walking quietly but quickly, the former Deathscythe Hell pilot scans the hallways methodically as he makes his way, listening intently for any obvious sounds of disturbance as he continues. Things changing around him have become rather.. usual.. and though it's not done making his skin crawl it isn't as creepy as it used to be.
"Wu?" Duo asks, quietly, as he turns a corner, catching sight of what he thinks is the shape of his former fellow solider now lover going a different direction.
"Wufei."
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There were people in the mall, to be sure, the residents screaming or scuttling, or slamming about, or else hiding in various places. He was curious as to whether or not the emergency doors would operate as intended— but not on his own.
Which had, of course, been his mistake.
The second had been charging out of the security office, down the cramped tunnel-hallway, breathlessly persuing the specter of a deadwoman. But why should she be dead, here? Some of the residents of the city were from thousands of years ago, or alternate realities, or had died themselves! Why shouldn't Meiran be alive, and here? Why shouldn't—
The blast rocked his mobile-suit back onto its heels— mass and velocity converted against momentum, jerking Wufei bodily against the straps. They were strong, made to withstand such forces, where his bones were not— The shocking wrench and delayed agony as his collarbones broke at the impact was terrible, terrifying. But this was wrong, they were too loose! The cockpit was... this wasn't Altron, Nataku had never...
...There in the viewscreen, Shenlong, and Meiran's voice in his ears. What? What was happening? Had she fired on him?
Clarity came all at once. Of course. This was that day, and this was not his gundam's cockpit. This was the interior of Tallgeese, and— abruptly he is falling, and Daisies loom up above him. Meiran is looking down at him, their positions reversed from reality. She's still wearing her space-suit— his own spacesuit, actually, with CHANG embroidered on its identification patch.
"Wufei!" She is shouting, stern, angry. She'd always been so angry, "Wufei you still haven't told me! If you mind being my husband!"
It is wrong, of course, it is all wrong. He'd been the one who'd failed her, who'd allowed her to die. His fault, as surely as if he'd killed her. He had killed her, in truth; through neglect, and cowardice. Through his own naive stupidity. He'd killed her. And now, she'd killed him.
Wufei comes up from the hallucination sucking air like a man half-drowned. Someone calls his name, and for that few seconds the words overlay: Meiran's voice, and Duo's, and he strikes out in blind denial. No. No! Not again!
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By all means, Duo should have known better than to follow Wufei like this. But he cares too much, too intensely to let the man chase his demons until he came back to their base of his own accord. Add in the recent change in their relationship and, well.. it has Duo following at a decent clip, knowing that Wufei is seeing something that he very much is not, at the moment, but …
They were all dangerous. All has their demons and their own dreams they didn’t wish to discuss. Never once had it made Duo hesitate to follow, or to attempt to console, even if he knew it would end up in something like a bickering match, or a few harsh words and hard hands thrown.
Never had he imagined that he’d be running head long in to something like a memory, a far off spector of something he knows nothing about aside from caring about one of the parties involved. The word husband hits with a wave of both confusion and curiosity, something to possibly ask about later, to talk about when they weren’t so ragged and raw and stretched too damn thin between their ragged minds and the things going on that were innocent, but perhaps twisted by their child soldier minds.
Duo, not as careful as he should be, but concerned, reaches out for his lover again, voice low and echoing his concern as he tries to shake him out of it again.
“Wufei-“ The pain is dull, at first. The adrenaline of the moment covers any realization of what just happened for a few moments longer. A precious few seconds and heartbeats where he’s simply happy to see Wufei in front of him uninjured, but then trails to his arm, that scarred and calloused hand wrapped around a familiar handle of a kitchen knife now firmly between his ribs, black shirt already wet with blood as nerve endings finally begin to fire in his mind.
This is not good. Not good at all, considering the size of the knife he’d last seen him carrying, eyes trailing to Wufei’s face again. There is a recognizable hitch of fear in the quirk of Duo’s not even quarter-assed sideways smirk as he asks, quiet, not daring to take a deep breath :
“Wu - this - that’s not the knife I think it is, right?”
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"Duo," He says, because he doesn't have any other words, scraped thin by hollow shock, "Duo."
Everything he loves, he kills. There is blood rising around the narrow centimeter of steel protruding from Duo's chest, and some unfeeling part of Wufei is detachedly registering the presumed mass and position of the blade. He reaches out again, smearing trembling hands as he braces Duo by the shoulder and arm, guiding him to the floor before he falls. It is a death sentence; if they had access to surgeons and transfusions and all the miracles of modern medicine it might still be that. Here? Now? In this?
"I've killed you," He says, because it is the truth, the cruel mercy of entropy itself, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to— There's no excuse. I moved without thinking, and I killed you."
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Wufei is staring at the blade, but Duo is staring at Wufei. Now that his mind has had some time to process, he feels the pain of the stab, the way that breathing too broadly moves the blade in his chest and in turn amplifies the pain. Vaguely, he thinks that this is moving slower than he thought it would. Not that he had ever pondered on something like how quickly or slowly he would die if if was stabbed before.
Surely he intended to die by gunshot wound instead, which he hoped would be faster on all accounts. Already he feels lightheaded, but can't decide if it's his own buried panic or his body reacting to the new hole in it. Wufei guides him to the floor and Duo.. still can't quite gather up something to say. What does one say when he's staring down at the death sentence in his chest and trying to figure out how long this is all going to take?
Either to bleed out or to asphyxiate, either would take too damn long by Duo's estimation. Despite it all, as Wufei says he's killed him, Duo cracks a rueful smile, finally tilting his focus back to the ceiling. "Stop wishing. I'm not dead yet."
But then, in a moment of seriousness, he makes a request, trying to clamp down on the way his voice shivers slightly in abject fear of it all.
"Just pull it. This is gonna be too damn slow otherwise."
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It's odd, the things that occur to you in the moment; Wufei almost laughs, but he tamps down the urge to a grim and unpleasant little smile. No telling what hysteria lies on the other end of that idea. It was how they had met, after all, in the very real threat of a slow and lingering, mutual death.
And how they would part, at least temporarily.
"I have never wished for your death," Wufei says, his hands still foreign to him, reaching to grasp at the handle again, obedient as any other weapon, "You will not remember this, so I'll tell you, at least this once: I love you. You have been my friend, my brother-in-arms, and— I am sorry."
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“What’s the point in it? I always wanted to go young and pretty, but at least make it quick so I don’t have to deal with the ugly shit.” Like goodbyes or his own lingering fear about what the hell lay ahead of him after death. Yes, he joked about the subject often, made light of saying he’d returned from hell but … in the end he’s just as uncertain as anyone else about what lay ahead of him after all he’s done.
Before, during, and after the war. The only thing that’s stopped him from taking more lives is being here in this useless City with Heero and Wufei, and while he’s been reveling in this new connection with his comrade…
Well, Wufei’s speech because he won’t remember is mostly why he hadn’t wanted a slow death. He winces through a rueful sound, reiterating as he pushes his chin forward to cajole Wufei to do it.
“Don’t say shit like that.” It isn’t the most gentle thing to say to a man professing his love and apology in the moment, but Duo doesn’t disappoint by leaving out an explanation either. “People I love die, Wufei. And you’re not allowed to for a long time coming.”
Duo’s eyes close, steadying himself as he realizes his breathing is already deteriorating in to wheezes. “I’ll do it if you can’t.”
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His grip firms. No, he can do this; fulfill a dying lover's request. If nothing else, he has proven that before. There is a moment when the words all crowd into his mouth, logjam-dense and just as worthless. What to do with the body, what to say to Heero, a promise to meet him at the train station, to ask for a last kiss, to touch his cheek, anything at all. That last, desperate assurance for which he had begged Meiran; I love you, do you at least not despise to be near me?
"Goodbye, Duo," He says only, because none of it can matter, and Duo has already asked him not to say any of it. It is worthy of respect, "Goodbye, my friend."
The knife comes out easily, slick and red, and a torrential gush came with it, all in one blackish cupful. Not long now; shock would take him under soon enough, and bloodloss would kill him minutes after.
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"One difference." Duo reminds, sounding.. fairly calm despite the situation. Perhaps it's because he knows he will be back, or at the very least that Wufei is here with him, and will be here with him until he is gone. He reaches to touch Wufei's arm, making sure he has his attention. "I'll be back, here. So maybe it's the best place to beat that particular curse."
If Wufei wanted to call it that. A way to dodge that particular thing that keeps happening to them both if only because it all seems so pointless here, day to day.
Finally Wufei moves to remove the knife, and Duo, dully, makes a small groan in response. Biting back reaction is easy enough, and the change in how he feels is instantaneous. This would have happened, slowly, with the knife still embedded within, but this is like purposefully opening the floodgates. Color begins to drain from his face rather quickly, and for a moment Duo makes a fleeting motion to try and angle himself, to sit up a little further, his breathing slowing into bubbling wheezes that take up more energy to achieve, a cough painting his mouth red. Thankfully, the coppery taste doesn't even occur to him in his current state.
"Wu.." Duo pauses, clearly fighting to gather enough breath for thought as his oxygen-starved brain still tries to function, settling into shock. All at once he is consumed with the need to make sure the other man stays, that little kid within him that is terrified of being left alone pushing past the heavy stone of fatigue.
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He knows what it is for family to die; someone must sit the deathwatch. Someone must perform the prayers. Someone must see to the body. Someone must do things properly, the way that no one ever could, for his own family, his own people. The way he could not, for Duo, not truly; what gods did Duo truly believe in, what meaning did he assign to this kind of death? But Wufei could do this much: no one who is loved, should ever die alone.
"Breathe," He says, watching intently at Duo's face, for those last moments. It's a deliberate form of torture; he deserves the agony of every moment, as it slips through his fingers, "While you can, breathe."
Deep breaths would only hasten the end, of course. But all things are finite, and Duo's life moreso now, than ever.