Category: Canon, Operation Meteor
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Note: I originally had this posted under another name, but decided to repost it. If you have any questions and/or comments, feel free to review/pm/message/email me from either account.
He’s not sure how things ended up like this. Not sure about anything at all anymore. The manacles around his wrist are still cold, the flesh under the metal raw and torn. His wrists start bleeding with every movement, but he hasn’t moved in a long time. His legs are cramped because he hasn’t gotten up, and from aching pang in his calves and thighs he assumes he must have been laying here, contorted, for days. But he’s normally very active, typically always moving; so maybe it’s only been hours. Except for the fact that his stomach is clenched hard. For awhile it had been more painful than his legs. Now it’s numb, the pain and the growling having faded away, he’s not sure how long ago.
It’s dark. It’s always dark. They try to break you down that way. Sensory depravation – it’s suppose to make your psyche crack and make you weak. Suppose to make you tell the enemy what they want. But there’s still the pain. So even though it’s dark, there’s still the physical aspect. He’s in pain, and he can heard himself breath; he can even feel the cold boring into his bones, making the pain in his cramped joints even worse than they would have been normally.
The dark isn’t as unnerving as he’s sure it’s suppose to be. He’s use to the dark. He grew up on the street, he spent countless nights by himself, wandering alone through cracked and uneven streets, the lamps having long burnt out or broken. The dark is a comfortable place for him. When he was little, the dark was the best place to loose himself when he was running from the cops. It’s a place of solace and peace. Unfortunately, this dark is not peaceful. It’s painful. That’s clearly been established. It’s painful and he wants to get out of it. He wasn’t to see daylight again. Not some crappy fluorescent light, but real Vitamin-D daylight.
It’s been days. Has to have been days because of that hollow and aching feeling in his stomach. It’s taken awhile, but he’s remembered what it is now, because when he was on the streets there were times he didn’t eat for ages. Didn’t get anything but apple cores and rock hard bread from garbage cans. His stomach felt like this at those times. Days without food, only minimal, dirty water that he drank from gutters and pools on the ground; sometimes, if he was really lucky, a working water fountain.
Not that it helps to establish the fact that it’s been days. That doesn’t help anything. So way? He’s been in this place for days. His knees just inches under his chin, his ankles and wrists tied together. He’s on his left side and his hip and shoulder have started to hurt which isn’t a good sign. He knows what happens to people kept in suspended motion, on their sides, bound for long periods of times. The joints stiffen, the muscles become hard and tense, the bones begin to bruise and rot under the pressure. They’ll have to open it up at some point to feed him if they don’t want him starving to death, but that doesn’t mean anything, because he’s strapped down. He’s not even really sure there’s a lid on this thing, because he can’t move. Maybe, ironically, he’s in an open box in a dark room. Perhaps, if he just worked a little harder to get out in those first few hours, first few days when he could still work his fingers properly, he would be sitting and moving around a room, no pain in the joints.
Probably not. He likes to think not, because otherwise he feels like a failure. The thought of being in an open box and not being able to get out – that’s just pathetic. So he really hopes there’s a lid over him. But he won’t know, won’t know until they come to feed him, then he’ll be able to hear it. He’ll know if there’s a lid or not. Not that it will help him.
A click, muffled by the walls around him, and now he’s pretty sure that there’s a lid, otherwise the noise would have been more crisp, more clear. A click followed by silence, but he’s pretty sure it’s a door being pushed open. There’s no light in the dark. Nothing changes. Muffled footsteps that he can hear only because his head is on the ground, his ear almost flat against the floor, he can hear the sound reverbrating through the floor. Heavy, flat, coming closer. There’s noises from above him, metallic clicking and soft clanking, familiar sounds of locks being open and chains pulled away. God damn he was happy the thing had a lid. Would have looked like an idiot.
The lid gets pulled up, but he can’t see anything. He’s strapped down. He can’t move, and it’s still dark. He can’t even turn his head. The most he can do is try to move his eyes enough to catch something. But no lights are on, it’s still dark, and he’s wondering how the soldier above him can see anything. Not that night vision goggles aren’t a perfectly good explanation. It’s just weird is all. He’d expected the shock of light. Being blinded by faking flickering lights above, kept disoriented and slightly sick with light. But having it still be dark. That’s just bizarre.
His straps are undone. Another thing he wasn’t expected. They’re undone and he’s pulled out of the box, limp as a doll because he hasn’t eaten in days and he hasn’t moved, and now being out, he can’t even get his limbs to work properly, can barely bend his legs. So he doesn’t feel all that bad about the soldier dragging him along the floor like a sack of grain. If he could have walked he would have, and it would have been a lot more dignifying. But if you’ve been kept in a box for days and already had to soil yourself, had to rot in the smell of your own bowls, had your body go numb, and lost a little bit of your mind, being dragged across a concrete floor and not walking, is really the least of your problems. Besides, he’s worried about living. He doesn’t care if he doesn’t do it in a dignified manner, he just wants to do it.
It’s all dark. Everything. He doesn’t see anything and he can’t understand it because he’s almost certain he was dragged through a door. He’s sure he’s sliding down a hall because the floor is much smoother, and if it’s a hall, it should be light. Then again, he’s been in a box for however long it’s been and his whole body is practically numb with cold and stagnant blood flow. He’s numb. He can barely feel the hand grabbing his wrists, so it’s not a big surprise to realize he has a bag over his head and he’d just never noticed it. He’d always thought the heat of his breath had been the box.
They stop moving and he’s dropped on the ground. He doesn’t move, not to say that he doesn’t try, it’s just the whole box thing, the whole muscle cramp thing. A needle stabs into his arm and he moves then, like a viper, whipping out at breakneck speed, rolling with the force, his numb fingers clamping down on a forearm. His fingers dig into the flesh, like teeth, short, jagged nails biting into skin and he can feel blood well up under them. It’s only for a moment though. A few heartbeats at the most, and then something spreads through him, liquid warmth, turning him to jelly again, and he flops back to the ground.
The manacles are taken off his wrists, but he can’t move, and this time because of whatever had been injected into him. His mind is fuzzy, his brain fully of cotton and his thoughts slow. Something’s strapped onto his face and another needle pricks him. He doesn’t move this time, no second burst of unleashing power. His limp, noodley limbs slowly stiffen. He’s being paralyzed, but he doesn’t know why, he can barely tell what’s going on.
He’s lifted up and brought down again, liquid envelopes him. He can feel it, but it’s the same temperature as his body, so once his head goes under and he’s breathing through the mask on his face that he can’t even feel, he can tell he’s in water, he’s just suspended, in nothing. It’s like the womb, or at least he imagines it’s what the womb would have been like. Dark and warm and soft. Except…
This is sensory depravation. This is the real deal. And he notices a little too late. Not that there’s anything he could have done about it. Ever. It’s dark, he still can’t see anything. But this time he can’t hear anything either. There are no smells, no feeling, nothing. He’s completely suspended, not a single thing tying him down to the Earth. It’s not the way that human beings are suppose to work. It’s like being suspended in space, and there’s nothing there. Just you, and nothing else. It’s bad, he knows this. Human beings are social creatures, they need to be around things, they need to sense things. You can’t take all of it away, it doesn’t work that way. It drives people insane.
But he’s suspended now, and even though he’s thinking about it, it’s not like it helps. Because he’s already there, in the pool of body temperature water, completely cut off from everything that makes a person human.
It’s alright though, because he’s back in Deathscythe, looking out into space and enjoying the view. The sight is amazing, more beautiful than anything he’s ever seen in his entire life, and a shit load better than what he’s seen during the war. Space, in all its infinite glory. Black, with winking white stars that littler the landscape. Amazing. But even more amazing are the colors that are shooting out in front of him, like shooting stars with tales of brilliant color flying behind them. Purple, blue, yellow. All mixing together and creating insanely wonderful art. It’s unlike anything he’s every seen and his breath hitches in his chest. Beautiful.
There’s a rush, powerful, swooping, that launches him forward, into the colors bursting in front of him. He’s enthralled, wants to be immersed in those colors. Wants it more than anything he’s wanted in his entire life.
His head cracks against something hard, his neck snaps back and his body twists violently, his already injured side taking a blow, connecting with something else, flat, against his entire length. Colors sweep in front of his eyes, bright lights dancing, lightning bolts of pain jabbing through his skull. He’s suddenly aware of noise, all around him. People are shouting, screaming. There are familiar popping sounds. Pop. Pop. Pop. And it takes him forever to realize it’s the sound of an automatic pistol being fired in quick succession.
He’s still numb, still paralytic, but he manages to crack an eye open with such effort he’s sure that must be the reason why he’s panting so hard. Brilliant white light flashes into his eye and immediately he has it closed again, pain searing his eye and into his brain. Another sound comes from close by, low and guttural. It takes him a few moments to realize that it’s him, that a groan of pain filtered up from his lips and reached his ears. It’s a foreign sound. Any sound is foreign at this point.
There’s a hand on his should, grasping him tightly shaking him, but not too hard. No, he might be injured. His neck might be broken. You never shake a victim hard – you’re not to shake period. You’re suppose to squeeze. Apply pressure and see if they respond. “Duo.”
Hard and demanding. The voice is familiar and he fights to open his eyes again, squinting up at the blurry figure above him. It doesn’t matter that he’s blurry though, because he knows exactly who it is. He opens his mouth to speak and lets out another groan. His head is pounding and dark spots are floating in front of his vision. Floaters. They’re a sign of something, he can’t quite remember what. He closes his eyes again.
Above him, Heero makes a sound, guttural and rough, but he doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t demand anything, just drags Duo up from the ground and throws him over his shoulder and starts moving, quickly.
Sounds are everywhere, people screaming and shouting, alarms blaring, so much that it’s deafening. He hands on the verge of unconsciousness, hopes more so that he’ll loose consciousness than stay awake for the whole thing. Heero’s carrying him and dealing with the extra weight as much as possible, but he’s not gentle, not that he can be, and at one point Heero throws him to the ground. Duo crashes onto the floor in a limp mess of limbs, his eyes opening in shock as pain crashed through the left side of his body. Some sound whines out of his throat and after a confusing series of grunts and blows and thuds and pops Heero’s hand catches his chin and turns his head. “Duo?” There’s an edge of concern to his voice, which is reasonable, because if you’re going to save someone he might as well be worth saving.
His eyes crack open again and roll, his mouth working silently. The cotton in his head hasn’t faded, and whatever they gave him is still thick in his system. His lips feel numb and large, his throat a gasping hole. He groans again and closes his eyes. His head hurts and he’s almost certain he feels warm blood matting his skull, running down the back of his neck. A moment later he’s thrown over Heero’s shoulder again, a strong arm around his waist holding him in place. A few steps later, he’s blessedly unconscious.
: End :