Asylum

Trowa Barton awoke deep into the night, risen from his sleep by a sound which he had never heard before. An echo of a moan, rising and falling in a tremolo of grief, traveled through the air of the corridor like it was the shadows themselves, clinging to the ground as the dirt and grime. There were footsteps—heels clicking against the tile of the floor... A shout, and a silence once again.

But this was the shout of a woman. She screamed out a name that he could not recognize in his state of mind with his eyes fixated on the cracked stone ceiling.

Moments later, in the darkness of his room, solely shadowed with the moonlight from the small window high, high up on the outer wall, he heard again a cart roll down the hallway, snapping across the breach of the tiles, and charge past his door until silence once again.

This was when he realized sleep would not come as easily as it had in the other hospital he had his unfortunate earlier holiday in. Sitting up in bed and making his way to the door, he slid open the slot that looked like it could only be used to drop letters in, and looked into the corridor. Surprisingly, it was brightly lit, more so than during the day, and there were only two orderlies, both female, rushing back to a room.

It was then that the moaning began once more, and for a last time, until the woman who was put onto the stretcher fell silent with sobs. "Treize," she said so sadly, "Treize. You must get me the Doctor Treize, oh, please?"

"Doctor Khushrenada isn’t here," hissed the fatter of the women as she put a gas mask onto the poor woman’s face. "He’ll be in by the morrow. If you keep this up, Miss Une, we’ll give you a reason to see him." The patient-woman fell into a catatonic state right at that moment, as if the mere thought of her not seeing her doctor would surely send such a physical pain to wrack her body.

Trowa found the whole incident dull and pointless, so he slid closed his eye-slot and went to the desk where sat the journal. Cursing the institution for not having at least a light bulb on a chain hanging from the ceiling, he took the journal and went to the window. Straining his eyes to focus on the sloppily written words, ignoring the harsh blotches of black ink-stains, which made most words unreadable, he attempted to figure the first page of the nearly half-written book.

But he found his mind wandering from the insipid sentences of a madman to how he wished there would be a light bulb hanging from the ceiling on a chain. And he very quickly evaluated that the mere thought was absurd considering such a devastating act could be made with such a hanging chain of a noose and light-bulb.

"Bitter Doctor Black and Boorish Mister Bartleby bring baskets brimming with bloodied bodilies." Heero Yuy tapped his fingers against the table, wondering how he could so easily starve himself and go without sleep for days. Things like that take training, and the dark-eyed boy did not remember such vigorously schooling his own self on bodily things like that.

"Boorish Doctor Black and Bitter Mister Bartleby bring baskets brimming with bloodied bodilies."

His eyes scanned the cafeteria room—though, of course, it had been foolishly named so—for his two striking nemeses. But he only saw other patients, most up from their seats, scurrying across the ground or up on the tips of their toes trying to see the television set, which was just a flurry of black and white fuzz and sparks. The orderlies were shouting this way and that at this and that, but Heero tried to concentrate so hard on his little poem.

"Bitter Mister Black and Boorish Doctor Bartleby bring baskets brimming with bloodied bodilies."

But he couldn’t even hear himself think, nor even focus on the other faces of the patients.

His fists curled instinctively at his frustration and he ground his teeth together, chanting the phrase in his head, but finding the words in his thoughts displaying backwards. He shut his eyes tight and let out a hiss, opening them again to find the whole room upside down. He simply smashed his face against the table and went quiet. Maybe if the other patients saw his frustration, they’d stop their own half-witted—or non-witted—little antics.

What a foolish thought, he analyzed very quickly. At his realization, he lifted his head once again, to find the room and the patients standing rightfully on the ground, where the ground should have been, and pursed his lips into a straight line. Once again, he attempted to chant the phrase in his head, but in the midst of Bartleby, someone interrupted him quite rudely.

His arm nearly pulled from his shoulder as someone jerked his face around nearly backwards.

The Boorish Doctor Black and the Bitter Mister Bartleby stood behind him. Boorish Doctor Black held his arm to keep him in place as Bitter Mister Bartleby examined his face intensely, holding onto his chin with his long skeleton fingers. Mister Bartleby was dressed in his finest black suit, with a distracting red tie and high black collar. The dark clothes seemed to make the man’s face even more sharper than it was. But Boorish Doctor Black, on the other contrary, had on his white laboratory jacket, clean as ever—if to disregard the huge splotch of blood dripping down the collar to the third shining button.

Heero Yuy stood his tallest and firmest as he was led away from the zoo of a cafeteria and into the corridor.

"You see, Mr. Bartleby," Boorish Doctor Black was saying to his comrade, "this is a fine young specimen of the repercussions of the Oz poison gas used during the siege off the north."

"There don’t seem to be any physical effects, Dr. Black? Or am I amiss?"

The shorter walking in the middle of the two strange men noticed that he was being studied intensely by the prodding eyes of Bitter Mister Bartleby, but he kept his face blank, hands at his sides to keep from killing the gangly man.

"You are quite not the miss, Mr. Bartleby, and—no, there are no such physical effects. Nor, internally... The boy has been studied."

Bitter Mister Bartleby put his hands to his pathetic excuse for a beard and twisted the little curl at the end of his moustache as if in deep thought. "Well, well, welly, well, well," said the skeleton man in the suit as he clutched Heero’s shoulder.

The boy turned around and walked the opposite direction without a second thought. He did not find it strange that Boorish Doctor Black and Bitter Mister Bartleby—the left side of Heero’s face contorted violently at the mix-up of titles and quickly corrected his own thoughts—Bitter Mister Black and Boorish Doctor Bartleby did not follow him.

But his plans were foiled when the pig-orderly found him wandering, and he was later locked in his room.

That night, a dark-haired woman with a short doctor’s dress, who introduced herself as Lucrezia Noin, but to call her Miss Noin—respectfully, greeted Trowa Barton. Miss Noin attempted to unveil his own reasoning for why he had been sent to the institution, which she called it—respectfully. But Trowa met her questions with an unwavering silence for a full hour.

With a sigh, she allowed Trowa his dismissal and he was led to the recreational area, from where he found woman he remembered from the night earlier. She was sitting strangely; concentrating on the chessboard from which sat no other player. Indulging himself out of curiosity, he sat down across from the woman, who immediately acknowledged his presence by folding her arms and heightening her chin as if she was on the verge of lecturing him on the strategic points of board games.

"Now, if you wish to survive this game, I will have to judge you by your ugliness. For, if he were you good-looking, I would have killed you long ago."

Trowa ignored her, and moved the last of the white pawns forward.

"You see, I tricked you then. It’s a war strategy. For the sake of the civilians, you let the ugly ones be prosecuted then assassinated publicly—so for the sake of pity."

The woman, who later said for him to address her as Lady Une, if he would have ever done such a thing, but she quickly changed her mind soon afterward, seeing he would not speak at all. By the mere sight of her, Trowa knew this woman was not just an ordinary dissociate, judging from her personality the night earlier. She could have may as well been a general, Major Major, in both her personalities. For he was able to speak to her on both levels of her personality, one of which she called herself by nothing—a dejected young woman, swooning over Doctor Khushrenada. The other part of the woman, Lady Une, took each word Khushrenada would say to her as a literal order, and she obeyed with as much honor as a soldier.

So it was that when Khushrenada, as Trowa would solemnly address him as for the rest of this sad story, entered the common room, that Lady Une stood bolt upright, knocking the chessboard to the side, rooks and kings and knights falling into Trowa’s lap. He took this as his leave, and left the soft remarks of Khushrenada on Lady Une’s behalf.

Not surprised the least bit when he found the door to his cell creak open, letting the skeletal figure of Mr. Bartleby slink into the room, Heero Yuy let himself take a seat at his bed, the joints of his body moving as if they needed to be oiled.

"Much like the robot today, now, aren’t we?" Mr. Bartleby had a way of letting his lips curl over his teeth. It seemed to the robotic boy that the gums of the skeleton man’s mouth had decayed away, just showing too large of yellowish-white teeth.

"Shiny boot of leather."

"Yes, yes, I’ve heard it time and time again. Whip-lashing and girl-children; it’s all very grotesque, you know, my boy."

The boy sighed and took it upon himself to keep quiet.

"I suppose I want to forewarn you—" Mr. Bartleby took a step forward, putting himself closer in front of Heero, "—of things happening about the institution. You, have volunteered to take a part of a revolutionary scientific, psychological, sociological, ecological breakthrough, my boy."

An alarm went off in the west wing, signaling a patient had broken through. Neither Mr. Bartleby nor Heero Yuy paid any attention to this, both staring each other down as if the mere stare could send the other sprawling to the ground, choking in their own vomit.

"There are four others who have volunteered, and a control, which I’m sure you’ve met. The control prefers to go by the name Zechs Marquise, even though we all know that man died. It’s a sad story, but as I was saying, my boy," the man’s hand leveled itself onto Heero’s forehead. "We know that you know you think you suffer from nothing, because you think you are living in nothing." He shook his head as if in pity, thumbing Heero’s temple as if the skin there was soothing him and not sending him into tremors, as it was in the first place. "But you are quite ill, and we will cure you, my darling volunteer."

Bitter Mr. Bartleby gave the signal to the orderly in the doorway, and Heero found himself locked in, with Mr. Bartleby looming over him with a skeleton grin tearing its way across his face.

Quatre Raberba Winner peered inside the art room, his head poking out from the doorway. He had not much healed over the few nights, his head still throbbing with pain, but something had lured him away from the common room, escaping his own personal orderly who had followed him this way and that to see how he had been progressing since the surgery.

Now, he could feel a strong aura, almost black, swirling about the art room as if it were tangible.

A boy sat before a canvas, holding a brush in his hand, letting it hover in front of the canvas, but not touch it. Quatre watched; trying to deduce what emotion practically poured from the boy with the blank face. The boy did not move at all, and there was a single nurse in the large room, who was filing her bright crimson nails, rocking her head to and fro as if she were humming a song, which she most evidently was not.

The feeling hurt him. It was not like a pain that he felt around the asylum, which he tried to numb with each moment passing. It was a sad sort of pain, as if, as Quatre most obscurely assumed, that the boy’s body was hurting but the boy’s mind did not care, nor even acknowledge it or know it.

Now, this was not a rare incident that Quatre had encountered. There were many in the asylum that did not attach themselves to their bodies, or even know of the reality around them. What made this boy different was the intensity of the feeling. It was far too strong to be bearable—even to live with.

If the body died, than the mind would, as well. When the body and mind had come together in realization with most of the patients in the asylum, it always resulted in either death of the patient or the cure of the madness.

Quatre walked in slowly, trying not to surprise the boy who was seemingly in a catatonic state, staring at the empty canvas, his arm completely frozen from where he held the brush nearly touching the painting.

When he was at the boy’s side, he opened his mouth to speak, ignoring the intolerable pain that wracked his body into shivers, "Excuse—"

The paintbrush was at his neck in less than a heartbeat, letting thick, wet red paint stain the skin of his jugular.

The feeling had disappeared from the room, as if it hadn’t been there in the first place, and Quatre felt nothing emanating from the boy whom stared up at him with large, empty Prussian eyes.

Quatre left quickly before the nurse had even noticed him there and swallowed back his surprise.

Trowa Barton found himself wandering into the television-room, where only one other sat, staring at the television as if the contents were expanding his mind. The man sitting before the television had on a foolish white mask, and the longest platinum blonde hair Trowa had ever seen. But this did not excite Trowa, for he was merely interested on what was showing on the television.

It was the broadcast news, but... it showed hundreds and hundreds of people, piled upon each other in the smoke... It was far too gruesome to be shown on television, as what Trowa had remembered. It seemed to be a mountain of humans, bones and flesh and white... What drew him to the television though, was not the sight of such genocide, but at the absence of what Trowa had expected to see—blood. He could see no stains of red across the mountain of dead, just corpses of all human races, and their jutting bones.

The man beside the television commanded Trowa to move out of the way. The tall boy had subconsciously made his way to stand in front of the TV, staring in fascination at such a sight.

"The Oz Federation..." began the TV-reporter in her quiet voice as the screen switched from the gruesome, foggy, black-skied scene to their media headquarters. The woman covered her mouth and shook her head at the camera, staring down at the ground, her face paling a few shades whiter. She could not finish. The camera moved to the other news spokesman who sat at the table beside her. "This was footage taken from the most northern of Oz bases in Iceland. The body count of Romefeller soldiers and civilians—and even Oz’s own soldiers—spanned to a number of nearly seven thousand in just this sector. The most deaths were now specified to be caused by an unknown poisonous gas, most possibly synthetic, created by Oz, and many by gunshot and on-ground battle. Romefeller refuses to publicize the other locations of the Oz bases if—"

The man with the mask turned off the television with the remote he gripped in his hand and then did not move from his seat. He stared at the black television until Trowa left.

He felt the pain, somewhere from his body, but he could not figure out just what had been hurting. Heero could not move, too absorbed with pinpointing the exact location of the affliction. He bit the curling metal post of the bed until he felt his mouth go numb. This was his catatonic state. For hours, he would stay in a position, much like this, seemingly uncomfortable if watched. From the way he lay on the bed, his arm stretched upwards to the ceiling, he felt that sooner or later, the arm would go numb, his neck would go numb, but the pain that he was looking for would stay. It was a tiresome process, and usually he had done it for the whole night.

But Heero had been doing it for a long time now.

Still, he stayed in his frozen state... until all the pain he had was gone.

In his failure, he flung himself off the bed, but with his limbs weak and paralyzed, he staggered to the door, and fell onto the ground, staring at the ceiling. It was not long until the pain returned, with more force than before from his straining his own body beyond his own, even human, limit.

So when he screamed until his throat bled, he did not think that when the doctors came to take him that they would do something different than they had in the past. There would not be the shot tonight. There would not be the drugs. There would be electrodes and steaming and hissing machines and convulsions and blood from where he clenched his teeth so hard from the powerful current of too high a voltage.

And from the behind the mirror glass of the operating room, sat two men, one short and fat, one tall and emaciated, watching as a part of Heero Yuy’s brain was supposedly dying, instead of expanding and... found.

It was only when they began clearing the room, wheeling the boy down the corridor, that, for the first time, Heero Yuy found words.

In a voice that sounded burned, he spoke hoarsely to the orderly beside him, "But you did not quite succeed." And the muscles in Heero’s arm were surprisingly coursing with adrenaline that in such quick of a move did he have that man’s neck in his hand, choking him with a strength and precision of his fingers that he did not remember having, but, suddenly—did...

When the man let out a strangled gasp, the four others dressed in lab coats tried futilely to pull Heero away. When a needle was struck to his neck, he knew that the tranquilizer would work in matter of moments. So he decided to make it quick.

He screamed as loudly as he could, and the asphyxiated man clawed at the air until blood spattered from his face, most noticeably, his eyes, and those who were touching him recoiled away like gunshots for what they felt was a shock almost like electricity. The dead man slumped to the ground and Heero went cold, stupefied.