Caged

Companion to The Perfect Soldier

A Gundam Wing Fan Fiction

Disgorged from the Darkness that is The Manwell

He’s dead.

I’m dead.

I stare at the vid screen. At the aftermath of the explosion. At the crumpled, melted bits that had once been a powerful machine of war. At the empty space where a young man had stood, had offered up his life, had self-detonated.

I stare at the end of my world.

He’s dead.

I no longer have any purpose.

I turn away from the vid screen. The world is shocked by pilot 01’s complete lack of hesitance as he pressed the switch that triggered the blast. I do not hear them. I do not want to hear them. Their voices are of no consequence to me now. All that matters now is death.

He’s dead.

Why do the words seem so strange? He’s mortal, just like every other human being. He’s fighting in a war. Is it really so surprising that this has happened?

Yes.

Why?

Because of me. Because I was supposed to be the difference. Because I had sworn to protect him. Because I exist to keep him safe.

But no longer.

Mission failed.

And I do not care to accept another.

I wander through the streets. I do not think about where I am going. But that’s fine. My feet seem to have already decided on a destination.

I offer up the money required to admit me into the club. I don’t bother to focus my gaze on anything or anyone. I follow the music. The beat. The rhythm that my heart needs to continue beating seeing as how it’s lost the will to do so on its own.

The bodies writhe in the open arena, surge under the flashing lights, thrust with the bass-induced desire.

I have no place here among them.

But the beat...

I need the beat.

I close my eyes, tilt my head back, and allow myself to feel.

The bass slams into me, forcing its way past my skin, raping my blood.

It hurts.

And I want more of it.

But not here.

Not with the others able to watch me surrender to it.

I open my eyes.

For a moment, the shadows and the lights confuse me. I am not sure of what I see.

I blink.

I smile.

I turn my attention back to the crowd and weave my way through it.

More faceless people, more money exchanging hands. I step into the metal contraption and curl my fingers around the metal bars. My eyes close once more as I feel the jerky movements as the cage I’ve paid for is hoisted up to the ceiling. I can hear the clicking of the chains as they slide through the series of pulleys. And then it stops.

I stop.

I slide to the floor of my cage, close my eyes, and let the music take me. Pound me. Hate me. Peel my skin from my muscles. Pulse inside my every entrance. Use me. Live in me.

Kill me.

This is what I want.

He’s dead.

And I intend to join him.

But not before I’ve earned it. Not before I’ve paid for my failure with my pain. Not before I understand how it had been for him in that final moment: caged by his obligations, trapped within his training, manipulated by the unseen forces that have kept the blood flowing through his veins.

If I’d had a gundam, I would have self-destructed with it myself.

But I don’t.

So I choose this.

No food.

No water.

Just the cage.

And the music.

I release my breath into the hot, humid, smoky air.

I release my control and let the beat take me... again... and again... and again...

“Are you sure?”

Beside her, Andrew nods. Quietly, studying the warehouse with apprehension, he replies, “I’m sure.”

Taki wants to ask how he knows Heero’s here. But she’d already promised him she wouldn’t. No questions. That had been his one point of non-negotiation. So she bites them back and takes a step toward the rave. “You’re... sure she’s...” God, why is this so hard to say? To even think? “She... needs help?”

Again, he nods. Nods and no more than that.

She examines the grimy building with a critical eye, forcing her shaking hands to still, shoving the anxiety aside. There is no margin for error. If Heero needs help, then Taki will do whatever she has to in order to assist her friend, her very best friend. Her family.

Taki watches a couple in black vinyl and gleaming body piercings approach the door. As the heavy portal swings open, the music tumbles out into the night. Even at this distance, she can feel the power of the bass.

Not for the first time, she wonders what sort of trouble Heero is in.

“C’mon, then.”

She watches Andrew out of the corner of her eye. He’s tense. Very tense. But he doesn’t hesitate. She takes note of this. He hadn’t told her what this place’s reputation is. Something tells her she doesn’t really want to know. It’s Andrew’s fierce determination and the fear in his eyes that drives the gravity of the situation home to her.

They pay to get in, receiving barely a glance at their relatively tame costumes. Taki has the urge to snap a collar and a leash around Andrew’s neck and carry a whip, herself. But, as their eyes adjust to the gloom, she sees that her idea has already been taken. By several other couples who are in the process of... coupling.

God, this place is a fuck factory.

She examines the crowd, feels the dark aggression in the air. Suddenly chill in the thick heat, she turns to her companion and leans in close to say, “What the hell would Heero be doing in a place like this?”

Andrew leans away and gives Taki a long, sad look. He replies, “I think we’re going to find out.”

As Taki starts scanning the throng on the dance floor, a touch at her elbow makes her pause. Slowly, Andrew shakes his head. “She won’t be dancing.”

“What?” How does he bloody know that?

“She probably won’t even be standing, Taki.”

She stares at him, stunned.

He confirms. “It’s that bad.”

“Andrew,” she begins, voice shaking, “how do you know this?”

She’d promised not to ask, but she can’t help herself. Andrew, however, doesn’t appear to hold this against her. He says, “I just do.”

They don’t dare split up in the crowd. They have no means of communicating over the distance so they wander through the shadows and the side rooms together. The entire warehouse had been resurrected into a paradise for those seeking sexual release through pain and domination. The more she sees, the more Taki fears.

She cannot imagine what would have brought Heero here willingly.

She attempts to console herself. There’s a mission... someone in danger or under surveillance...

But if that’s the case, then it has gone terribly wrong. What else could have brought Andrew from his resource satellite to Earth? What else could have prompted him to track Taki down and pound on her door at two in the morning? Taki dearly wishes she’d known exactly what had brought him to her doorstep.

More often than not, Taki is the last to know these things. Once, she’d thought Heero had simply been trying to protect her. But now she isn’t so sure. Now she remembers the flatness, the darkness in Heero’s eyes. She’d only glimpsed it on a few occasions. Not enough to understand it, but enough to know she hadn’t imagined it.

They make a full circuit of the club. Beside her, Andrew is getting frustrated with their lack of progress. All of the shadowed corners, the cement-anchored restraints, the free standing cages, are empty of the one person they seek.

“She’s not here,” Andrew says, thoroughly confused.

Despite herself, Taki is immensely relieved.

“She has to be here!”

Taki’s relief vanishes. “There’s no way you could be wrong about this?” Please tell me you could have made a mistake...

He shakes his head. “Not even remotely.”

Taki swallows, clears her throat, and accepts the challenge. “Okay, then. Is there another level to this place?”

In unison, they look up, searching for evidence of a loft or catwalk.

“Hey, what are those?” She points up, into the shadowed recesses of the ceiling.

Andrew squints for a moment and replies just as a flash of light illuminates the looming structures, just as Taki’s eyes widen with understanding, “Cages.”

Oh dear sweet fucking God...

A shudder rips through her body. Her hands fist.

Tell me I won’t find her in one of those... Dear God, just tell me she’s not up there...

She draws a deep breath. Her gaze hardens. She looks at Andrew and tells him, “Showtime.”

“I don’t fucking CARE if you’re not bloody comfortable with that! I want her down and I want her down NOW!”

The club manager actually flinches in the face of Taki’s rage. Usually, she has to really psych herself up for one of her rare, public displays of mental instability. But not this time.

“And if I have to, I will make your life a living hell.” Taki leans closer to the man and confides, “I will devote my entire existence to it and love every second of it.”

The manager sweats profusely in his black leather. His skin is pale beneath the many tattoos adorning his flesh. He nods shortly. Glancing over Taki’s shoulder, he speaks to his assistant. “Cage number five. Get her down.”

The assistant nods and moves to a dark alcove concealing an ancient pulley system. Taki follows him with Andrew beside her. The young man selects the correct lever and begins to lower cage number five from its perch near the ceiling.

Taki shifts restlessly, trying to hope for the best. But Heero has been trapped in that cage for six days. And even though Andrew insists that she’s still alive, Taki can’t bring herself to hope for a pissy glare and an “Omae o korosu.” Normally, she goes out of her way to avoid Heero’s volatile irritation. But, God, what she wouldn’t give to be greeted like that now...

The heavy, iron cage scrapes against the floor and Taki turns her uncompromising gaze on the assistant. “Open it,” she demands. Carefully, she keeps her attention averted from the form slumped against the bars. She concentrates on glaring the man into submission until he selects the corresponding key from a ring at his hip and disengages the lock.

“Just take the bitch and get the fuck out,” the man snaps, clearly not in a good mood at being bossed around by a female nearly half his height.

She opens her mouth to tell him what he can do with that filthy mouth of his but Andrew brushes past her and ducks into the cage. The expression on his face, the anxiety radiating from his muscles is enough to get her back on track. The cage is too small for her to follow him inside so she hangs back, framed in the doorway, and peers over her shoulder.

Taki twists away from the sight before her and slams her back against the bars. Her hand clamps over her mouth and her eyes close. She takes deep, slow breaths and tries to convince herself that it’s not as bad as it looks, that she doesn’t really want to lose her lunch right now.

“Ah, there you are...”

Heero blinks again, trying to focus on the sound of that voice. A familiar voice.

“I was starting to really worry about you.”

It takes a monumental effort to shift her gaze to the source of that soft voice. She frowns as she takes in the sight of a young man with stylish, wire-rimmed glasses and long, blond hair.

Andrew?

No sound emerges from her lips. In fact, her lips barely move at all, but he nods. “Yeah, it’s me, babe. You want something for your throat?”

She doesn’t answer since the question is obviously rhetorical. He reaches for a cup of water and maneuvers the straw to her mouth.

“Slow, tiny sips, Heero... That’s it. I don’t want to have to clean up your puke if I don’t have to.”

Where am I?

“Taki found a place in the city.”

How long have I...?

Andrew smiles and brushes her limp bangs out of her eyes. “We brought her here about ten days ago. This is the longest you’ve been conscious since then.”

How long was I in the cage?

His face tightens with anger and sorrow. “Six days, love. You were up there for six days.”

Why aren’t I dead?

Andrew doesn’t answer this soundlessly mouthed question. He has to look away, has to gather his composure. When he turns back to her, she’s staring at him expectantly. “I thought I meant... that Taki and George and I and everyone else in your life meant more to you than that. You don’t know how badly it hurts... You were ready to abandon all of us. Do you really not care, Heero?”

It’s not like that.

“How is it then?”

Heero’s eyes close and a single tear squeezes out from between her lashes. I failed. He’s dead.

Andrew draws in a sharp breath at her admission. He opens his mouth, a hard gleam in his eye, but the door opening forestalls what he would have said.

“Is she awake again?”

On the bed, Heero mutters, Oh, God...

Andrew nods and grins sadistically at his incapacitated friend. “You did this. You deal with the consequences,” he states as Taki flies across the room.

“Heero, you bitch! What the hell were you thinking? I cannot believe you would—”

Heero opens her eyes and watches Taki’s face as her tirade builds, intensity multiplying exponentially. She endures only as much as she can before her head begins to pound with every heart beat. Heero mumbles on a wisp of breath, “Should have stolen a mobile suit after all...”

Taki pauses, having somehow caught Heero’s defeated whisper. She blinks. She grins. “Hey, now that’s the spirit, girl!” Taki expounds happily on Heero’s apparent return to good sense, completely blind to the fact that Heero would have stolen the thing for the sole purpose of ending her own life.

After Andrew figures Heero’s been tortured enough... and after he’s consulted his laptop for some vital information, he sends Taki on an errand. Printout in hand, he sits very carefully on the edge of Heero’s bed. They stare at each other for a long moment before Andrew very quietly tells her, “He’s not dead.”

Heero’s eyes snap up to meet his sincere gaze. Wordlessly, he presents the single satellite image to her. She stares at the body of her ward cradled in the arms of his comrade. He is bloody and broken and unconscious, but the soldier would not be bothering to hold him so gently if he had not still been alive.

“Oz hasn’t found a body yet because there isn’t one to find. I’ve been keeping tabs on him... on both of them. Trowa Barton is still making trips to the nearby town to buy medical supplies on a regular basis. He’s alive.”

Oh, God...

“Heero?”

“Thank you, Andrew.”

Andrew nods and rises from the bed. “You need to get some rest now.”

“I know.”

He hesitates, then places the satellite image beneath Heero’s limp fingers. She doesn’t need to see the picture of the young man’s battered body. She merely needs to be reminded that he’s not dead, that she’s not dead.

That there is still hope.

Quatre gasps. His hand jerks, sloshing tea over the rim and onto the saucer. Blindly, he settles the china on the table and lifts a hand to his chest.

The explosion of emotion he’d just experienced had been, easily, as strong as the one he’d felt when Heero had self-destructed with his gundam. He closes his eyes, remembering his own shock and pain, and then Duo’s, and then... someone else’s.

The stranger’s emotion had left him gasping for breath, weak, and disoriented. The pain... he’d never known such pain before. The anguish. The devastation. And then, just as quickly as it had slammed into him, it had disappeared. Quatre had thought that, perhaps, the stranger had taken his or her own life. And he’d shed a tear for that tragedy.

But now he knows he had been mistaken.

Not dead. Not dead.

Quatre revels in the relief and hope and pure love radiating from within him. Although he has no name and no face with which to associate these emotions, he knows it’s the stranger. Knows something has happened to reverse the darkness that he’d felt spreading over that distant soul.

And he suddenly knows the only thing that could have reversed such intense grief.

He turns to his computer, not daring to believe but willing to admit it’s possible. It’s possible that Heero survived. As he waits for his data search to turn up any evidence to support this, he becomes introspective once more.

He thinks about the intensity of the emotions he’d experienced. He wonders who this person is and what Heero Yuy means to them.

Wonders if he’ll ever meet this mysterious stranger in the future.

They think he’s dead.

That’s just as well. If they hadn’t been so busy fighting each other, he probably would be.

I remove his helmet carefully and select a few items from the first aid kit. His scalp wound is still bleeding. It had taken me longer than I had anticipated to get to him. Even after I had calculated his path through space I couldn’t just swoop in and collect him. I’d had to be careful, to make sure neither Quatre Winner nor Heero Yuy could detect my small shuttle craft.

But once they’d been collected by Oz, I could work.

I had almost been too late.

I don’t have to look at the suit’s air filter gage to know he’d had minutes left to live.

I do what I can for him, but a field medical kit is no substitute for a hospital. With the bleeding stopped and his pulse steady, I return to the cockpit. The nearest colony is only ninety-three minutes away, but we won’t be going there.

I lay in a course for a more distant place and prepare my cover story. It won’t be difficult explaining to the spaceport officials why I was out here and why I took such a long route back. What will be difficult is convincing them that the unconscious young man in an Oz vacuum suit isn’t a military officer. Hm, perhaps I’ll have to redress him in my own suit and fiddle with the filter gage. Yes, that will work. And I’ll have plenty of time to accomplish it.

The colony where the circus is performing is nearly fifteen hours away.

With everything running smoothly in the cockpit, I duck back into the small room that serves as the sleeping quarters. I make my preparations to change his suit, pausing occasionally to check his vitals.

I almost smile at myself. A few months ago I would have left him in space to die while I went off to “rescue” Heero Yuy. But my priorities have changed somewhat.

Heero can handle himself.

And I owe Trowa Barton a great debt for saving Heero’s life.

For, indirectly, saving my life.

“I’m going to get you home, Mr. Barton,” I promise him.

I don’t think he hears me. But he might. It doesn’t matter, either way.

I allow myself a moment to simply stare at him, wishing I could watch him open his eyes. Those very, very green eyes. But that’s dangerous. I’m a ghost, a shadow, a clone. No one can know about me.

At least, not yet.

I reach out and brush his hair off to one side and I almost smile.

It looks like I’ve got two soldiers to guard now. Although, deep down, I know I will watch over all five of them. I have confidence that they will finish this war. And I am at their service until that day comes.

I lean back and meet my own somber gaze in the room’s small mirror.

I am Heero Yuy.

And I am... caged.

~The End~

Author’s Note: I absolutely love this little ficlet (mainly) because it really opens the door to Yokaze’s role during the war. Having written this, it’s so much easier for me to imagine/insert her presence in the series as the silent, hovering figure in the background. Plus, this is a rare glimpse into her mind.  I know I hardly ever let her have moments of pure introspection so, if you were wondering how she really thinks, then I hope this fic clears up a few things for you.  And if you’re wondering exactly how Andrew knew where Yokaze was and that she needed help... well, you’re just going to have to read Night Wind, the sequel to Mission One.