Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing

Deceptions Part 13: The Dream

By Symee-Sama

For the first time in his life, Heero felt lost. He ignored his discomfort from sitting on the cold stone floor of his cell, and thought about the words that Relena had said to him. Did she really think that his life was worth something? Even after what he had done to her? His eyes glanced around the tiny stone room, and he made his decision. She wanted him to live so he could pay for his crimes. He didn’t want to be here. He could’ve escaped easily, but he would stay for as long as it took for him to pay back the pain that he had caused her. Even if it took forever.

//Is this what you want?// The smooth voice said, and all of a sudden, the dark, damp cell was filled with light. Heero tensed. He was back. //To cower here in this cell for your crimes?//

Go away Zero! Heero snapped impatiently. He had been coming more and more often now. Badgering him; trying to get him to escape from jail. Trying to get him to kill again. You’re not real. You’re just inside my head.

//Is that what you believe now?// Zero was unperturbed, and Heero could’ve sworn that he was smirking at his discomfort. //I thought that you were smarter than that. I thought that you were trained to be better than that.//

I don’t want anything to do with my training! Heero clenched his fists, wishing that Zero had a physical form that he could fight. He hated these mind games. He hated fighting with his words instead of his fists. I don’t want to be the perfect soldier anymore. So leave me alone!

//How taken you are by their lies.//

You lie! Heero snapped. Not them! I trust them!

//You trust the people who put you in jail.// Zero sneered. // You trust the people who took away your freedom. What a fool you are! I made you the man you are today, but you still will not trust me.//

You made me a murderer. Heero said flatly.

//Then make me pay for it.// Zero’s voice sounded pleased as the light dimmed and a man appeared . //Go on.// His mouth moved and Zero’s voice boomed out. //Make me pay.//

Heero lunged at him, a feeling of satisfaction ran through him as his hand connected with his face. Zero’s smugness was gone, replaced by pain and disbelief. You bastard! Heero yelled at him. You made me kill them. You made me hurt her!

//Take responsibility for your own actions.// Zero taunted. //You wanted to hurt them and her.// Heero’s blood ran cold. //You enjoyed it. Just like you’re enjoying this.//

This is different! Heero yelled and delivered a punch to Zero’s gut that made him gasp and his face scrunch up in pain. You’re not an innocent!

//But he is.// The golden light faded away, and Heero looked at the man he held in horror. The light was gone and so was Zero; in his place a bruised and bleeding man was in Heero’s grasp. His nose had been broken, and Heero could see where he had broken his ribs.

“No,” Heero whispered and dropped the man in a crumpled heap. “I’m sorry.” He said softly, repeating it in his head like a mantra. “I didn’t mean to.”

Other guards rushed into the cell, some of them pulling Heero away from the guard’s body, others kneeling beside him. “I didn’t mean to.” He said again as he was pushed to his knees. “I’m sorry.” He felt a sharp pain in the back of his head, and it took him a moment to realise what had happened. They had hit him.

Pain seared through him again as they hit him a second time and the room spun and blurred, but he remained upright. He could feel blood dripping down his neck, but he ignored it. He deserved this. For what he had done to her. For what he had done to others. He deserved this.

Heero closed his eyes, bracing himself for the blow that he knew was coming, but it wasn’t enough. White lights flashed behind his eyes, and his head felt like it was going to explode. For a brief moment, he thought that he was with Relena on the balcony again. He thought he could hear her reprimanding him, feel her pushing him, and then he was falling, hitting the unforgiving stone floor, feeling the blood pooling around him. He could hear an eerie laughter echoing through his head and he shuddered. Leave me alone, Zero. He thought weakly. Stop making me hurt people.

//No matter what you do.// Zero’s voice chilled Heero’s blood. //You will always hurt people. It’s all that you’re good for. You will never be more than a murderer.//

No, Heero thought weakly as the room spun and he was swallowed by the darkness.

* * * * *

Relena opened her eyes slowly, taking in her surroundings. Where was she? This wasn’t her cell… A slow smile crept over her face when she realised where she was. She had been rescued, and she was at the Preventor Headquarters. She had been rescued!

The very thought made her want to laugh and cry at the same time. She was safe, but nothing would be as it was before. Nothing could be as it was before. The thought made her cringe. Things had been going so well. Everyone had been happy, but then, Heero had told her that he was going away for awhile, and had disappeared.

She hadn’t been worried. She knew that he would come back to her, but she had never expected what would happen when he did come back. She had never thought that he would’ve fallen back into a world filled with blood and violence. She had never expected him to be –

Crazy. There. She had said it, but the word still seemed to stick in her throat. He had been the strongest of them all, but he had fallen. He hadn’t been able to escape the war. If Heero couldn’t escape it, what chance did the rest of them have?

Relena became more and more depressed as she remembered what had happened when she had been rescued. Heero had been hurt. She had hurt him. She had wanted to hurt him for the pain he caused her, and now she regretted it with all her heart. She still loved him, despite everything that had happened, she still loved him. She couldn’t stop, no matter how hard she tried.

Her thoughts were interrupted when she heard a knock on her door. “Come in.” She said, biting back a gasp when Heero entered her room. “What are you doing here?” She demanded. “You should be in jail!” He walked across the room, and for every step that he took towards her she took one back until her back was against the wall. He was too close. It was too soon after everything had happened, and… he was too close.

“I escaped.” He stopped in the middle of the room, hurt shining through his eyes. “Relena…” He began, looking at her, his eyes seeming like they could pierce his soul. “Did you mean what you said?” She looked at him blankly. “When you said that my life was precious, did you mean it? Does my life have worth?”

“Every life is valuable.” Relena smiled sadly at him, pitying him, and hating herself for helping to reduce him to this. “But it’s what you do with it that determines how valuable your life is.” Her hand flew to her mouth when she noticed that blood was flowing down his neck.

“You’re bleeding!” She cried and he placed a hand on the back of his head, surprised to feel a warm, sticky liquid flowing through his fingers. “I did this, didn’t I?” She asked softly. “This is my fault.”

“I don’t blame you for anything.” Heero assured her. “I shouldn’t have expected any other reaction.” His eyes had a pleading look in them. “Just…” He broke off, gathering his resolve before speaking again. “Relena,” his voice was soft and she had to strain to hear it. “Don’t let them kill me.”

“They’re not going to.” Relena informed him. “The judge changed her ruling to life in prison.” Heero shook his head violently.

“Not physically,” he said in the same soft voice. “Mentally.” He ignored Relena’s confused expression. “He’s killing what I am. He’s making me kill.” He brought up his bloody hands, and held them out to her. “I can’t escape the killing.” He stared at his hands, a dull look in his eyes. “Must they always be stained with blood?”

“I don’t understand.” Relena protested. “What have you done, Heero?” He reached for her, just like he had on the balcony, but this time, she didn’t push him away. She simply stared at his hand for a long moment before reaching towards him…

Only to find that her way was blocked by a strange golden light. “Relena!” Heero shouted as the golden light surrounded him, forming a circular prison around him. “Don’t let him kill me!” He cried out to her as he pushed against the light, forcing his hand through the barrier.

Relena grasped his hand, not wanting to let go, but the light had other plans. A scream escaped her lips as she was thrown backwards across the room. No. She opened her mouth to shout his name, but no sound came out. No! She watched in horror as the light closed around Heero, running to him and trying to find a way to reach him before he was smothered by it.

She watched him for agonising minutes, pounding her fists against the light, watching as he desperately tried to reach her through the golden barrier. Tears running down her face as his attempts grew weaker, and his face became flushed from lack of oxygen. He placed a hand over hers, as if he was willing the barrier to go away so he could be with her. Relena. He mouthed her name, and she burst into tears again. It couldn’t end like this!

As if it was following her commands, the light dissipated, and Heero collapsed, falling into her arms Relena felt frantically for a pulse, but there was none. His body was cold, and his eyes were lifeless. He was dead. She held him close to her, not wanting to believe it. Tears streamed down her cheeks. He was dead.

Relena looked up, from his body when the door opened. “Please,” she whispered. “Somebody help him…” Her pleas dissolved into screams when she saw who had entered the room. No! She was supposed to be safe here. They had promised that she would be safe here!

“Hello love,” James said in a sickeningly sweet tone as he stepped into the room, closing the door behind him.

“No!” Relena screamed and… woke up? She burst into laughter. It had all been a dream. Heero wasn’t dead, and James wasn’t in her room. The door burst open and Duo ran in.

“Princess?” Relief flooded through her as he rushed to her bedside and looked her over. “Are you okay?” She nodded, unable to stop laughing. “What happened?” Relena told him everything. Every little detail, and when she was finished, she realised that tears were streaming down her face, and she couldn’t tell if she was laughing or crying.

* * * * *

Sally frowned as she looked at her newest patient, angry with herself for the resentment she was feeling. A patient is a patient. She told herself. You can’t refuse treatment to someone who needs it. Even if he did try to kill you. She glanced absently at the burns on her arms. They had faded, and now, the long scars were the only reminders she had of her near death experience. The scars and the nightmares.

She had always wanted to help people. Right after the war ended, she had gone to Preventors, wanting to help maintain the fragile peace that had been created, but it wasn’t what she truly wanted to do. She had wanted to be a doctor. So she was studying medicine in her spare time.

Wufei had been incredibly helpful to her aspirations. Once he had found out what she wanted, he had done his best to help her achieve her goals. He had taken on most of her duties and paperwork as a Preventor so she could have more time to study and learn. He had been doing her paperwork on the day of the bombing, she remembered with a wry smile.

She had just received her PHD and had come to his office to let him know. After all, it was because of his efforts that she had been able to take the test so quickly, but then Heero had come and ruined everything. Wufei had run out of the office to try in an attempt to stop him, and the next thing that she knew, she was in the hospital.

Her mouth twisted in disgust as she stared at the young man lying in front of her. She had been in a coma for over a month because of the actions of this man, and now she was supposed to heal him? The irony of it.

She could refuse to treat him if she wanted to, but she knew that if she did that, he would die. They would have to transfer him to another hospital and he would die before he reached there. She sighed, and moved closer to him, she knew what she had to do.

“You don’t have to help him,” she turned around at Wufei’s voice. “He doesn’t deserve your help after what he’s done to you.” He walked over to the examination table, his contempt for the other pilot obvious. “After everything that he’s done.”

“I do have to help him. I can’t just leave him to die.” Sally stated simply, and picked up some gauze. “Could you help me with something?” She asked him, and he nodded. “Prop him up, so I can get look at the wound in his head.”

Wufei did as he was asked, and when Sally saw the back of Heero’s head, she grimaced. “What did they do to him?” She wondered aloud as she threaded a needle, and prepared to stitch up his wound. “This is terrible.” She began to stitch his skin together with practised, confident movements.

“Relena pushed him off a balcony,” Wufei told her. “That’s what gave him the wound in the first place. Then, it was made worse by incompetent doctors, and stress.” Sally gave him a confused look. “They forced him to stand for hours after he got it.” He explained. “For his trial.”

“What opened it up again?” Sally asked, not looking up from her work.

“Yuy went nuts in his cell, and beat up a guard.” Sally nodded absently, she knew that. She had treated the guard earlier, but that didn’t explain how the wound had opened up again. “Then, he was ‘subdued’ by the other guards.” There was more than a trace of scorn in Wufei’s voice (weird sentence?). He didn’t approve of the excessive force used by the guards to subdue Yuy. They had continued to beat him, even after he had fallen unconscious.

“He’s lost a lot of blood.” Sally informed him. “A dangerous amount of blood. He will have to stay here until he recovers. They won’t be able to provide the proper care for him at the prison.” Wufei’s eyes widened for a moment with concern, and Sally smiled inwardly. It was nice to know that he cared for her. “I’ll have him restrained if it will make you feel better.” He nodded, and she tied off the thread. “But he has to stay here for treatment.”

Wufei nodded again, and laid Heero back down on the table. “I have to go.” He said quickly. “Don’t forget to restrain him.” He gave her one last nod, and then he was gone. Sally sighed. Why did she always fall for the hard-headed ones?

Well, at least she knew that he cared for her. His annoying reminders and over-protectiveness were his ways of showing his affection. If she wanted love poems, and romantic candlelit dinners, she would definitely have to look elsewhere. Her smile returned. Although he was blunt, and couldn’t be a romantic if his life depended on it, she wouldn’t have it any other way. She turned back to Heero, all conflicting opinions about him gone now. For some reason, everything seemed so simple and clear-cut after speaking with Wufei.

* * * * *

Duo walked quickly down the halls of the prison. He was confused. He had questions, too many of them, and the only person who could answer them was at the moment, strapped to an observation table in the medical wing of a prison. He sighed softly as he walked down the darkened hallways. He had just had two conversations, and both had affected him differently.

The first had been with Hilde. He had apologised to her, explaining why he had run out of the apartment a week ago. She had been angry at first, not wanting to accept his reasoning, not wanting to give him another chance, but she had relented eventually. He knew that he had a lot of things to make up for with her, but he couldn’t do any of them until this whole issue was resolved. He couldn’t make any promises or commitments until he found out what was affecting Heero. Hilde understood that now, and she promised him that she would wait.

His second conversation had been with Quatre, and what he had learned had disturbed him. According to Quatre, he had sensed another presence when he’d entered Heero’s mind. Duo shook his head. The telepathy stuff was confusing by itself, but what Quatre had told him could explain Heero’s actions. There had been another presence in his friend’s head. One that wasn’t supposed to be there, and one that wasn’t natural, but mechanical.

Quatre had sworn that it was Zero, but Duo didn’t know how to handle it. Zero had been destroyed, the system had burned up along with the Gundam, and even if a remnant of the Zero system had survived, how could it be in Heero’s head? First of all, it only worked while you were inside the Gundam, and secondly, no one knew how to control the Zero system. Except for the Doctors of course, but they had all died on Libra.

That was why Duo was here, striding down the halls of a prison. He needed the answers, and he was going to get them one way or another. He wasn’t going to let Heero die, and he didn’t want him to waste his life rotting away in this dump. He walked into the medical wing and was greeted by Sally. “How is he?” Duo asked her.

“He’ll be fine,” Sally smiled slightly. “He has remarkable regenerative abilities. You need to talk to him right?” Duo nodded. “All right, I’ll leave you two alone, but if you release him there will be hell to pay. He doesn’t need to be untied for questions okay? He can answer them just as well, strapped down.”

“You’ve been hanging around Wufei too much, Sally.” Duo said dryly. “His opinions of me are starting to rub off on you. That’s unhealthy.” He smiled.

“I didn’t mean it that way…” Sally began, but stopped, realising what he said was correct. “Wufei doesn’t really think that you’re an idiot.”

“Sure he doesn’t,” Duo rolled his eyes. “He shows me how much he respects me every time I see him. You don’t have to lie to me, Sally. Let Wufei think what he wants.” He smirked. “I’m just worried that his opinions are rubbing off on you. The last thing this universe needs is another person like him.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Sally’s tone was sarcastic as she walked out of the room. “I’ll be back in an hour.” She smiled slightly. “Be good, and don’t touch anything.”

Duo ignored her parting comment, deciding that he would get her back later for that, and turned his attention to Heero. “Hey buddy,” he said softly, and Heero’s eyes snapped open. Okay… Duo thought to himself. That was freaky. “How are you?”

“That’s a stupid question,” Heero stated coldly, and Duo smirked.

“A little pissy, are we?” His smirk faded when he remembered why he had come here. “I got to ask you a few questions, okay?”

“I need to ask you something first.” Heero intervened.

“Go ahead.” Duo leaned back in his chair, and linked his hands behind his head. “What do you wanna know?”

“How is Relena?”

He should have expected the question. He really should have, but he didn’t, and the question caught Duo off guard. “She’s been having nightmares.” Duo said quickly, and then resisted the urge to punch himself. He wasn’t supposed to tell Heero that, but damn! He hadn’t expected that question.

“Nightmares?” Heero’s voice hardened. This was his fault. She was suffering because of him. “What kind of nightmares.”

“She woke up screaming last night,” Duo said in a resigned voice. He had already let the information out, he might as well tell him the whole story. “She was hysterical when we reached her. Babbling about you being killed by light, and James coming back.”

“She knows.” Heero whispered, and Duo gave him a strange look. “About Zero. Don’t you understand? Me being killed by light, that’s Zero!”

Heero grew silent after his outburst, and Duo decided to change the topic. If they kept talking about Relena, Heero would become all moody. Duo couldn’t blame him for agonising over what he had done to her, but he needed this information. “So… What happened in that cell yesterday?”

“Zero tricked me into beating up one of the guards.” Heero said tonelessly. “He made me believe that the guard was a physical manifestation of him.”

One question answered. “Okay, what do you remember about this last year?” Duo leaned forward. This was the important question. This could tell them what had happened to their friend.

“Nothing. I can only remember the visions.”

“How do you know that they weren’t real?”

“Because they couldn’t be. The people who were in them were dead, the things that happened in them weren’t possible.”

“But before, you said that you remembered the people that you killed right?” Duo asked, and Heero nodded. “So how are those memories different from these ‘visions’”

Heero thought about that for a moment. “They’re not different.”

So it’s possible that these memories could be real. Duo thought to himself. “Can you tell me about your ‘visions’?”

“The doctors were in them.” Heero began slowly. “They were doing things to me, experimenting with some new invention. They did something to my head… Then they tested the invention by sending me on missions…” Duo arched an eyebrow. Now they were getting somewhere. “But this is all impossible. The doctors died.”

“Keep going.” Duo urged, somewhat surprised that Heero was talking so much.

Heero frowned. “I remember going back to them after my last mission.”

“The one to kill Trowa?” Duo supplied, but Heero shook his head.

“No, I got caught on that one.” Heero said quietly. “The one before that. The bombing. I got stabbed and Doctor J helped me heal…” He frowned again. “Could I have imagined all this?” He wondered aloud, looking at Duo for some answers.

“I don’t know, but there’s a way we can find out,” Duo told him, and leaned back, trying to sort through the new information. According to Heero’s ‘visions’ the doctors were alive, and could the new invention have been a new type of Zero system? One that didn’t require a Gundam, but could manipulate someone’s actions from inside their head? It made sense, and if it was true…

Then Heero wasn’t as guilty as everyone thought. His actions would have been beyond his control. Duo shuddered, remembering his own run-in with the Zero system. What would it be like to have that presence inside your head? He shuddered again, he didn’t even want to think about it. But this… This new information could answer all his questions, and could clear Heero’s name.

“Do you remember where you stayed when you got hurt?” Duo asked and Heero nodded.

“On L1, the slums.” Heero began. “Sector 08.” Duo pulled out a scrap of paper.

“Hold on.” He said quietly. “I got to write this down.” Everything was falling into place. His questions would soon be answered, and if everything went right, Heero’s name would be cleared. They would find the doctors, and everything would be explained. He grinned at Heero and brandished his pen with a flourish. “Sorry, could you repeat that?” His grin grew. “I’m terrible with directions.”

Heero repeated them, and Duo whipped out his cell phone, dialing Une’s number. “Hey Une!” Duo smiled. “We got an address!” He listened for a moment. “Yeah, I’ll need a team, and I’ll need a partner. Heero’s obviously out… Is Quatre free? He’s great to work with.” He listened for a moment more. “Aw, c’mon! You can’t be serious! Are you-” He cut off glaring at the call phone as if the entire predicament was its fault. “Shit.” He said softly, and Heero glanced over at him.

“What is it?” The stoic man asked, and Duo grimaced, looking like he had a bad taste in his mouth.

“I’m being partnered with Wufei.”

Author’s Note: I hate the ending. What a crappy ending. Any ideas? And OOH 7 pages. Check out my long chapter! Hehe, sorry it took so long. And check it out! The braided baka is the one who’s figuring EVERYTHING out!!! Go Duo!