Disclaimer: Nuu, nuu, nuu, none of the characters in this yarn belong to me sadly. The song: ?Never Again? also does not belong to me. Nickelback has all rights to that, and the Sotsu agency and Bandai owns the characters. I just stole them and beat them into this fic and will return them all- even if dead.
And, btw, this is a one-shot. So without further adieu! The fic! Have fun and comments are welcome.Note: this is from Heero?s POV:
I heard them again, in the living room, screaming it out-someone?s body hitting hard on the wood floor. I?m sure the rest of us heard it as well, but we all chose to do nothing, it was their problem not ours. They could work it out-they always seemed too-but then again that's also when he wasn't drunk off his ass. I wondered why she kept letting him back. Did she hope he would change? Did she think he would stop his drinking tirades and stop beating her when he came home from god alone knows where?
Me, I had been staying with the Maxwell's for about two years, after Relena threw me out because she was sick of waiting and had turned to Quatre-god that sickened me-but what could I do? It was her choice. But Quatre was here now, along with Trowa and Wufei. Lady Une had sent them to L2 on a special Preventers mission. I was already stationed here, which is how I came to live with Duo and his little pixie girl Hilde.
Everything seemed alright the first year I stayed- but then Duo started going out more and more, and coming back so drunk he'd begin fights with Hilde. I never knew the specifics, seeing as I kept to my room. But tonight seemed to be different...Tonight there was a lot more swearing and Hilde screaming she hadn't done a thing wrong. It puzzled me to no end-and I think I began to worry for her safety...what was he doing to her? She was just a girl.
*He's drunk again
It's time to fight
She must have done something wrong tonight
The living room
Becomes a boxing ring
It's time to run when you see him
Clenching his hands
She's just a woman
Never again*
Now suddenly curious I crept from my room and down the hall, hearing her scream out again. The others were out tonight, and would be for the next couple nights. I came upon the living room door and saw her on her knees- my eyes widened- Hilde on her knees? Something was definitely amiss- Her hands covered her face and her clothes were all torn. Duo had stormed out slamming the door wildly behind him. I entered the room and kneeled beside her. It was hard to show compassion-but I feared for her safety now-like I had for Relena's, just as strong if not stronger.
"Hilde? Are--you ok?"
"Heero...?"
"Yea-I'm here. Are you ok?"
"Ahh! Don't touch me!"
This startled me. She had said my name as barely a whisper- she could barely talk she was beaten so badly. I looked at her, her face rose up; covered by new forming bruises and her eyes were swollen from being hit and the tears streaming down. She was bloody as well I gasped.
"Go back to bed, Heero! Just go-leave me be...Please."
I looked at her-but was compelled to do as she begged. I don't know why I wanted to suddenly hold her and make everything all right, afraid that the next time Duo might kill her. I went slowly, watching as she doubled up on the floor in a fetal ball and cried silently. How could he do this? Even Relena would not be able to handle this!
*I hear her scream
From down the hall
Amazing she
Can even talk at all
She cries to me
"Go back to bed"
I'm terrified that she'll wind up
Dead at his hands
She's just a woman
Never again*
I walked to my room in silent contemplation. I'd been here two years and never seen it so bad. Never seen him actually strike her, or take her to her knees-She was always strong, and stood up to fight again. This worried me to no end why she was unable to tonight. Was Duo that horrible? Was he that bad? She was just a girl after all...
*Been there before
But not like this
Seen it before
But not like this
Never before have I ever
Seen him this bad
She's just a woman
Never again*
I fell asleep. The next day Hilde hid in her room and didn't come out no matter how much Maxwell begged her and apologized. She refused to show. Personally I did not blame her, however I had no intention on saying this out loud. But after seeing what he'd managed to bring such a strong-minded girl down to the other night I decided to talk to him and find out what the hell was going on. I don't think that was a good decision on my part now, though.
"Duo."
"Yeah, what is it?"
"Come here, I want to ask you something."
"Can't it wait pal? I'm trying to-ya know..." He motioned toward Hilde's door with a long, solemn, sad face. I looked at it with the indifference that was so well known on my face and then back at him.
"That's what I want to ask you about..." Duo's eyes looked puzzled then, and he left Hilde's door and followed me into their living room. "Sit." I commanded him. He sat.
"What's this about? Why do you wanna ask me ?bout Hildey?"
I looked at him sternly and sat on the armrest next to him. "You beat her pretty bad last night..."
Duo looked shocked. "I-I didn't mean it! That's why I'm trying to apologize! I-"
I cut him off.
"How many times does this make it, Duo? Beating her and then apologizing in the morning? You come home drunk off your ass and expect her to do god alone knows what and when she refuses- you beat her like she's nothing. How long do you plan on keeping this up? It's not like I haven't heard it from my room for the past year- haven't wondered what the hell has been going on, but decided it was best to keep to myself and let you two figure it out. But after what I saw last night- after the way you left her- I find I just can't keep silent any more. Duo this has to stop! You'll kill her if you keep it up."
Duo's eyes sank, his long bangs covering them in remorseful shadow. He didn't say anything, so I figured I'd gotten through and left it at that, heading out to the hanger through the office door to work on my car for the rest of the day.
I don't know when Duo went out, or why he didn't listen and just went to do it again, but he did and that night was the worst so far. He came home in a tirade and beat Hilde's door down when she refused to open it for him. I heard the screams and smashes and heard Hilde scream out: "I DID NOTHING TO OR WITH HIM DUO! HOW COULD YOU THINK THAT?!" That just seemed to make him even angrier. I had no idea what she had screamed that for-but after a while Hilde's voice went out and she said and screamed no more. Then I heard the front door slam equaling Duo's departure again.
I waited a bit and heard absolutely nothing from Hilde's room. Nothing at all. This was obviously bad, and I flew into panic as I raced to her room to find everything she owned in it in shattered pieces and her a tangled, bloody, bruised and swelling mess on the floor leaning against the bureau, with blood leaking from her wound. I let out a gasp involuntarily and rushed to her, carefully lifting her small battered form in my arms I raced to my Jaguar and carefully placed her in it. Revving the engine up I backed out of the garage and screeched off down the street for the L2 National Hospital.
At the hospital for an hour or more, Hilde was no severe case, her head was being bandaged and she was awake and coherent. Duo had arrived, acting all worried and sweet like, like he hadn't done this to her. His hands hadn't thrown her into the bureau and cracked her open. Again I kept my mouth shut, but I suppose I shouldn't have. Hilde lied to the nurse apparently. Told her she had slipped and fallen. The nurse didn't seem to believe it with good reason, but she couldn't contradict her. I watched Hilde in the room she was in as the nurse left. Her eyes were upon Duo, hard and unforgiving. I couldn't really read them.
Duo offered to take her home, and just to make it look like it wasn't him who had caused it, that she still trusted him, she accepted. So he took her and I was left alone in my Jaguar to think this all through. I had never seen it as bad as it had been tonight- and I had seen a lot as far as I was concerned. Hilde was a girl, and she couldn't survive much longer if Duo kept it up. I had told him so- but he twisted it around and accused her of something else.
*Just tell the nurse
You slipped and fell
It starts to sting as it starts to swell
She looks at you
She wants the truth
It's right out there in the waiting
Room with those hands
Lookin' just as sweet as he can
Never again
Seen it before
But not like this
Been there before
But not like this
Never before have I ever
Seen him this bad
She's just a woman
Never again-
Never again*
I arrived back home, and came in to see Duo trying to cuddle Hilde on the couch. I nearly blanched. The sight all the sudden sickened me worse the Relena running to Quatre. And it sickened me further to see that Hilde was stiff as a board, trying to keep him off of her, but not wanting to get beat again letting him do it. I stalked to my room suddenly flaming mad. And thoughts of kicking Duo's ass crossed my mind. He did not deserve her- or any woman for that matter. But least of all her. I bared my teeth and smacked my pillow with all the strength I could muster- nearly putting a hole through the mattress. If she were with me none of this would ever happen...If she were...
*Father's a name you haven't earned yet
You're just a child with a temper
Haven't you heard don't hit a lady
Kickin' your ass would be a pleasure*
I slept all through the next day, with odd dreams crossing my mind-ones I won't think to mention. The next week went pretty well then. Hilde healed, but for all her pain trusted Duo less and less. When he went out she began to come and talk to me, seeing as I had saved her life the last time Duo had went all out on her. She would sit on my bed, up at the head and me in the chair and talk to me. I listened, having nothing really better to do. My last assignment from Lady Une was a simple one, and I completed it in less then two days.
I didn't know it at the time, but while she poured her heart out to me and began telling me things she had never dared even tell Duo- I was falling in love with her. She was dragging emotions from me I thought were long since dead. Things I never felt with Relena- even though Relena made me want to feel them with her- and was the first to make me feel. I sat and listened to her tales from Oz, and even through her first experiences with a guy. That made me want to hurl thinking of someone else besides Duo, or me even touching her like that- but I kept my straight face. So the week seemed to pass without a hitch- until that night. The night it all ended for good, the night I don't know if she'll ever regret.
I had slept through the day again, after another all night mission with Trowa. The boys had come back now, and all were in their rooms when I awoke. Trowa was still dead to the world. No one woke me, I heard nothing all through, I just slept. I awoke again when night had once again fallen and taken L2 in its cold, dark embrace. I awoke to the screams again. I sat up in bed rubbing my eyes as I heard Hilde screaming at him, and him at her. I scrambled out of bed and rushed to the scene-apparently the other three had not been woken by it as of yet. When I arrived in the entrance to the living room I stopped dead in my tracks...They were facing off in the living room- Hilde's back was toward her favorite window seat and Duo's back was facing the kitchen. He screams something at her that I can't really hear because my sight is fixed upon Hilde. She screams back and he begins to advance on her.
"Stay back Duo! I'm fucking warning you! Stay the hell back!"
"Screw you Hilde! I know you've been fucking around with Heero! Every night for the last week I've come home to find you in his room and sometimes even asleep in his bed! Don't think I don't know! And you are mine! I won't let him take you from me!"
He was to quick in his movement for me to jump in and stop him-but apparently not to quick for Hilde to pull out a 9mm. I watched it all in what seemed to me to be incredibly slow motion. Watched Hilde pull the trigger, watched the bullet fly through the air slicing it and cut through into Duo's chest. My eyes went wider then I'd ever had them before and watched still as if in slow mo as Duo blanched and bent forward his arms swung out, his braid flew over his head and his eyes widened. He began to throw his head back and fall to the floor in a motionless heap. It was about this time that Hilde with incredibly wide eyes let her clenched hands with the gun still in them, fall to her thighs and then she dropped the gun. A feeling raged through me- one that was unidentifiable and the it created a sudden urge that raced through me as I raced to her and caught her before the metal of the gun hit the floor, before she sunk to her knees and all before Duo's hand finally hit the floor never to move again.
*He's drunk again
It's time to fight
Same old shit
Just on a different night
She grabs the gun
She's had enough
Tonight she'll find out how fuckin'
Tough is this man
Pulls the trigger fast as she can*
I sank to my knees with her in my arms, placing my face in her hair to calm her as well as myself. She trembled and said nothing as the other three of us came running out of their rooms at the sound of the gunshot only to find me holding Hilde in my embrace sitting on the floor with a smoking 9mm at our knees and the body of a former comrade upon the floor.
"What happened?" Trowa asked suddenly aghast at what they walked in on to. Neither I nor Hilde replied right away, I just closed my eyes and nuzzled her head, whispering it'd be ok. Which was so unlike me...
Quatre went and kneeled down on one knee to inspect Duo, feeling his pulse. He sighed and shook his head, closing his deadened blue violet eyes. "He's gone..."
Wufei looked at me. And feeling his almond eyes boring a hole into my head asking what the hell happened I looked up, and down at Hilde who was still shivering from the shock of it all. Surprised beyond belief that she had actually had the guts to do this. I stood up, Hilde in my arms, she still hadn't blinked yet I was sure. I looked at the expectant eyes of my comrades and told them in terse words as was my style what had happened. "Duo has been habitually beating and abusing Hilde for about a year- maybe longer, and she just couldn't take it any longer." I said and made my way to my room with the girl in my arms.
I stopped briefly to say "he possibly raped her too..." and went out leaving the rest to wonder at the girl's action and clean up the body.
I laid her on my bed and kissed her temple. She blinked finally and looked up at me with wide, and I suddenly realized beautiful blue eyes, and mumbled my name, and something else. "Heero...Never again..." I nodded my head and something- that feeling from before forced my head down toward her- she felt it too apparently, because she rose up to meet me half way...No, she was right- all this would happen never again...She was just a girl- and now my girl- Never again.
*Never again
Seen it before
But not like this
Been there before
But not like this
Never before have I ever
Seen him this bad
She's just a woman
Never again*
Fin
