Disclaimers: The people who own the rights to Gundam Wing would never approve of what I do here, so obviously I don't own it. This is for catharsis and not money, so please don't sue me since I don't even own my delusions, they own me.

Written: December, 2000 - March, 2001
Overall Rating: R
Pairings: (1x2) [(3x5)+(4x5)+(4x3)]
Category: Angst Yaoi Mind-control Emotional-duress Violence
Enigma Story Category: Gundam Nightmares
Warnings: Angst, yaoi, mind-control, emotional-duress, violence, blood, illusions of death, slightly bastard Quatre, {just label it AU-OOC if you can't cope}

NOTES: Things are very dark when Heero is brainwashed by OZ into thinking his lover and teammates are dead at the hands of Wufei. What will the Perfect Soldier do when he is consumed by grief and how can an injured Duo cope? Meanwhile, Quatre's actions are driving Wufei to distraction and Trowa is desperate for a solution. If the pilots can survive, will they be able to build a future worth living in?

***SPECIAL NOTE***: This part contains my first ever fictionalized air battle between Gundams. Three-dimensional spacing and choreography are harder than they look and this section is dedicated to the people who storyboarded the great aerial battle scene between Wufei and Heero in "Endless Waltz", the sequence which inspired this section of the story.

//someone's thoughts//


False Memories
Part 4


"Yuy! Are you insane?!?" Wufei screamed over the comm link desperate to avoid the imminent battle. "You just blew up the other pilots, damn you!"

"Shut up and die, traitor!" Heero spat back, his mind unable to separate the false memories from the real ones.

"That's *Duo* down there, you fool!" The Chinese pilot cried as Wing's thermal blade connected with his own thermal glaive.

The two dueled in the sky for a few terrifying moments before alarms began to sound in Wing's cockpit, a sound which carried over the open comm channel into ShenLong's cockpit. Allowing his gaze to shift, Wufei noticed his tall lover on the ground firing up at Wing in desperation and suddenly realized what Trowa was trying to do.

Distracted for a moment, the small pilot was suddenly slammed against his safety harness as ShenLong rocked back from another assault and he felt something slice deeply into his left hip. Wufei felt the all too familiar warmth of blood flowing and he systematically blocked the pain and promptly forgot about it entirely. He had also forgotten the pair of good luck charms he had bought in India for Trowa and Quatre which he had stuck in his pocket at the airport. The two surprisingly sharp metal objects were still likely to cut his flesh but he paid them no attention, a Gundam charging at him was a far more significant threat.

Feinting with his thermal weapon once more, Wufei drove Wing back in an effort to let the alarms penetrate Heero's awareness.

"Don't you hear that, Yuy?!?" He screamed in hopeless rage, Wufei was no match for Heero in aerial combat and he knew it, but he was the other pilots' last hope. "That's Trowa trying to get you to back off! Snap out of it, damn it, or you're going to kill *all* of us! Is that what you *really* want?!?"

Growling at the inconvenience, Heero prepared to destroy the person firing at him, but ShenLong interfered. Wufei threw all of his skills as a pilot into protecting Trowa who had neither cover nor weaponry sufficient to stop the mobile suit that seemed to have decided he was an enemy to be eliminated as well as Wufei.

Utterly desperate, Wufei left himself visibly open to attack in the hopes of re-directing Heero from obliterating Trowa.

A cry of rage left Heero's throat. "You traitorous bastard! Don't try to deceive me! Trowa's already dead! And so are Quatre and Duo!" Heero refocused his assault exclusively on ShenLong to Wufei's relief and Trowa's horror.

"*You* killed them, Chang! You killed them ALL!!! Now, *I'll* kill *you*---AGAIN!!!" He punctuated his pronouncement with a slashing blow from Wing's thermal sword, slamming Wufei against the safety harness and indirectly adding more gashes to the bleeding Chinese pilot's body.

"Kill me--*again*?" Wufei asked, stunned as the terrifying realization hit him.

"Yes! And *stay* dead this time!" Heero snarled across the comm link adding in an agonized voice, "STAY DEAD!!!"

The Chinese boy now knew that Heero was deluded and stopping him would take drastic action. Choosing self-sacrifice over the probable deaths of them all, Wufei calmly stated, "Very well, I shall initiate ShenLong's self-destruct system and spare you the suffering you would experience once you realized the gravity of your error."

Quietly he added, "I hope you come to your senses soon, Heero, you are needed here far more than I am."

Without hesitation, he initiated the system designed to obliterate not only his Gundam but himself as well and set a trajectory to move the blast away from the three teens on the ground. Wufei leaned back in his chair, arms crossed and dark eyes closed, speaking silent good-byes to those he was about to leave behind, hoping Quatre might pick up on it and tell Trowa and Duo they were all on his thoughts at the end.

The HeavyArms pilot had no idea why the two metallic giants had stopped fighting, but he had a strong sense of foreboding when the dragon-fisted mobile suit began to move away. Profound sadness pierced Trowa's heart when a keening wail poured forth from the exterior claxons mounted on ShenLong.

"Damn you, Heero! *Why* did you push Fei to this?!? WHY?!?" Trowa screamed in futile fury.

Realizing there was nothing he could do from the ground, Trowa shoved the guns into his waistband and hurried to attempt to move his fallen lover as well as his wounded friend to safety. Duo and Quatre were separated by at least 25 meters forcing him to choose between saving Quatre who lay stunned or Duo whose previous injuries had been aggravated by the van explosion and whose survival was already in question. If Heero had not ended his rampage due to the sight of Duo's ravaged body, then perhaps Wufei knew what he was doing, suicidal or not.

Trowa also knew he had no way to establish communication with either of the combatants. With no way to speak to Wufei he had no way to dissuade his beloved dragon from his lethal intentions. Worse, he had no way to determine the Wing pilot's mental state. Clearly, Wufei felt he knew enough to make this horrifying decision, but the quiet HeavyArms pilot didn't want to allow either young man to fly free of the limits of life without his being certain there were no remaining options.

Nothing Trowa Barton wished for or did, however, would make any difference now and accepting this fact nearly destroyed him. He took a deep breath and shouted in agony, "NO!!! STOP THIS!!!!"

It is doubtful in the extreme that either the strangled scream or the loud warning claxons made any difference in the deluded world where Heero Yuy's mind existed. However, nothing would ever match the impact of the familiar strobing beacons emanating from ShenLong as it prepared for its last thirty seconds of existence.

Was it the rhythm of the lights flashing or was it something more which finally destroyed the false memories created by the OZ scientists? It didn't really matter in the end. The barriers which had been established suddenly shattered, leaving intense clarity unlike anything Heero Yuy had experienced in his short life.

With a move which belied his previously deluded condition, Heero threw Wing into the sky, rocketing after the retreating form of Wufei's Gundam. When he was close enough, Heero quickly recalibrated his own thermal blade into a fine point of white heat and inserted it key-like into the exterior controls of the Gundam ShenLong, allowing him to override the suicidal sequence, sparing a very surprised Chang Wufei's life. [1] [2]

*****

As the lights and noise died away, Wing landed and its cockpit flew open, allowing the Japanese pilot to step out onto the hatch and see first hand the damage he had caused.

Stunned, Heero Yuy looked down at the ravaged body of his lover, a blackened and bloodied figure most identifiable by the charred chestnut braid. A quick glance in the opposite direction allowed him to see Quatre, face down on the Australian soil, also unmoving. Trowa, however, had launched himself towards Wing, fury etched across his features.

"You lunatic! How many of us do you insist on killing?" He screamed as he gracefully leapt towards his unprepared opponent.

"Stop, Trowa, please!" Wufei commanded abruptly through ShenLong's exterior speakers causing the acrobat to transform his leap into a somersault, landing with ease to stand and stare gratefully at the machine coming towards him.

"Wufei!" Trowa cried, "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, angel. See to the others, please," Wufei answered with a sigh of relief.

"You've got it," Trowa responded as he began to move towards Quatre. "Just keep *him* away from me!" Without so much as a backward glance, Trowa dismissed his now guilt-stricken friend in favor of going where he was needed.

This latest act of intervention on Wufei's part baffled Heero. Hands balled into fists, the Japanese pilot stood in place as he watched ShenLong land with precision, blocking Heero's view of his own lover laying motionless on the grass.

Sweeping the ground with his sensors as he landed, Wufei had determined that Quatre had begun to struggle to rise and appeared only minimally injured. As he moved to his own now open hatch, he called out, "Trowa! Check on Duo!" With a nod, the tall pilot struck out once more, headed towards the dark figure leaving Wufei to confront Heero alone.

Heero was preparing to jump down to the ground himself when he heard a command leveled at himself.

"Wait, Heero!" Wufei ordered, "You must face me first!" With speed and grace, he sprung out of the cockpit to confront the boy he had been prepared to die to protect only moments before. The Chinese pilot faltered momentarily on landing as pain lanced through him, but he ignored it so he could face the shaken teen.

Now face-to-face in mid-air on the open hatch, Heero asked simply, "Why?"

"'Why' what, Yuy?" Wufei asked calmly, arms crossed over his chest, refusing to assume that Heero truly understood the enormity of what had just occurred. Further, he refused to be a victim of his own rage and fear. Rage for watching what his friend had done. Fear for the fact that Duo might lay dead because of it.

The wild play of emotions across the cobalt eyes confirmed many of his assumptions. As Heero searched his face for answers, the Chinese pilot stood firm, refusing to volunteer information of any sort.

Finally, Heero found his voice once more. "I asked you 'why', Wufei," Heero's voice trembled with barely concealed emotion, a true rarity in and of itself. "Why did you try to kill yourself? Why are we here? What the hell is happening, anyway?"

"Frankly, Heero," Wufei sighed as the exhaustion rolled back over him once more. "I don't know why we're here as opposed to somewhere else, but you were a captive at that OZ base," he gestured with his head at the smoldering ruins behind them.

"Neither do I know exactly what was happening to you before we arrived. However, you were acting abnormally, and it seemed that something drastic was needed to stop you yet I had no intention of killing you, regardless. So..." He trailed off and shrugged, he had no words to explain the self-destruct decision that wouldn't simply aggravate things.

The Japanese pilot's brows drew together as he frowned. "What *are* you talking about, Wufei? What did I do?" Somewhere in the back of his mind, it registered that blood was now moving to stain an entire side of the usually immaculate white silk pants of the boy facing him, but it didn't seem important enough to mention at that moment.

"Apparently you destroyed an OZ base single-handedly, and while it is perfectly normal performance for you to do so, you carried the battle past that and attacked the four of us as well."

Again, Heero asked only, "Why?"

Wufei stood firm in his resolution to not speculate. "Truly, I have no idea," he remarked, letting the pain and sadness show in his tone, "However I'm certain you were not in full control of your senses or your actions. Otherwise I would never have expected you to attack the vehicle containing Duo, Trowa, and Quatre or even myself, but you did."

Fighting for control, Heero asked, "What more do you want me to know here, Wufei? What are you concealing?"

Trowa's distressed voice interrupted, "Fei! I need your help down here!"

Turning, Wufei shouted over his shoulder, "We'll *both* help you, Trowa." Turning back to the boy in front of him, he stated simply, "Heero, come with me now and you can help us deal with at least some of what you've done."

He was about to leap to the ground when an agonized voice asked him, "Is it Duo, Wufei? Is it Duo who's hurt?"

Cobalt met onyx as the two men silently discussed the issue. Finally, Wufei broke the silence and stated simply, "Yes, Heero, Duo *is* injured."

"My fault?"

"Unfortunately, yes," Wufei sighed yet tried to look confident, "But perhaps it is not too late to do something about it nonetheless. Come on, let's see what we can do to help Trowa."

The two pilots dropped gracefully to the ground and Heero sprinted towards the tall youth who knelt beside the motionless figure to the west of the smoking remains of a stolen van. Wufei followed a bit more slowly as blood dripped from the sole of one shoe and soaked the Australian soil as he passed.

A line of crimson footprints led away from the Gundam ShenLong as fate once more had her cruel way with the Gundam pilots.







Authors Notes:

[1] This is based on Duo's move with Deathscythe to stop Wing from self-destructing on the ocean floor at the very beginning of the series. I have no idea how a thermal blade can do this, but if a scythe can pull it off, so can a sword.

[2] Thus ends my very first "dog-fight" between Gundams. How'd I do?

on to part 5

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