Disclaimer: Gundam Wing is the property of Sotsu Agency/Sunrise - no profit was made in the typing of this text piece.
Pairings: None
Rating: NC-17 (just in case, for violence)
Contents/Warnings: Duo POV (and POW), torture, blood, gore, violence, angst, death cries... (starting to get the idea?)
Word Count: 1190
AN: Uhm... yeah. Don't know quite why I wrote this. Had to vent bad feelings, and this was what came out. Could say I wrote it for this week's gw500, but I won't post it there - It got too long, anyway. Could say I wrote it for the 'angst' category at the current GWA contest, but this ain't the sort of fic that would stand a chance there - and not the sort of fic I'd want to be known for, either. I'm still posting it here, though - in case some of you wants to play psychiatrist and pick my mind for its madness... and just so you know, the original idea was even grimmer than this version.
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Torment
by kebzero
Heero screamed. It was a primal scream; his death cry - a warning to the hereafter he was coming. I knew it was his last breath. With the things I'd seen, I was relieved. After all that, death would be a blessing.
Two days prior, we were doing recon at our next target. We screwed up, big time. Got caught. At first, just bludgeoned a little by the holding unit. Pain didn't start until we got handed over to OZ' finest torture unit. OZ is a faction of factions, and we were evidently captured by someone far removed from the nobility at the top.
We were taken to a place that looked like a dungeon hallway. It was dark. Wet. Cold. Stone and brick everywhere, except the chains they clapped us in. We were beaten with fists and sticks, electro-shocked with hand tazers, scratched with knives and burned by cigarette butts. They never bothered with prison suits. What we wore when captured was shredded soon enough. They asked. Neither of us talked. They got impatient.
They took Heero down from his chains. He practically fell in their arms. I knew I would have too. Everywhere hurt. They dragged him down the hallway. I heard a door slam - thick steel, by the sound of it. They left a guard with a tazer stick to keep me entertained. And awake. Other than his sadistic snickers and my own soft groans, the corridor was silent.
The door opened again, but it was too dark down that way to see anything. I only heard the squeaky wheels of a cart come up the hallway, and only caught a glimpse of it through my swollen eyes as it rolled past. The cargo was what got to me. Hair. Lots of it. Dark brown, even more messy than I remembered it. It didn't look like they'd bothered with scissors or razors. Probably a bowie knife.
The guard jolted me again, and I blacked out for a while. When I came to, the cart had returned and picked up more. Teeth, this time. Maybe punched out - but molars don't give that easily to fists.
Some time later, a pinkie, cleanly cut.
Then the four other fingers. The thumb still had a bony end; it had been pulled out, not cut.
But still, there was no sound escaping the room, other than the soft footsteps of the cart-pusher and his vehicle. Each time, he came back from the other end of the corridor, cart empty, back for another load.
Half a foot came next. They hadn't bothered snipping off one toe at a time. Looked like the work of a cleaver. At least they'd done that bit fast.
A single ear. Looked like they had nicked off the top of it during the haircut earlier.
None of that turned my stomach as much as what came next.
A small platter, with two round things bobbing about. Clear blue dots on white, red-streaked balls. One of them stared right at me as the cart went past, showing me the panic the eye had held as it was, by the looks of it, dug out with a spoon.
Things got even worse after that. They moved from outside to insides. I closed my eyes every time I heard the squeaky wheels approach, but it didn't do much good. The bastard with the crew-cut and the tazer chose those moments to stick the cattle prod in my side, wrenching my eyes open with pain.
This wasn't even torture. It was murder by vivisection.
When the scream finally sounded, relief washed over me. It was done. There was such a finality to it that I knew he had died, finally found his peace. After the long parade of body parts, I was feeling pretty dead too. I dry-heaved many times, but nothing came out. My stomach had emptied with the first batch of tazer prods long ago.
They came for me next. My turn. I barely registered they were hauling me off down the other end, and not where they'd taken Heero. It was a small interrogation room. Got roughened up some more. They told me to talk, or I knew what was coming.
I told them to go fuck themselves. Or something like that. My speech was slurred by swellings and missing or broken teeth. Felt like both.
Their threats meant nothing now. They'd killed Heero, killed him slowly, bit by bit. They hadn't interrogated him at all. I knew Heero had to have broken, had to have told them everything he knew - anything they wanted to hear. Despite his ego, he was only human. Besides, we didn't know enough to really hurt our sponsors at the colonies, anyway. Heero wouldn't have risked his fingers, much less his eyes - not like that.
They had killed him.
They beat me some more, threatened me with the chamber they had hauled Heero off to. I kept my mouth shut. I didn't care anymore. It was obvious there was only going to be one way out of here. At that point, I was only too willing to embrace death; glad to follow Heero's example. Maybe I too could hold my cry for that final one.
A few more punches. Someone forced my jaws apart and stuffed a rag into my mouth, securing the gag with another rag. Made it hard to breathe - but suffocating sounded like a better way to go than what they were planning.
They grabbed me and hauled me out into the corridor again. I was too weak to do anything but move my neck a little. Halfway down, we passed the shackles in the walls. They'd hung up a body. I didn't watch. The sick bastards had strung up Heero's mutilated body. They tazered me as we went past, and I caught a glimpse of his feet.
Whole feet.
I turned my neck, looked up his legs, expecting the worst.
Fingers. Face. Teeth, hair, ears - and dull blue eyes trying to focus on me. Sure, his clothes were rags, and he pretty much had cuts and bruises everywhere, like me - but he was whole. "Duo...?" he asked, voice broken and hoarse.
That's when I finally realized. They hadn't killed him. No, not just that - it was all a set-up. They hadn't attempted to break Heero, they had attempted to break me. All those parts had been fake. I saw remnants of plaster dust on his foot, some around his fingers-
Suddenly alert, I panicked, tried to warn him what was going to happen - but with my gag, and restrained by the guards, I at last realized it would only come off to Heero as if I was afraid of the torture, terrified before they had even gotten started. I stopped, trying to think of a way to reassure him - but it was too late. Something blunt hit the back of my head, and I blacked out. Heero shouted my name again. With my last thought before oblivion caught me, I wondered if they'd bother with the fake props this time...
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