* * * * *

/It is night again.

I know it is night again because that is when things change.

That is when the day guard goes away and the other one comes.

This much I know, despite the drugs. The day guard no longer believes that I am as violent as they say and he's right. There's no use in violence; I know this place.

I realize that I'm in far too deep to ever get out again.

Perhaps that is the worst of it; that this is hell, that I know what I know and yet there will be no escaping it. There will be no convincing anyone that I am right because they will not allow anyone close enough to me to believe that my words are any more than the ramblings of a madman.

It helps that I am kept drugged numb, so numb that there is only this very tiny part of me to fully realize what is happening.

The door opens and I open my eyes (I think I open my eyes, perhaps I only imagine it) to see the pretty young nurse who comes sometimes, just before the day guard leaves. I am right. It is time once again. She looks like Meiran in an eerie sort of way, in a way that makes me whimper. I can hear my voice and she whispers, "Shh, now, it will only prick for a minute."

She is right. The tiniest of pinpricks and I'm swimming again, swimming in the depths of a drug-ridden sea that I hate more than anything, and crying, though it hurts to do so.

I never used to cry. Never. I did not cry before my marriage in my fourteenth year, for boys, even scholars, should not weep. They are not women, soft creatures whose hearts seem to lack the resolution required to do what I have done in my life. What the others have done. And that is well and good for women should not be so. They should be strong and nurturing but they should not be required to commit the awful atrocities that I have fulfilled. Meiran would have been like that, I like to think. Meiran. Nataku. Her death brought me to tears and screaming and then I vowed never to weep again. Never to show such weakness to anyone again.

I should have known that I could not possibly keep such a resolution.

The last fight plays behind my eyes every time I close them for sleep. It has haunted me for three years now, that and the last words spoken, the desperate battle carried on before we entered space together... before Treize thrust that mech upon my beam spear with the full intention of killing himself or me and brought my world crumbling down around my ears in seconds that dragged on for eon upon eon before the ultimate explosion. The explosion that should have killed him. The explosion of my heart.

He did not die there. I am sure of it, somehow. Perhaps it is only the red thread of destiny which ties us together and perhaps it is only in my mind and I am truly as crazed as they believe. I cannot say; not beyond the certainty that he lives, the certainty that all my searching was not in vain.  He remained hidden despite my best efforts, but it is not, it cannot be in vain.  I know he lives!

My thoughts are broken by the soft click of the door, so easy to do when the drugs are in me. I have not thought on what the drugs are, for I know the simplest name for them (hell). Soft words are spoken and the nurse and the day guard leave and I am alone... with him.

Fear is not new to me but this horror is beyond imagining. Humiliation, the humiliation of not even being allowed to piss alone, is almost bearable in comparison... but... this...

The feel of his tongue on my eyelids, that large hand trailing up my thigh and my hands bound still and tight to the rails, the bindings that are so rarely removed... I am afraid. I am afraid!!!

Clothes are nothing, liquid, I am never even certain that I have any. I think sometimes I do and sometimes I do not. I cannot tell. There are never clothes when he is here, this I do know, for even if I had them, they would be removed. Fingers, the fingers, oh, they burn, and I can hear myself sobbing somewhere, somewhere outside of me and outside of these thoughts. Somewhere I know the unbearable, the unbelievable, and the sounds of my agony, the sounds of my screams, are stifled by the walls. Even if they were heard outside of them, no one would care. No one would come to look.

It hurts!! Oh, gods, it HURTS!!!!

Treize!!! Treize!!!!!/

"TREIZE!!!!!!!!!"

* * * * *

*thunk*

"Oi, Heero, sounds like you hit coffin."

"Shut up and keep digging."

"Yeah, yeah." The two boys carefully cleared the last layer of earth, trying to ignore the blisters rising up on their hands and to minimize the noise their shovels were making on the solid, once-glossy wood of Treize's casket.

"Now what?" Duo whispered. "Man, I'm telling you it's gonna stink in there."

"We open it and jump out really quick until the air clears a little."

"I can't believe this..." Duo said, but hunkered down to grab his end of the coffin lid, waiting on Heero's signal. They'd be lucky if the smell didn't knock them out. Duo had a bizarre image of himself and Heero passed out by the grave in full daylight, with guards surrounding them and Treize rotting away in his coffin. In spite of all his bravado, Duo wasn't eager to get his first glimpse of a long-dead corpse. He'd seen more than his share of death, of course, but digging up a grave... well, this was a first.

"Now," Heero said, and Duo lurched into action. Within a blink of an eye, the casket was open and both boys were on the surface, lying in the sweet grass and waiting for the smell to dissipate...

"Heero?"

"Hn."

"I don't smell anything, do you?"

"Nh."

"Maybe he's rotted past the point of stinking?"

"Hn."

"Or he could be a vampire. They don't rot."

"There is no such thing as vampires."

"Just wanted to see if you were listening," Duo said, but Heero was already perched at the edge of the hole they'd dug, his muscles bunched up and rigid under the thin covering of his tank top as he stared down into the darkness.

"What is it?" Duo asked. He never would have thought that the sight of a rotting corpse would upset the Perfect Soldier...

"It's empty," Heero answered.

* * * * *

"It was empty?" Quatre asked again.

"Aa." Quatre couldn't help but note that Heero was articulate as always.

"Totally empty, and you could tell there hadn't ever been anyone in there," Duo filled in. "What gets me is, why would anyone bury an empty casket? I mean, you know?"

"Yes..." Quatre mused.

"Because they didn't have a body to put in it," Heero said in a reasonable, matter-of-fact tone.

"Yes, but..." Quatre paused a moment, his thoughts racing as he struggled to catch up. "Is there any way Treize could have... could anyone have survived that explosion?"

"No," Heero said flatly.

"Not even you?" Duo asked with a grin, backing off as Heero turned an icy blue glare on him.

"Not even me."

"Then why would there be no body-"

"Maybe there weren't enough pieces to pick up," Duo suggested.

Trowa shook his head. "They found all the pieces of Tallgeese II. There would have been something in it, even if it was only a handful of blood and bone. They would have buried something. Lady Anne would have seen to that."

Duo made a face as Quatre shuddered with the vivid imagery. "Maaa, did you hafta go and say that, Trowa? Ugh. I just ate lunch..."

Intense Prussian eyes narrowed. "Hn. Looking in the coffin guarantees nothing. They could have been expecting desecration and buried him somewhere else using that site for show."

Flicking blond strands of hair back out of his eyes, Quatre gnawed on his lower lip. "We've been going about this all wrong," he announced, pursing his mouth in thought. "We've been haphazard because we've all assumed that Wufei is as mad as they say he is."

"Sane men don't go diggin' up graves in the middle of the night, Q," Duo shrugged. "I mean, it's been three years. We saw the end of the war and fought through Mariemaya's attempted coup and all went our separate  ways. He coulda been fallin' apart for the past year and a half and none of us would ever have known.  Believing in him would be asking a lot under the circumstances, even if we were all a team once... I mean, we all saw Khushrenada's mech explode."

"But..." Quatre spoke slowly as a revelation struggled to come to light.  "Do we even know for certain that Treize was IN that mech?"

"The answers will be in Tallgeese," Heero asserted, crossing his arms over his chest.

Trowa nodded solemnly. "Aa. The truth of the mech will be inescapable."

"What I want to know is why the hell Wufei would want to drag up Khushrenada again," Duo grumbled.  "Aren't we all better off without him, man? I mean, c'mon, admittedly the guy wasn't all that bad but wouldn't it just start up the same old shit again?"

"We have to know," Quatre said.  "For Wufei, if no one else.  And if Treize Khushrenada is really alive... well, we just have to know, don't we?"

"I want to know what really happened," Heero said quietly, glaring as everyone turned to look at him.

All eyes turned again to Quatre as he stood, a firm look of resolution upon his face. "Then the mission is to discover what really did happen. If we split into teams, two of us can try to find Tallgeese II while the other two trace Khushrenada's last days.  Do all of you accept?"

Three voices answered back in solemn unison. "Ninmu ryoukai."

* * * * *

Quatre tossed restlessly on the bed, unaware of Trowa's sleepy grunt as he flung an arm over his slender partner's face.  "Time, running out of time," he sighed...

/Running out of time because my little dark angel surely needs me.  I pace the dark confines of that which has become my whole world, my ragged breath tightening my throat as I struggle to swallow the panic, the sheer terror of being locked away (can't get out can't get out), the roiling frustration and hopeless, desperate longing for my precious one, for his sweet tenor voice crying out in passion, his slender arms, the dark silk of his hair, the light in his eyes that was surely a gift from Heaven.../

Quatre sobbed, and the overwhelming loneliness and loss woke him enough that he burrowed into the comforting warmth of Trowa's side, thankful that Trowa was warm and solid and real.  The melancholy atmosphere of the dream colored the rest of his night, but if he dreamed again he had no recollection of it.

* * * * *

"Um... Heero?" Duo asked, glancing down at the lights of cars disappearing beneath the bridge they were crossing and appearing once again on the other side as if by some deep and cryptic magic. {Commonly known as concrete,} he thought.  His frown deepened as they passed by the interstate's exit and Heero gunned the engine.

"Hn?"

The breeze from the open window lashed chestnut bangs into confused violet eyes. "Hey, man, weren't we supposed to turn left there?" he asked, glancing back at the on-ramp. "You missed the turn!"

"Aa."

"Communicative as ever, I see! And we didn't turn left becaaaaaauuuuuse?"

"Because I'm going this way."

"Oh," Duo answered. "You're going this way. I see. Heero?"

"What?"

"Why are you going this way?"

With a sigh, Heero scowled and pulled into a Texaco station, bringing the ancient dark-green convertible to a halt. "Because the answers don't match up."

Duo groaned. "Of COURSE the answers don't match up! Otherwise, why in hell would Wu be so obsessed with digging up a dead man who was responsible for starting a war!? This is all crazy," he muttered as Heero hit the little red button that automatically pulled down the top. "So what kinds of answers are we gonna get by going this way?"

"You'll see," Yuy replied in that mysteriously tacit way of his as they pulled out of the gas station again, Duo's braid whipping back out of the car.

"Yeah, that's what you said LAST time!" Duo shouted over the roar of the wind in his ears before settling down and closing his eyes, the cool fall wind chilling his face. Might as well get a little shut-eye while Heero the Machine drove to hell... or wherever they were going!

* * * * *

Soushiro Izumi sighed and attempted to turn over in bed, blinking an eye at the sudden blinding light that seemed to be just outside of his eyelids.

It was.

"AAAAHHHHH!!!!!!"

"Hey, man. No worries. It's just us, the Ghosts of Halloween Present, here to party and maybe chat with you a while. You'd like that, right? I suggest you say you would, 'cause otherwise my partner over there is going to blow us all to hell and back with the neat little dynamite trick he set up while you were sleeping." Glowing like brightly lit argon, violet eyes shone out of a ghostly pale face that was lit up in the bright wash of a flashlight and, to be frank, it scared the hell out of him.

It was almost enough to make Soushiro wet the bed before he got control of himself again. "What do you want?" he asked, voice low, threatening.

"Ahhh, that's the question. Look, it's a simple thing, I wanna know what happened that night in the cemetery. You know the one, when you picked up the Chinese guy? The nutball who was digging up the..."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Soushiro denied, glaring at the two humanesque forms clad in paisley printed sheets from his linen closet.

"Let me blow him up."

"Naahh, man, you can't blow him up yet. I don't have the information..."

"So let's blow him up and hunt down his partner."

"Well, now, what you say makes sense, but..."

"Let me blow him up," Heero demanded, waving a paisley clad arm.

"Not yet, man. Not just yet..." Duo paused. "Well, then again, maybe you're right. Maybe if we kill this one, his partner will talk, ne?"

Heero snorted. "Not half as much as you."

The bright green of Duo's hand-held thermal scythe flared in the room and he stepped closer to the bed, voice dropping to a husky whisper. "What was it those pilots used to yell before they committed suicide, Number One?" he asked. Those bright violet eyes seemed to expand and become incandescent, sending sharp shudders of terror through Soushiro. "Oh. Yeah. Banzai."

With that single dark whisper, the scythe flew and Soushiro cried out, flinching violently away. Seconds later, the realization that warm piss had gathered beneath him and he could feel it made him open his dazed hazel-gold eyes.

It was still standing there. "Tell me what I want to know, little man," It breathed darkly. "Otherwise, Shinigami will have to take you home."

Not a word came from the almost silent 'Number One' and Soushiro began to talk. "It was a quiet night. This is a pretty peaceful place so we don't get a lot of calls. This one, though... It was a doozy. This lady called, said that some psychopath had just run past her window, giggling and shrieking something about 'not even death' and that he went into the memorial cemetery near her house. We didn't get any more information than that -- she hung up and the number traced to a pay phone near that area. Still, we stay on the lookout for kids trying to decimate the cemetery, you know? So we went on over to check it out and sure enough, there he was, digging away..."

"But not laughing," the silent one spoke up. "And he had a shovel, didn't he." It wasn't a question.

The warm end of the still glowing thermal weapon nudged his jugular, the energy sputtering bare centimeters from his throat. He swallowed. "Yeah. He had a shovel, all right, and he'd got about chest deep when we found him. He was a little guy, you know? Don't know how he dug that deep by himself..." The scythe nudged him again, those wildly glittering eyes demanding more. "When we came up, he stopped digging. The guy didn't *look* crazy but, you know, homicidal maniacs never do. My partner told him to climb outta there and he did but then Hoshiro whapped him upside the head with his Maglight. The guy must've been pretty hard-headed because he went down but he was still conscious. He nearly fell in the hole he'd dug so I grabbed him and he started fighting. When he did that, Hoshiro whapped him upside the head again. The second time knocked him out cold."

"What made you have him committed instead of following the usual routine, though?" That nudge again. "He obviously wasn't nuts enough for that even if he *was* digging up a grave."

"It was when we found out who he was. A Preventer, a former Gundam pilot, digging up the grave of a man he'd killed? And when the Preventers called us..."

The one who'd wanted to blow him up interrupted him. "Someone from the Preventers called you?"

"Yeah," Soushiro answered. "Hoshiro talked to 'em.  They said the little guy was seriously psychotically obsessed... talked about justice all the time, didn't think the head of Oz was really dead even though *he'd* been the one who killed him... Said the kid was really whacked out, needed help and that they'd make sure he got it. So we did what we were told to do and said what we were told to say. After all, those Preventers are all pretty close. They're all intermingled and married so they ought to know one another pretty well, right? You sure as hell can't get in without knowing one of 'em." That pronouncement was bitter.

"Oh-ho-ho!" the pasty-faced violet-eyed creature crowed. "So that's part of it, too! The Preventers rejected you, rightly, 'cause you're willing to falsify information, and you got the chance to get back at one of 'em... So you did. The way the cookie crumbles, right?"

"Fuck no! That's not it at all!" Soushiro snarled, fighting to get his wrists loose from where they were still tied to the remnants of the headboard.

"Number One, take him out," intoned the one Soushiro thought of as Shinigami.

"Ninmu... ryoukai."

"No! No, wait, PLEA~...!" The heavy thunk of Soushiro's own Maglight landed against his head, knocking him unconscious.

"Kanryu."

"Now let's go somewhere and burn these ugly fuckin' sheets of his and get this white paint stuff off," Duo said, already pulling at the sheet and wiping his face with it. "It itches like hell."

"I want to blow him up."

"Heero, my good man, it's better to leave him laying in his own piss. C'mon.... This little mission ain't over yet and I'm sure you'll get to blow *something* up before it's all said and done."

"Hn." With that, Heero cut Soushiro loose and tossed the hideous paisley sheet over his shoulder to stalk after the long-haired idiot.  After all, completing a mission came before the pleasure of blasting a pathetic Preventer-wanna-be to kingdom come.

* * * * *
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