Chapter Text
There is a place between worlds where the eternal things sleep: the old gods, and things older than gods, demons and angels past their primes, and concepts and ideas the universe no longer has need of in its self. This is a place of madness, of nothingness, of eternity and instants, where the elder things sleep, their minds filled with nightmares of reality. And in this place dwell the mortals who reached out and touched the face of creation. In the darkness between worlds, something stirs, and shifts in the weightlessness of non-existence. White feathers and burnt flesh move, and blue eyes open, and somewhere, someone wakes from a nightmare with a scream.
* * *
Sleep shattered like a pane of glass struck with a hammer. It had been the same dream again, the same chaos of images and sound, that had awoken Heero Yui from his sleep for the last eight nights. Unused to dreams at all, let alone repeating nightmares - and there was no other way he could classify the dream but as a nightmare - it was disconcerting and disturbing. He was sitting upright in the darkness of the bedroom, his breath coming in ragged gasps that sounded too loud to his ears. The sheet clung to his skin, damp with sweat, tangled around his lower body uncomfortably.
Running his hands through his hair, Heero stared into the darkness, replaying the images from the dream in his mind. The chaos of movement and color that had erupted out of the darkness of sleep to engulf him like a wave drowning him and pulling him out to sea, the soft, deep voice whispering wordlessly in his ears that made him want to plug his ears before it drove him mad, and then the feeling of hands on his shoulders and back holding him from running away, hands that touched lightly but felt as though they would crush him - all of those had been terrifying enough, but then there were the eyes. Ice blue, they opened out of the chaos and movement, looking not at him but into him, burning cold points that blew apart the rest of the dream, leaving only the eyes. And then he would start awake, sitting up before he was even completely awake, with the feeling that he had yelled in his sleep, his body shivering and his skin drenched in cold sweat.
He glanced at the only light source in the room, the teal glow of the LCD clock on the bed stand, and was made painfully aware of how little sleep he had gotten. But he knew he would not get back to sleep again. With nothing else to do, and no real urge to stay in bed, Heero detangled himself from the sheets and got up to take a shower.
* * *
The telephone rang suddenly that afternoon, startling Heero for a moment before he registered what it was. He stood up from the corner desk that supported the desktop system he had built as an extension of his laptop and picked up the portable phone from its cradle on the end table near the bed.
"Hai?" He said. Anyone who had the number to his home line was calling him for a reason, most usually to ask him a question.
"Hello, Heero." The voice on the other end of the line was Trowa, nothing unusual there. "Duo asked me to call you." Heero frowned, but said nothing. "He wants the four of us to meet for dinner and an evening out tonight."
Heero hesitated for a moment. Any other time, he would have said no, say goodbye to Trowa, and hung up without a second thought. But anything, even a night out with Duo, would be better than another night going to sleep only to be woken up by the nightmare again.
"Heero?" Trowa asked. "Are you still there?"
"Sorry, yes I'll be there." He could hear Trowa's shocked silence "Where will we be meeting?" Heero scribbled the information on to his digital assistant as Trowa told him. "I'll see you there, then."
Trowa said something to the same affect and then hung up.
* * *
In less than four hours after he had gotten off the phone with Trowa, Heero was getting off the train in Neo New York. He had called Trowa an hour earlier while still on the train and made arrangements for a driver to be waiting for him at New Grand Central. The driver was waiting for him at the platform, looking subtly dangerous in the black driver's uniform that was meant to disguise his real purpose. While he had no problem moving around San Francisco without a bodyguard, Neo New York was a different story entirely for Heero Yui.
The bodyguard turned driver ushered him to the waiting car, something black and armored looking, opening and closing the back door for him before climbing in himself. The driver told him they would be at their destination in 20 minutes and to help himself to the contents of the bar fridge beneath the back seat. Curious, Heero opened the small ice chest like refrigerator door and looked in, only to find it stocked with his preferred brand of vodka and four bottles of the only beer he would drink. Trowa, it seemed, remembered his habits very well.
Heero simply closed his eyes and let the city slide by out side the car as they drove towards their destination. As much as he would have liked a drink to begin the evening early, he wanted to remain alert for the moment and to make the evening last as long as possible. He already knew how the evening would end, and had no desire to see it until within at least two hours of dawn, if not closer. The longer he could avoid sleep, the better.
He felt the car slow, and opened his eyes to find the car pulling up in front of the restaurant Trowa had indicated when he had called.
"We're here, Mr. Yui." The driver said.
* * *
Heero was shown to a back room of the restaurant, a place whose genre of food was not betrayed by its decor nor its staff, but whose owner Heero knew all too well. The three others were already there, sitting around a round table in the far corner of the room: Trowa dressed in his usual conservative casual, leaning forward on the table and turned to talk to Quatre across the table, who wore a dark blue turtle neck pulled up nearly to his chin and who was looking around the table, eyes darting but face smiling, and Duo sat between them, grin plastered on his face, talking back and forth to Trowa and Quatre.
As he walked in, Trowa's face lit up for a moment, and then, almost embarrassed, the look vanished. Quatre looked over and smiled weakly, then looked at Duo, who stood, smiled even wider, if that were possible, and threw open his arms as though he were going to hug Heero from across the table.
"Heero! You actually made it!" Duo tossed his head, making his braid bounce wildly. "Now the party can really get started!"
"Come have a seat, Heero. We were waiting on you to have the food brought out. Nathaniel really out did himself this time." Trowa smiled, talking proudly of his head chef. Heero joined the table silently, taking the seat offered to him by Trowa. As he did so, two bus boys appeared from nowhere, as though from the walls, laden with trays. They filled the table with four large bowls of salad, and set decanters of wine beside them, then vanished just as suddenly.
Trowa smiled, poured the first glass of wine for himself, something dark red and glowing, and raised the glass over the table.
"To the survivors." He toasted. Each of them poured their own glass, and echoed the toast.
* * *
The meal ended after six courses of the food that had made Trowa's restaurant modestly famous, and for a while the four sat talking. More accurately, Duo talked, Trowa commented, Quatre looked nervous, and Heero listened silently. Duo talked about how well his biotech venture was going, about the plans to integrate the Gundam technology with bio-engineered structures and computing, about everything that had happened to him since the four had been together six months ago.
The things he didn't mention were far more interesting to Heero. He noticed right off the looks Quatre was giving Duo throughout the meal, and the constant adjustment he gave the blue turtleneck collar, as well as what was obviously hidden beneath. He had heard about Duo and Quatre from Trowa in passing, but had not realized how little Duo had changed since the long months of the two wars Heero and Duo had spent together. Seeing this made him reconsider some of his thoughts on Duo, but only a few. He was still loud, prideful, and self centered, but not nearly as shallow as others might suspect.
The entire meal had passed without much incident or substance, and Heero hoped the rest of the night passed equally as well. The wines Trowa had picked for dinner had been perfect for the food, and light enough that his head was still clear after three glasses. The only event that set his mind truly questioning was at one point when his mind had wandered away from the table nearly completely, he was snapped back suddenly by a touch on his hand. He looked down to see that Trowa had laid his hand across Heero's, almost absentmindedly. Heero only glanced at it, and pulled his hand away slowly, masking it under going for his glass.
* * *
After what had felt like hours of discussion, at last the group of four adjourned from the restaurant. The entire kitchen staff came out before they left and bid their boss a good evening, and gave a cheer for the four who had once been the heroes of the world. But that had been a long time ago, or so it felt to Heero, who only felt wearied by the cheers. As they pilled into the large black car that Trowa had called for them for the night, its driver the same tall young man with the subtly dangerous look to him who had driven Heero from the train depot, Duo was talking about the club they were headed to, quite a wonderful place he said, but Heero only tuned him out.
His thoughts were wandering, as they had become want to do lately with his lack of sleep. Once, he could have gone nearly fifteen days on less than an hour's sleep a day, but now, he was suffering on having slept perhaps four hours a night for the last eight nights. And where they wandered too was of course, back to his nightmare. Maybe this night would be the cure, if he could get himself distracted enough and exhausted enough to sleep though the night, maybe, just maybe, the dream would not come back.
The car surged, and Duo whooped loudly, making Heero wince inwardly. At least, Heero thought, I don't look as bad as Quatre, who looks as though he's expecting a beating when he gets home. Remembering Duo, Heero suppressed a shudder, and realized that might very well be the case. But what ever the case might be, they were on there way to the club Duo had bought four months ago, and renamed Babylon.
* * *
Occupying four of the uppermost floors of one of the tallest buildings of the Neo New York skyline, a pillar of black glass that punctured the atmospheric control dome that shielded most of what had once been Manhattan before the rebuilding projects had redirected the rivers and leveled the terrain, Babylon was every ounce as decadent and depraved as its historical namesake had been, if not more so. The lowest floor was a sea of human bodies awash in light and sound, dancing as though possessed by something summoned forth by the music, each moving in their own way amid the chaos of the dance floor. The second and third floors, more accurately overhangs over the dance floor wide enough for foot traffic and tables, housed the four primary bars, and a microcosm of a restaurant. Suspended at random levels in the open space over the dance floor were a myriad of transparent silver and white spheres, each illuminated to reveal a female or male silhouette dancing in the same way as the masses below, puppets of the music being generated by the caged in DJ suspended in the teardrop shaped platform that hung down from the ceiling of the third floor.
"Duo has done such an excellent job with this place." Trowa commented as the four stepped off the private elevator they had taken up into the cacophony of light and noise.
"Trowa, Heero, why don't you two go make yourselves comfortable at the bar while I go check on things up stairs." Duo said, smiling proudly. "Once that bit of unpleasant work is taken care of, we can really get this night started." With that, Duo, followed closely by Quatre, stepped back onto the elevator, and vanished as the mirror finish doors slid shut behind them.
Trowa turned and looked at Heero, shrugged, and started making his way towards L shaped arc of steel and glass that was the closest bar. Heero, shrugged inwardly to himself, and followed.
* * *
"So how long has it been going on like this?" Heero asked, looking over at Trowa seated next to him at the bar.
Trowa looked over at him with a questioned look, and then realized where the topic had shifted. "Oh, you mean Duo and Quatre? About two months from what I can tell. At least that was the first time I saw him in the collar in public." Trowa took a drink from the brown bottled import the bar tender had handed him. "They've been together longer, but I don't think Duo sprung that on him first thing. But you know Quatre, it was bound to happen eventually with someone."
"You're probably right." Heero said, "I wouldn't know from first hand experience, unlike some people, though." The jab had come out more barbed than he intended, but Trowa understood the comment as it was meant.
"It was inevitable that wasn't going to work out." Trowa took another drink from the beer. "At least you and Duo never kidded yourselves about the status of things."
Heero frowned. "Only from my point of view. Duo never did really understand that." Heero shrugged. "At least I know Duo was like that before I ever touched him."
"Not much of a comfort, is it?"
"No. Not really."
"What about you, Heero? You haven't said a word all night about how your life is going?"
"Same as it has since we all settled down after those six months after the wars ended." The implications of that statement Trowa understood very well: he was still living as a hermit, without a care in the world beyond the door of the loft he lived in, and while he wasn't happy, it was against his nature to be anything else.
"As much as it seems we have all changed since then," Trowa looked over at Heero and laid his hand over Heero's where it sat on the bar next to his drink, "We really haven't changed that much, have we, Heero?"
Heero shook his head. "No, we haven't changed that much at all." He looked down at Trowa's hand, then reached for his drink with the other. He took a long drink that finished off the glass. "Not very much at all."
* * *
An hour later, Duo and Quatre appeared behind them at the bar. "Boys!" Duo yelled excitedly, slapping down his hands on their backs, "What do you think of the place?"
Heero and Trowa turned their stools around and looked at Duo and Quatre. Both had changed clothes, and while Duo only managed to look more flamboyant than ever in his white suit, Quatre looked as though he wanted to find a rock to crawl under and hide how much flesh was exposed by the net shirt he was wearing. Out of the corner of his eye, Heero saw Trowa's fists clench and his eyes narrow at Duo, but his voice was perfectly civil when he spoke.
"Like I said, you've done such a great job with this place, Duo." Trowa raised his second beer in a loose toast. "Excellent purchase, Duo. Wish I had thought to buy it first." Duo's grin widened at the complement.
"Well, enjoy, boys! I'm off to go enjoy the DJ that I got at a steal of a price. Don't spend the whole night drinking - go dance some!" And with that, Duo vanished back into the crowd, Quatre in tow behind him on a four-foot leash.
Trowa looked down at his beer and then over at Heero. "I think its time to switch to something stronger. How's that ... whatever it is... you're drinking?"
Heero waved the bartender over and asked for a second sake cup. "As good as you can get on this coast." Heero said as he poured the other cup full of the hot clear alcohol and topped off his own. He picked up his own cup and downed it, and Trowa followed suit.
"Damn!" Trowa gagged. "That tastes like hot pen ink! But what a kick!"
"Drink enough and I promise you won't care about the taste any more." Heero said with a smile.
"So this is how the perfect solder chases off the demons." Trowa said, looking over the ceramic cup he was about to take a slower sip.
"One has to do something to occupy the evenings."
Trowa finished the second cup full. "I agree completely."
Heero smiled, and poured the third round.
* * *
Heero had no idea how much later it was, only that the club still had a nearly full crowd and that he was about halfway through the third bottle of hot sake that he was sharing with Trowa. The flow of people moved constantly behind their heads, inches away usually, and Heero had paid little attention to them for most of the evening. He had let his mind wander again, thoughts loss in the sea of sound.
All of that ended when a gloved hand brushed softly across the back of his neck, slowly and deliberately. Heero's entire body went stiff, like an electrical shock had passed through him, and then his head whipped around to see who had touched him. It was the exact touch as he had felt in the nightmare, down to the shape of the hand. His heart raced. As his head moved, he caught a glimpse of ice blue and silver, but when he scanned the crowd behind him, all he saw was a tall man dressed in a long black coat, silver hair hanging loose over his back, vanish into the crowd and chaos. Heero sat frozen, watching, clueless as to why this stranger had invoked such strong memories of the dream.
"Heero, you look like you've seen a ghost." Trowa said.
Heero still scanned the crowd, looking again for the man. "No, not a ghost." He said, turning away, "Just a nightmare."
"What?" Trowa looked at him, concern on his face.
"Don't worry about it. I'm fine." But Heero heard the lie in his voice, and was fairly sure Trowa did as well. But Trowa thankfully did not push it any further.
Heero, however, could still feel the touch of the hand on his neck, and knew it had not been his imagination. He shivered, and looked down into the cup he held in his hand, wishing for something stronger.
* * *
Time was a fluid thing in the glass and steel world of Babylon, measured only in the shifting beats of the music, the flow of the crowds, and the refilling of glasses. Duo reappeared at irregular intervals, sometimes with Quatre at his side, sometimes not, each time slightly more intoxicated than the last. Trowa too was starting to show the signs of someone reaching the upper end of their tolerances. But Heero felt frighteningly sober, despite his best attempts at being otherwise, and realized it was not the lack of alcohol in his body but the lingering thoughts of the nightmare.
He was sure that he had simply hallucinated the touch on his neck, and attributed it to the lack of sleep making his mind play tricks on him. But no matter how many times he assured himself of that, no matter how many times he reminded himself that it had been simply a nightmare, nothing more than a dream his mind interpreted as unpleasant and churned up out of the depths of his subconscious by his own mind, it did not make it any less real feeling.
The next time Heero really noticed the world outside his thoughts, hours must have passed. The music was down to a dull roar, and the crowd thinning slowly, headed for the elevators in small knots of conversation, getting last drinks before leaving, or trying to locate friends in the slowly draining sea of humanity. The staff were beginning to move across the floors more openly, cleaning and picking up, herding out stragglers.
Heero looked up to see Trowa looking over at him, an uncharacteristic smile on his face. Heero did a quick mental calculation and realized Trowa had followed him drink for drink through the night, and was obviously unused to something with so high of an alcohol content. Trowa was, in no short terms, completely drunk. Heero gave an inward sigh, knowing that this would not go well.
"Trowa, are you ok?" He asked, noticing that Trowa was looking a little green.
"Yeah," Trowa said unsteadily, "I think its time to call it a night though. Ugh." Heero nodded. "You weren't really planning on taking the train home tonight, were you, Heero?"
"Not really." Heero had given little thought to getting home or anything else for that mater. It was not like anyone was expecting him. "Come on," Heero said "Let's get you home."
* * *
Trowa lived in the area that had once been upper Manhattan, and still bore the designator left from Manhattan's days as an island, in the Central Park West dome, a massive neighborhood filled with the homes of the wealthiest families and corporate residences in the solar system. The gleaming tower of glass that housed Trowa's flat was a far cry from the shabby looking loft in a converted bank building that Heero called home in San Francisco, with subterranean parking and everything from a laundry to a sushi bar housed in the lowest twenty floors of the mixed use tower. Briefly, as the driver pulled up to the front of the building, a facade of black marble and steel, Heero wondered if he might not be happier living in such a place rather than in his quiet, secluded home in the Japanese sector of San Francisco.
Heero helped Trowa from the back seat, who despite several bottles of water during the drive home was still more drunk than sober, threw the door and atrium, to the residential elevators located in what appeared to be a decorative column that rose like a lotus from either for the two artificial lakes at either end of the atrium of the building. Trowa placed his palm on the scanner for the elevator, and in an unsteady voice informed the elevator that he had a guest with him. The door slid open with a soft ping of acceptance, and they stepped inside the sculpted brass and wood interior of the elevator car. The back of the car looked out through glass windows, which as they rose above twenty floors revealed the city through the transparent tubes that clung to the sides of the building.
As the car slowly rose, Trowa let his taller body sag against Heero, resting his head against the supporting shoulder, and breathed deeply out. Heero closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and tried not to think about how good Trowa's hand on the small of his back felt.
* * *
Trowa's flat occupied one quarter of the seventy-eighth floor, a space nearly double the size of Heero's small loft in the Japanese quarter of San Francisco. The colors were mellow, lending themselves to the yellow light from the wall lights and overhead track lighting, and Trowa looked instantly at home in this place of leather sofas and carefully placed decorations. Hard to believe, Heero thought as he helped Trowa onto the long, dark green leather couch that filled the living room side of the separator wall between kitchen and living room, that we have become so accustomed to this life. Trowa groaned and laid his head back on the arm of the couch.
"You look like you are about ready for another bottle of water." Heero said.
"Middle shelf in the right side of the fridge." Trowa said without lifting his head. Heero obeyed silently, and handed the bottle of water to Trowa as he sat down next to Trowa's legs. Trowa drank the entire bottle without a pause.
"So why did you come out with us this evening?" Trowa propped himself up a little bit, and focused bleary green eyes on Heero.
"Just wanted to spend a night out." Heero lied.
"Oh don't shit me, Heero." Heero raised his eyebrows and looked at Trowa. "You want a night out like I want a hole in my head. What's going on?"
"The lack of company was starting to get to me," Heero tried again "And even Duo is better company than my own thoughts when I start to get cabin fervor."
"Who knows what evil lurks in the nightmares of the boy they call Heero Yui?" Trowa said in a playful voice. Heero looked shocked for a moment, and then smiled half heatedly.
"Sorry," Trowa said, reaching forward his hand to touch Heero's side "I didn't mean to make fun of it. But it does seem kind of odd," Trowa said, laying back down, "You use to be the one we all thought of as inhuman. Guess it goes to show we are all human, no matter what the world thinks of us."
Suddenly, Trowa sat up, and looked at Heero. Before Heero could say anything, Trowa flipped himself around and lay back down, with his head laying on Heero's lap and his feet propped up on the arm of the couch. Heero looked down at Trowa in stunned silence.
"It's good to see you again like this, Heero."
* * *
Heero moved with a swiftness ingrained in him by training as powerful as instinct, his entire body moving like a fluid, and suddenly caught ridged as his feet landed on the floor over a meter from the couch. Trowa, suddenly without support, had fallen forward and almost fallen off the couch, and Heero watched as he slowly sat up, eyes clouded with alcohol induced confusion. Words were trying to form, but Trowa did not manage anything intelligible for several awkward minutes. But it was Heero who spoke first.
"Absolutely not." He could see the shock in Trowa's expression, and the anticipation of the backlash of anger. He kept his voice perfectly level. "Trowa, be logical. Neither you nor I have done anything like that since..." He trailed off, looking at Trowa meaningfully. "You need to go to bed, and sleep off the alcohol."
Trowa nodded slowly, silently, and started to stand up slowly. He faltered, and Heero started to step forward to help him. Trowa caught himself, and looked up at Heero through his even, sandy brown bangs. The look said everything that Trowa couldn't say. Heero winced internally.
"The guest bedroom is the door off the kitchen." Trowa said slowly. "You're right; I do need to go to bed."
Trowa left the room slowly, headed towards his bedroom. Heero stood for a moment, feeling out of place and empty inside. Maybe at least my nightmares will be of more mundane things tonight, Heero thought.
* * *
Heero had no idea how much time had passed since he had fallen asleep. Instinct woke him from dreamless darkness: there was someone in the room. His mind raced calculating his options thousands at a time, his ears tracking for the slight sound of movements and breath, but he lay still, breathing as though asleep, eyes closed. Training kicking in, letting him mimic sleep perfectly while awake, even before he was aware of the need for it. Ears searched the silence, listening still. There, behind him, off towards his feet slightly, someone was standing at the edge of the bed. There was smell, there was movement, and there was breath. Someone, male probably, just over two meters he calculated.
He heard them move, just barely, and suddenly felt the shift of weight on the bed as someone sat on its edge. Larger than him, body wider, but graceful. His mind calculated options. He could hit them with a well-placed kick, but probably nothing more.
He lay still, waiting.
More movement, though he could not tell exactly where the person moved to, only that they were closer. A shift in weight, air currents moved about him. And then suddenly, a hand touched his bare shoulder, long thin fingers with flesh like ice, incredible strength behind the touch, like they could crush bone with a twitch.
The scream in his mind was a wordless sound of terror. He lay still, no longer even breathing. Who ever it was would know he was awake. He could not help it.
"You're not dreaming anymore, Heero Yui."
The voice was like distant thunder, echoing deep, but soft at the limits of perception. It was not Trowa's voice, nor Trowa's hand. No, it was the voice, like the touch, from his nightmare, from the club that night.
"This is real."
Blind panic struck, and he thrashed wildly, hoping to hit something. His fists and feet caught only empty air and sheet. Blindly he sat up, his instincts telling him already what he had to verify with his eyes. He turned on the light. Nothing, no one. But he could smell whoever it had been in the air still. It had not been a dream, not this time.
The only thing that kept him from screaming was remembering where he was.
* * *
Why had he thought that being home would make him feel any better? Heero looked around his home and felt alien and out of place, lost in a sea of the familiar that seemed suddenly to have no meaning. His loft was Spartan, simplistic and functional in its layout and decoration. Everything had its place, and every place its function, but nothing felt as it should.
He sat down on the futon couch in the small living room area, staring at the blank wall screen opposite, but making no move to turn it on. Nothing made any sense any more. What was happening to him? Was he going insane, finally loosing what mental cohesiveness he had? He ran his hand through his bangs, brushing them back, and then held his head in his hands. Dreams that felt so real they fooled his instincts, but dreams that could not be dreams unless his brain was producing an entire slew of sensory hallucinations.
He had to be hallucinating, he realized, nothing else could explain it. The nightmares had been the first symptom of whatever was wrong, the hallucinations now, these had to be the second. If something was biologically wrong, which all such dysfunction had to have their roots in, it was repairable. Even the hallucinations of the Zero system had their roots in the biofeedback alterations made in brain waves by the system. This too, no matter what it was, it was repairable.
He stood and wandered into the small gym room in the back corner of the loft, where he kept a small assortment of equipment and weights, as well as the prototype bio-analysis system that filled a corner of the room. It was a monstrosity of hoses and tubes, painted dull beige, with an LCD display panel with every possible analysis and test as an option. It included a low-grade MRI system, X-ray bays, and a myriad of blood tests, and about all the thing could not do was surgery.
He stepped into the small pod like bay of the system and ordered a full batter of tests for brain problems and neurotransmitter levels. The shield doors slid shut, and he was illuminated in turquoise lit dimness. Dull humming began, and he followed the instructions of the soft female voice that spoke somewhere behind his head as each procedure ran.
But something in the back of his mind already knew what the results would be.
* * *
Four hours later sore, hungry, and exhausted, Heero stepped out of the machine, and looked around. The light seemed too bright, and the absence of the hum was noticeable. He felt lightheaded, and worse than he had when he arrived home. The machine was displaying an ETA for the test results of just fewer than twelve hours, and Heero knew it would probably take longer than that because it would relay the data to a specialist AI who would examine it as well.
Heero decided that he needed food, and found that somehow he had allowed his supply of food in the house to run out to nearly nothing. He walked over to the phone and hit the third button on the speed dial. The restaurant clerk answered with a cheerful hello, asked if it would be his usual, charged to his account, and Heero agreed, and hung up. On its way was a four course Thai meal from a place across town, fresh prepared by the family that ran the restaurant. He knew the exact amount of time it would take the food to arrive, and he had exactly time for a shower.
He showered more slowly than usual, his mind wandering when it shouldn't be. He thought back to the night before, wondering if it had been a mistake to turn down Trowa the way he had. Wondering too if somehow what he had experienced could somehow not be a hallucination. But that was illogical; it was improbable to the point of being impossible. It was much more likely, he knew that he himself was suffering some sort of brain dysfunction.
As he cut off the water and stepped out, he caught his own reflection in the mirror. Do the insane wonder if they are insane, he asked himself, looking at the dark circles under his eyes and the grim expression on his face. He brushed the thought away like a large fly, but just like it, it returned, buzzing in his brain loudly as he shaved and brushed out his hair. Was it possible to be insane and realize it? Worse, was he not insane, but was this all real? That was insane.
He was halfway through dressing when the food arrived, the door buzzer squawking in its off key bray, announcing the presence of the delivery down stairs. He pulled on the rest of his clothing as he checked the security monitor to verify that it was the youngest son of the family that owned the restaurant, and then pressed the clearance button that opened the door. He waited, counting seconds in his head, reaching an even minute as the knock came on the door. He opened it, took the two bags of food from the boy, handed him a large tip in cash, and thumbed the small credit reader that verified his identity and processed the charge for the food on his account, and then pushed the door shut after wishing the boy a good day.
Dinner at least, he thought as the smell of the half duck pushed its way to his nose through the other smells and made his stomach protest its neglect lately, would not be a loss.
* * *
After dinner was eaten, and leftovers put away, Heero retired to the balcony that looked over the rooftop garden that the building association cultivated in the sunken ventilation shaft that extended four floors into the ten story building. Looking out on to the greenery, the balcony attached to his bedroom and living room. He used it as a meditative place, a place he spent hours in reflection and meditation.
Now, he sought the quiet of his mind, and the peace of the silence of thoughts, but found he could not still the disquiet tumbling of his worries. He breathed slowly, resorting to focusing on the breath, but always found his thoughts straying. Anxiety convulsed in his brain, and compounded its self on his lack of ability to settle his mind. Was he that out of control, that far gone?
Time passed, and he forced himself to remain sitting, to struggle for quiet in his mind. At last, as twilight was starting to show its self, he felt the peaceful calm begin to settle over him. Time passed, each moment it's own moment, flowing from one to the next like a stream. Was he mad? It did not matter, for he was not just himself, but all things were the same. All being was being, all things were all things, endlessly interconnected into oneness. The universe was. Peace settled on him.
(Mother is calling you. Come.)
The world broke like a shattering stained glass window. Heero found himself curled up on the wood of the balcony in a fetal ball, shivering in the darkness. His entire body was twitching, as if an electric shock had been passed through it. His heart was pounding, and he sucked down air in ragged gasps.
The voice. It had been in his head, there as clear as the sound of his own thoughts. And it was that same voice from the dreams, and from the night before. He could find no escape from it, it seemed. He sat up slowly, his body shaking from the adrenaline in his blood stream. Something was wrong, something was very wrong with him. He crawled to the door and pulled himself up onto his feet. What was happening, he wondered, what is doing this to me?
His hands were shaking, fluttering like his heart was. Slowly he made his way towards his gym, hoping that the results were done. They were. The screen blinked softly in the dim light, the print out button blinking slowly. Shakily he pressed it, though he already knew what it was going to say. It printed, and the screen filled with text, reports of his health.
No abnormalities.
No changes in blood chemistry, no imbalances in neurotransmitters, no unusual items on his x-rays and MRI results, nothing. He was completely and perfectly healthy. What ever was happening to him was not physical in any way.
His first thought was suddenly that he wanted very badly to clean his guns.
* * *
How long could he go without sleep, he wondered. Once, he had been trained to go without sleep for long periods of time and remain functional. Now, he had no idea. Two days, three days? Maybe four or five before he went completely over the edge from depravation of REM sleep. All he knew was that he would have to find out.
* * *
Three days later, the battle was over. Heero knew he would not last much longer without giving in to sleep. His body was rebelling, his brain was shutting down, and soon he would find out the next phase in whatever was happening to him when sleep came to claim him.
Groggily he looked at the clock next to the wall screen, realizing he had nearly made it for three days solid without sleep. His eyes drooped, and focus was hard to hold. He had read thirty pages of the book on his lap without seeing a word on the pages, simply turning them regularly as his eyes moved emptily over them. He laid his head back on the cushion of the futon, and felt sleep creeping up onto him.
Soon.
His body was giving in. He could not fight it any longer, sleep was impossible to fight off. He lay down on the futon, not even bothering to fold it out. At least, he thought as darkness swallowed him, I'll be comfortable.
Sleep settled in and enfolded him in void.
* * *
"So you finally gave in, Heero Yui."
Heero found himself standing in shapeless darkness, standing on a surface as black as the rest of what ever surrounded him. He thought at first he was blind, but found that he could see himself, his arms and legs and body and feet looked as though illuminated in bright light. The voice was off to his left, behind him, the speaker out of sight. He tried to move, and found his body would not obey. He could do nothing but stand and wait.
Suddenly a gloved hand touched Heero's neck and shoulder, cold radiating through the black leather. Heero tried to jerk away from it, but while his mind ordered the movement, his body remained unmoving. The hand came to rest on his shoulder.
"Don't exhaust your mind trying to move. This is only a projection of yourself, made by your mind. And I have control of it."
Heero struggled, or tried to, a moment longer and then stopped. It was doing him no good, whatever the reason really was.
"Who - Who are you?" He managed, finding words though he was sure his mouth did not move.
"Ah, at last, he speaks." The voice was laughing softly. The hand let go of his shoulder, falling away. Movement in the corner of his eyes, and then a figure stepped out of the darkness in front of him. Ice blue eyes, crystal clear and cold, looked out of a pale, aristocratic European face with a hawkish nose and lips so pale they seemed to meld into the rest of the fine featured but clearly male face. White hair spilled loose over broad shoulders, its fine strands flowing to nearly past hip length, their color made even more shocking by the black long coat the man wore which trailed to the dark floor. Heero's eyes stopped for a moment on the floor: the man's feet were bare.
The man made a fluid, low bow.
"My name was once Sephiroth." The blue eyes closed slowly, and a look of serenity passed across it like a cloud. "Names mean very little to Mother, though."
* * *
"Ah, but I suppose you don't understand." The voice was smooth, easy to listen to. Heero found himself nearly hypnotized by it.
"No, you wouldn't, not yet at least. You know, I suppose from watching you that all things are simply elements of one greater being?"
"All being is consciousness." Heero said by rote. He knew this, had felt it many times. All things were linked, when one felt pain, all suffered.
"Yes, you do understand." The eyes narrowed.
He's reading my thoughts, Heero realized, and on the heels of that, of course he is, this is your dream and he is part of your mind.
"Yes, I am reading your thoughts, and no, this is not a dream, at least not in your understanding of one." Sephiroth stepped forward, closer to Heero. The eyes were not pure blue, Heero saw, flecks of silver floated in the ice blue, moving slowly. Heero wanted to look away, but could not. Sephiroth laughed, a sound like distant thunder. "All things are part of the Life Stream, the stream of souls that flow through the Earth and give her life. And in return, she gives us life. Earth is Mother." The eyes narrowed to slits, and Heero found himself transfixed by them.
"Mother, she picked me as her solder, as her guardian. And I did what I had to do, thought not quite as I meant to, not as well as I wanted to." The lips pulled back, showing sharp, white teeth, perfect and even. "But Mother is safe now, and that is all that mattered, I thought. But imagine," A single leather clad finger touched his nose, "imagine my surprise when I transcended, and touched the face of Mother, and found not one Mother, but thousands, millions of Her. All facets of the same existence, but all one. And each one," gloved hands reached up and held Heero's head between them, "with Her perfect solder."
"Many thousands of worlds, I found lifeless and dead, their solders having failed them. Other thousands, I found myself, or someone so like myself as to be the same. But here," the hands moved and rested on his shoulders, "I found you. And you seem to have made all the difference."
The serenity passed across the smooth face again. "I sought out others like me, and I found only me. But now, I found you. You, you who are Mother's solder here in this world that is so different from mine. Fascinating."
"You still do not understand." Sephiroth stepped even closer to Heero, bare feet now toe to toe with Heero. The gloved hand moved from his shoulder, and the backs of the fingers brushed softly across Heero's cheek. Ice blue eyes looked at him, looked through his soul it felt like, their expression unreadable.
"The darkness, this place, this existence, is so lonely. You," the hand touched his ear, fingers trailing down his neck, "You are like me, and can be even more like me - become transcendent, and touch Mother's face." The hand moved again, resting on the back of his neck, as cold as if liquid helium flowed through the flesh under the leather. "We are Gods waiting to become, Heero Yui, Mother's solders. And you, you have fascinated me, enchanted me..." Was that longing or hunger or somehow both in those eyes, Heero wondered. "Come with me, Heero, and we can be Gods together, and guard Mother together."
Suddenly the hand on the back of Heero's neck pulled him forwards, and the other gloved hand snaked around his body and pulled him towards Sephiroth. A tongue like liquid ice parted his lips, and he found himself locked in the kiss. His first urge was to struggle, but he knew he could not. Lips and skin preternaturally cold, saliva like super cooled liquid helium, filling him with a cold Heero feared would freeze him to his core. And suddenly, something inside of him gave in, and the cold flooded through him, burning through his mind.
White light burned out all other sensation.
(Come with me, Heero Yui, and we will be Gods together.)
(The darkness is so lonely.)
(Come with me, Heero Yui.)
(Come with me.)
And the universe, all universes, dissolved into blackness.
* * *
Heero woke to find himself where he had fallen asleep, curled on his side on the futon. His body felt chilled to the bone, but every nerve ending tingled and burned. He hurt all over, sore as though he had run a marathon, and worse he realized that he was painfully aroused. He sat up slowly and looked around, looking at the LCD clock by the wall screen and realized he had slept nearly fifteen hours. What a dream, he thought to himself.
But what did it matter, he thought, standing slowly, stretching out the stiffness, he felt better than he had in weeks. For the first time since the dreams started, he felt like himself. What happened to me, he wondered, was it really just a dream? But surely it had to be.
Heero found himself rummaging through the fridge for the leftovers from his last meal. But really, he was thinking, his brain wandering as his hands moved reflexively. It had just been a dream; he knew that, nothing more. There was no Sephiroth, no place of complete darkness, nothing like that existed, nor could exist. It was simply his mind working something out on its own in the form of dreams and hallucinations. And whatever it was, it seemed to at last be over.
The door buzzer yowled and Heero thumped his head on the edge of the refrigerator he stood up so fast in surprise. Who on earth, he wondered, and made his way towards the door. He checked the video security monitor, and buzzed the intercom asking the person to identify themselves. A delivery, unexpected, but nothing worth his usual paranoia.
He counted seconds after the door opened and closed, waiting. The delivery boy was slower than any of his usual delivery services, and he reached a full two minutes before the knock on his door. He opened it, and the boy carefully handed him a large, rectangular box wrapped in silver foil and black ribbon. He inquired as to payment, the boy said everything was already paid for, and vanished, pulling the door shut with him, leaving Heero to puzzle over the box.
He carried it to the counter in the kitchen, and set it down carefully. There were no markings on the outside of the box, only the ribbon and foil. With a shrug, Heero pulled on the ribbon, finding that it pulled free smoothly, and opened the foil. It pulled back to reveal a transparent box, inside of which was a slender black vase, filled to the brim with the lush green foliage and small white blossoms of day lilies. Attached to the vase was a small white envelope. The front panel of the box opened at a seam with a slight push, and Heero reached in and pulled it out, opening it carefully. The message inside was written in a smooth if spidery hand, kanji closely spaced, and its message was elegant if simple.
"When the moon is full, I will be waiting for you in the still waters. Without you, I cannot exist."
The messaged was followed by a set of GPS coordinates, and then a signature seal in silver ink. Heero knew, without looking, whose name it said. Sephiroth.
And somehow he had known, without knowing, that it had been much more than a dream.
* * *
The coordinates turned out to be in a secluded wilderness preserve in the mountains of the Hokkaido region of Japan. The place was deep into the mountains, yet accessible by the myriad of trails in the area. Why there, he wondered, there seemed to be nothing of any significance for miles surrounding the area. And why the full moon, less than two weeks away, for that matter. But did any of this make any sense? Did sense even matter at this point? Somehow, it really didn't.
Two days passed without another dream, and Heero found himself spending hours simply staring at the lilies. This was real, they said, over and over again, all of this was more than bad dreams and hallucinations. No matter the doubts, no matter the questions, he knew what he was supposed to do.
Heero prepared for the trip, still waiting for a sign of some sort, some signal that he was doing what he should. But none came. He thought constantly of the dream, his mind filled with nothing but its every detail. Especially thoughts of Sephiroth. Days and nights became meaningless after a while, and he found himself sleeping only when tired, paying little regard to schedule or time. Nothing felt real except the memories of the dreams any more.
But he did what he needed to do. He had a deadline, the exact full moon, and a place he had to be then. The flight was arranged, but he made no return plans; the equipment was purchased and packed, backpack, tent, sleeping bag, and all the odds and ends needed; he arranged travel to the trail head. He tried to anticipate what he would find there, but he had no real idea what to expect. So he packed extras of many things he would probably not need. Anxiety filled his being like a poison, and the days slipped through his fingers like the fine sand of the rooftop Zen garden outside his bedroom window.
His nights became sleepless as his departure drew closer, and soon even the short naps that he had found some rest in were gone. When he would lay down, his mind roved constantly, thoughts of Sephiroth and what ever lay waiting in the Japanese forests. He found himself thinking of things he had not thought of since the war, since his time with Duo. But now, now things were stronger, more compelling: this was not the thoughtless lust of the body, Sephiroth had tempted him, and he had fallen like Eve to the fruit of the tree of knowledge. What curse would be his for this?
He felt as though he was under some spell, some enchantment, compelled to do what he was doing. He claimed to be a god, to be somehow chosen by the earth. He promised the same for Heero. It all seemed madness, delusion, to the rational part of his mind. And yet it made no difference to him, he wanted to do this: he wanted Sephiroth.
* * *
The transpacific flight from LAX to Tokyo was a fourteen hour living hell for Heero. He hated flying, even low atmospheric flights like this, because he felt so vulnerable in the thin shell of metal that encased the pressurized cabin. It was a leftover from the war, as best he could tell, some remnant of fear transmuted by everyday life. Worse, he could not sleep, as he usually would, to pass the time in oblivion. So he sat, staring out the window next to the first class seat onto the expanse of endless blue water below him. All he could think was that his time was ticking down.
He had checked his luggage except for his GPS and a portfolio of trail maps of the area he was headed to. The maps were spread out on the work surface tray that folded out of the seat arm rest, but he found himself only looking blankly at them. Marked on the map in pale blue was his destination, a small chain of mountain lakes. He had planned his route and time tables in red pen on the maps, marking likely camp sites along the route. A full day's hike would put him where he needed to be, but with two days from the time he reached the trail head till the night of the full moon, he did not plan to push himself hard.
His mind wandered as the blue water passed thirty thousand feet below him, doted with clouds and ships and the white crests of waves. Here he was, traveling thousands of miles on the urging of a dream and a vase of flowers. What if, he wondered, it was some elaborate form of madness? Worse, what if it was some sick, cruel joke? But no one could have known about the dreams - he had not even reported them in the medical exams - so how could it be someone else playing a joke. He sighed. He would know soon enough if it was real or not. Something would be waiting for him in those woods, answers of some sort to these questions in his head. Either he would find nothing, and know he was simply insane and delusional, or else he would find - what, he wondered? He had no way to know.
He leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. Confusion so easily transmuted its self into rage in his mind. It was useless, impotent rage, pointless and self destructive, but it still seethed inside of him. He wanted order, logic, all of the things he was use to in his life. He had been trained as a solder, taught to follow orders as though they were instinct, and his life had been logic and order. And now this. He was off chasing words from a nightmare, off to find the mysterious being that called itself Sephiroth, which lured him with promises of god-hood and flattering words. But it was more than that, Heero realized. Something about Sephiroth had struck a powerful resonance in him. Something deep in his nature said that this was real, that this was right, and that he had to do this. Something was calling him. But all he could think about was putting his fist through the seat in front of him.
* * *
The map, it turned out, was wrong. The trails, which were clearly marked in small dotted red lines, were barely existent on the steep, forested slopes of the mountains. After four miles of trying to follow the badly marked trails, Heero gave up and began following his GPS.
It was bitterly chill, though not cold, and the rain, which had started less than thirty minutes after he started hiking, fell in fat, heavy drops that struck with painful, stinging force. Wind pulled through the rain soaked Japanese cedars, shaking water off of branches and making an unearthly sound. Soaked to the bone, despite the rain gear, the chill settled in to Heero's bones. Any other person would probably have been miserable and given up. Heero simply focused on his GPS and the ground under his feet, and kept walking.
The bed of wet pine needles that covered the forest floor was treacherously slick, and he found himself slipping more often than not and four or five times he fell totally. Mud covered his rain gear from the knees down, and dirt and grime covered his hands and face.
After seven hours walking, with late afternoon creeping up on him, and less mileage covered than he had hoped for, Heero made the chose to push on through the night. And while dangerous, and probably a bit fool hardy to boot, it was better than wasting eight hours trying to sleep when he could be drawing closer to his goal. So he kept walking, and darkness closed in around him like a shroud. He took the occasional break to eat, though it was usually not very much, and never a full meal. Nothing seemed to really matter, nothing except the slowly counting coordinates on the GPS and the ever lightening sky as dawn of the last day crept in. And still it rained.
Dawn broke slowly, a slow lightening of the overcast sky visible in bits and chunks through the trees overhead. He had covered nearly the entire distance he needed, with only two miles left to go as it became full daylight. He was starting up what seemed to be the side of a dead volcanic cone, the trees slowly becoming thinner as the steep slope rose in front of him across the small valley he was crossing. Grand as it was, it was still raining, though it had slowed, and he had the ridge to climb and descend still. With a sigh, he went back to focusing on his footing, following the GPS.
He crested the ridge a little under an hour later, almost exhausted from the climb up the slope. There were only a handful of trees on the ridge, and his view of the crater below was breath taking. A cluster of mirror smooth lakes clustered in the bowl of the crater, seven in total, linked by small channels of water and rimmed by cobble beaches. Two great waterfalls spilled down the far side of the crater wall into the lakes, billows of water forming fog that meshed with the cold gray sky overhead.
He glanced down at the GPS and looked down into the crater below. His goal seemed to be the beach of the closest lake. At least, he though with an ironic bent in his mind as he wiped the rain out of his eyes, feeling the mud smear across his skin, it's all down hill from here.
* * *
He had made camp on the beach and slept for most of the day, lulled by the sound of the heavy rain drops striking the fabric of the tent. As an early dusk settled in, he woke up from the dreamless sleep, his body sore and his muscles cramped. He put back on his boots and rain gear, happy to be vaguely dry finally in the fresh clothes he had put on before falling to sleep, and walked down to the lake's edge. It was still slowly raining, though it was not nearly the downpour it had been earlier. The sky was overcast, slowly darkening as the sun set, hidden behind the rolling clouds above.
Yet as true darkness settled in once the sun had set, the clouds began to thin, and the rain stopped. A spray of stars began to appear overhead through the holes in the clouds. Heero put away the rain gear, and found a relatively dry rock to sit on and watch the sky clear, and the moon slowly climbed over the edge of the ridge to the east, so bright it cast shadows.
Hours passed, and the moon climbed nearly to the zenith of the night sky, its silver light transforming the still waters of the lake into a glowing mirror that reflected it and the stars behind it, all but the brightest nearly washed out by the glow. Still, Heero sat, waiting for some sign. He wondered what would happen, and wondered too what he expected to happen. Doubt crawled in his mind like a worm. What would he do if nothing happened? What would he do if something really did happen? So many questions rattled inside his head that he wished he could bang his head against the stone to make them stop.
Heero was so wrapped up in his thoughts that it took him several moments to notice the disturbance on the surface of the lake. Small, iridescent bubbles were rising about four meters off the shore, breaking on the surface and making rings of moonlight and shadow. He watched them, puzzled, wondering what was causing them when there had been none before. Perhaps a fish, or a turtle, some creature stirring in the depths, he supposed.
Then something perplexing happened, something Heero could not explain, nor even guess at. Another small cluster of bubbles rose to the surface, each one a glowing blue sphere, and burst, sending concentric rings of blue light across the surface. Heero was on his feet now, looking out into the water, jaw hanging a bit slack. Again, yet more blue bubbles rose, burst, and blue light refracted across the surface. And suddenly, there was a surge of bubbles, both blue and silver; rolling to the surface as though the spot on the water had suddenly come to a boil. The surface of the water became a maze of rings of color. Then it was silent, the water still again.
The water surged upwards, a roll of fluid suddenly forced up by motion, and something broke the surface. Silver hair, blue eyes, and the aristocratic face... Heero felt as though he were going to faint. Sephiroth's head rose above the water, and gasped, a deep painful sound of empty lungs drawing in air. Heero quickly took off his boots and socks, striped off his pants and started to wade out into the water, splashing up sheets of cold, icy water around him. Sephiroth was rising further out of the water, his body uncurling it seemed, standing and stepping forward unsteadily.
Heero was almost waste deep now, oblivious to the icy cold water, and reached out towards Sephiroth, who seemed unresponsive to anything. Suddenly, the blue eyes focused on Heero, and hands reached out of the water towards Heero in reflex response. Heero grabbed for the hands, pale and long fingered, and at last wrapped his around them, only to be met by shocking, breath tearing cold, far colder than the water he stood in. Slowly, carefully, he started helping Sephiroth to shore.
Sephiroth's steps were unsteady, unbalanced, as they slowly walked towards the shore. The cold air settled in against Heero's wet skin, but it was nothing against the preternatural cold that radiated from the pale, tall form he supported. Heero could not help but look at Sephiroth as they stepped on to shore. He was easily a good foot taller if not more than Heero, a lithe body that was powerfully built but fine boned, with broad shoulders and chest, and an almost feminine waste. And below that - Heero tried not to look but found himself looking despite himself. If the cold was bothering Sephiroth, it did not show in the least. Heero shivered, but not from cold.
Slowly, he brought Sephiroth to the tent, and sat him down just inside of it. Wet silver hair blanked his broad back, and hung limply across a blank face. Heero did his best to pull the blankets up around those broad shoulders, but it did not seem to do anything to banish the cold. Suddenly Sephiroth moved, turning to look at Heero. Heero found himself transfixed by ice blue eyes with slowly dancing silver flecks.
"I -" Sephiroth's voice was harsh, raspy, as though his throat was clogged, "I could not exist here without you, Heero. I came for you, and you came for me." Sephiroth's body seemed to sag, the strength suddenly gone out of him. He bent outside the tent, head nearly between his feet, silver hair falling loose, and vomited water. Heero watched silently, and held the blankets in place, wondering what was coming next.