castleinthemist | 005 | Face what I've done and do my time

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005 | Face what I've done and do my time | Open

Duo was moving through the halls out towards the stairs that lead towards the stairs which lead to the trolley system. He was armed, gun drawn and moving in haste as if something was after him. Suddenly, he ducked down in the hole where that box was and looked up and around. Was it a game? Was he just playing around and training himself? That's certainly what it looked like to a casual observer. After all, for those who knew him it wouldn't be outside of his usual behavior.

He looked up and around, looking for something anxiously. He then grabbed at his backwards baseball cap and ducked suddenly as if someone had thrown something at him, or shot at him. If this was a pretend training game, he was really playing the part.

But it wasn't. To him? He was on the run, a half dozen or so enemy soldiers on the war path led by Heero Yuy. One time friend and now enemy, he was outnumbered and out matched. A shot rang out when he thought he saw something back where he came from, and he leaped out of the hole he was in, dashing for the stairs. Goddamnit!

"Quatre! Wufei! Where are you guys!?"

[OOC: So this is part of Dream/Memory!plot. As in you can get some of Duo's memories transferred to your characters to have them have to relive themselves. I'm pretty flexible at how this thread goes. You can just react to what he's doing if you want and I'm posting his memories here in my journal. The memories are transferable by touch and it doesn't matter if Duo's seeing it or not.]

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"Duo!"

The sound of Duo's frantic yelling was what drew Heero's attention, but what had him more concerned was the gun he had drawn. Something was very wrong and it had nothing to do with shadows or whatever the castle had lurking through it's corridors. Duo wouldn't have yelled Wufei's name if that was what it was. Wufei wasn't here.

He followed behind Duo, towards the stairs as the older pilot scrambled for them. If he didn't do something to subdue him soon, he could hurt himself as well as anyone who got in his way. He didn't know what was causing this behavior, but it was dangerous.

"Duo! Stop and calm down."

When Duo turned at his name being called, the only word that could adequately describe the look on his face was contempt. Perhaps hatred. He was being hunted by a pack of soldiers like an animal, and that was just one thing to set him off. Another? It was Heero. His Heero. Someone he always regarded highly as a friend even though they had done horrible things. Even though Heero had done those things.

Halfway up the stairs he swung his gun around to aim at Heero. "So help me, Heero. You take another step and I'll shoot you down."

If having a gun trained on him wasn't enough to stop him in his tracks, that look on his face was. Heero had never seen this Duo look at him that way before. The Duo from his world hadn't even. He hid his surprise behind his calm veneer, eyes on Duo.

"Put the gun down, Duo. You're not thinking straight."

Taking a step back, he kept his eyes on the gun, working out the best methods in his head to disarm Duo. The first thing to try was talking to him, snapping him out of whatever messed him up like this.

Bit of a problem, because that wasn't what Duo saw when he looked at Heero. All he saw were those deadly, cold eyes dancing with morbid amusement as he stared down his prey. That bitter rage in Duo's eyes subsided to a bit of fear then, and well he lowered his gun for a moment, it was like he had heard something completely different. He raised the gun again and fired his gun, only for it to jam before unloading the bullet. Click. Click.

Duo looked at the gun with a scowl and turned to run up the rest of the stairs. He wasn't fast enough to out run Heero, but he had to try.

Click. Click.

The gun didn't fire, but instinctually he was already moving as if it had, finding cover behind the nearest anything that could take two bullets. There was a pillar he ducked behind, crouched low and waiting for impact. It never came and he realized the gun had jammed. The older man made mention of that back in his room.

Coming out from behind the pillar, he saw Duo just standing there, looking down at him still with a look of fear before lowering his gun. This wasn't right. Duo was seeing his counterpart, wasn't he? The one who betrayed them?

Heero sprung into action the moment Duo took up the stairs. His gun was jammed and he was running scared. Not thinking straight at all. Up the stairs he went, moving as fast as he could to catch up to Duo and to possibly grab at him.

The day had already started out damn weird, and apparently it was only going to get weirder for Haku. It hadn't been a half an hour since she'd managed to get away from Harth and her odd memory turned some kind of reality when she heard Duo's voice echoing through the castle, clearly distressed.

She didn't think. She just reacted, bolting from the common room as fast as her feet would take her through the castle, looking for the source of the noise. By the time she got even remotely close Heero was already there, but it was the gun in Duo's hand that Haku saw first, not Heero.

She skidded to a halt a few feet behind where Heero was, feeling her mechanical heart start racing in her chest at the sight of it. A gun. Duo had a gun. Where did he get a gun? He was pulling the trigger and--

She ducked down with a frightened yelp, throwing her hands over her head as she was certain that it was going to go off. But it didn't, and there was nothing but an empty clicking noise, followed by fleeing footsteps.

"Ah-- MAXWELL-SAN!" she cried out after him once she realized that he was running. She looked at Heero, worry and fear in her red eyes.

"What's going on?! What's wrong with him?!"

He had noticed Haku, but it wasn't Haku he saw. A woman, sure. But dressed in all black Kevlar and a swat team helmate. Barton's storm troopers and Heero's back up. Who ever said Heero played a game like this fair? It was some kind of cruel game, hunting him down and threatening to break him down and turn him into some kind of mindless puppet or some shit. Just like Heero.

So he ran, bolting across the bridge towards the old trolley station.

Heero stopped at the top of the stairs for a moment, looking back at Haku as she made her way up them. She must have heard Duo yelling as well. Great. Haku was going to get in the way and he was going to have to watch out for her.

"He's not thinking straight." It was the best explanation he could think of, not knowing at the moment that Duo was hallucinating. The older pilot's violent reaction towards him made sense, but he didn't know why Haku was such a problem for him.

He took off again, chasing down Duo across the bridge.

If he was looking to deter her from following, he wasn't doing a very good job. There was barely a hesitation before she took off after him, hoping to find Duo quickly before something else in the castle did.

Duo was across the bridge in no time and traveling into the room and jumping a bit down the stairs to the other set that Toph had built, though he didn't really distinguish that. He saw stairs, and he didn't even see them as the stone they were. Reality and his memory were blurred together. From his perspective? He was inside of the moon base.

And it was honestly awfully strange that there were stairs at all! Welp... Can't stop to think about that! He ran up the stairs and out the door that lead to the roof top platform.

Heero burst into the room and copied Duo's movements, jumping from one set of stairs to the next. Not much distance between them now. He was sure he could take him down this close.

Lunging forward, he wrapped his arms around Duo's middle and pulled him down onto the ground with him. He shifted so most of his body weight was used to try and keep Duo pinned down on the floor.

"Snap out of it!" He growled, looking back at Haku when he heard her steps.

Following the two far more athletic pilots was not all that easy for Haku. It wasn't like she was out of shape - she was an android after all - she was just clumsy and not all that good at climbing and running around.

But she managed to at least keep up at a few paces behind Heero, stumbling to a stop when he managed to grab Duo and pin him to the ground. She hated seeing him like this. It wasn't anything like how she had known him.

"M... D... Duo... please... it's us. Your friends. No one here is going to hurt you..."

Duo lurched forward with the blow to his middle, falling on his chest, then his hands slapping against the stone, his gun sliding several yards in front of him.

"Aaah!" He yelled, frantically trying to get to his feet but he found that with the other man's weight on him that wasn't so easy. The weight was distributed and he was pinned. He wiggled about under the man trying to get free, trying to elbow him or get the leverage to throw him off. Nonononono!

"Get offame!" He yelled, fear lacing his voice. This was bad. Very very bad.

"Duo, calm down!" He continued pinning Duo underweight him, struggling to keep the frightened pilot on the ground. How was he supposed to get Duo to listen to him when he thought he was his version? "I'm not that Heero. I'm not him."

Looking to Haku, he motioned with his head for her to get closer. She might be able to get through to him, much better than he could given who he was.

Haku hesitated at the motion, but after an inward breath she stepped forward and knelt down in front of them. She was afraid of him like this, but she was more afraid for him and anyone else who might get in his way.

"Duo... Duo, please... I-I know you're seeing something... horrible b-but... it's not real..." she managed to stumble through her words, taking another breath and swallowing hard, trying to steel what nerves she could.

Her hand reached out, fingers coming to rest on his cheek even as her racing heart tried to make her turn tail and run. She wouldn't. She couldn't so long as Duo was like this.

"Please. Please, listen to my voice. You know me, Duo. It's Haku. I'm your friend."

Nothing seemed to work, nothing verbal any how. He landed a blow from his elbow to Heero, but he wasn't sure where it was, just managing to flip himself over under Heero. "Nngh. I'm not gonna give you that chance, Heero!"

Speaking like they were having a completely different conversation, he threw a punch at his friend, trying to throw him off. When Haku reached down for him his eyes went hard again. What he hell was all of this? He flinched and jerked away, giving Heero an opening.

Heero had to loosen his hold on Duo slightly to avoid his elbow, giving him the opening he needed to flip himself over. But he wasn't giving up that easy. The second the was flipped he moved to pin him back down again.

Haku's words weren't helping at all and that was a problem. Though she she reached out to Duo, it gave him the opening he needed. Raising his arm, he punched Duo hard in the stomach, hoping that the force of it would be enough to knock the wind out of him and make it easier to hold him down. Maybe even talk some sense into him.

Haku let out a frightened noise at the scuffle, falling backwards and scrambling away from them. Her back hit the wall, hands going over her face. She didn't want to cry, but it was getting harder to hold her emotions back.

"Duo... please snap out of it..."

He struggled all the while, pulling away from Haku's touch, pushing back against Heero, all until Heero pulled him back and pelted him in the diaphragm. The pilot gasped, the wind surly struck out of him. Dazed, but not fully unconscious he dropped his arm, turning his head as he tried to take in a breath. "Hnn..."

There. Getting off of Duo, he looked to Haku over at the wall. She looked pretty shaken and he couldn't blame her for it. However, this was the only way to deal with the situation right now.

He didn't have time to console the android. He needed to get Duo under control and snapped back to reality. Pulling Duo up, he lifted him into a fireman's carry and looked to the android again.

"Haku, I need you to grab his gun. Can you do that?"

Slowly Haku nodded and crawled towards the gun, taking it in her hand. She didn't usually shake, even when afraid, but the gun rattled noisily in her hand from how much she was trembling.

"Wh... what can we do... ? I-it's like he's not even here..."

For the moment, he was konked out. Barely coherent and hearing only whispers when they spoke. His mind blanked in and out as he tried to regain consciousness, though the blood rushing to his head certainly didn't help anything.

"I'll figure it out."

Shifting Duo to make carrying him a bit easier, he started his way down the flight of stairs. Get back to their rooms and see about strapping Duo down to the bed or a chair or whatever he could find. Keeping him confined was easy.

Getting Duo to snap out of this was going to be difficult. He was his once-friend-turned-enemy, in a way, which meant the older man had no reason to listen to him. Haku, who just really met him, couldn't even get through. So what could work? Quatre maybe? Would he have a chance?

Normally Haku would have been fine just sitting there, shaking like a leaf and hiding from all the scary things that were too difficult for her to handle. But this was a friend. A new friend, yes, but some one whom she had come to trust and she hoped trusted her in turn. She couldn't hide. Not now.

"O-okay..."

Slowly she stood, gun still in hand, and stumbled after Heero. There was likely nothing she could do. She might even be in the way. But hiding would have been so much worse.

Duo was slowly coming to, swaying gently on Heero's back while Heero carried him. His stomach hurt badly, and the blood rushing to his head proved to make regaining consciousness just a bit more difficult.

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