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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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.

Despite their little chase from before, the three of them hadn't managed to get too far from the common area. That was the one thing they did have on their side, and there wasn't much distance left before they were back in Duo's room.

Heero looked back at Haku, making sure she was keeping up before he picked up his pace. Duo could start waking up any moment now.

While Heero was looking at Haku, Haku was looking at Duo, her systems reading vitals and watching his heart rate. He wasn't injured badly by any means, but his body was still in distress. It worried her just to look at it, and her worry was evident all over her face.

She clutched the gun tighter as he started to come to. She had no idea how to use it or what she would even do if it came down to another scuffle, but for once her desire to run was being squashed by something greater.

Duo opened his eyes, looking back up at Heero. His options were limited and he still wasn't able to think straight. He pushed against his body and then brought his elbow hard into the man's back rib cage.

"LET GO OF ME!" He roared, feeling a bit sick to his stomach now, or nausea from the blood flow to his head. He was dizzy.

That blow to the back of his ribs sent pain shooting straight through his body. Heero ended up gracelessly dropping Duo to ground, clutching his side while he fell to his knees.

"Damn it!" He cursed, doubling over in pain and sucking in a deep breath, all while he cracked an eye open to see what Duo was doing.

"DUO, STOP!" Haku screamed when Heero dropped to the ground. She knew he wasn't listening, though. At least not in the way he usually did. He wasn't hearing her and that wasn't something she knew how to fix.

She tried to go after him, forgetting for the moment that there was still a gun in her hand.

When he was dropped, he had to catch himself, fall correctly or else he'd risk getting hurt himself. He fell down, onto his hands and curling into a somersault. He climbed to his feet and then dove at Heero, throwing his weight into him.

This couldn't continue. "This is for Sally you traitor!" He aimed his first blow for Heero's chin, only to reach his hands around his neck.

The pain in his chest was all but forgotten when Duo launched himself at him. He landed on his back, hands gripping at the older man's shoulders to try and hold him off.

Sally? What had happened to her? What had his counterpart done? Before he could even ask (like it mattered), Duo had aimed a blow to his chin, connecting and causing his head to whip to the side. Then he felt hands reach around his neck and his hands went around Duo's wrist, trying to pull him back and shifting his legs to strike Duo in the stomach again.

Duo pushed forward still, his teeth grit and his grip only tightening. Angry tears appeared at the corners of his eyes and were gone as soon as they arrived when he kneed him in the stomach. He grunted painfully, one hand being pried off as he coughed.

"Not..." he seethed through his teeth. "Not gonna defeat me that easy!" He tired to tighten his grip. He was going to kill Heero, and that was exactly his intent.

If Duo had been paying attention, he might have noticed the ground start shifting subtly under him, and then suddenly as if awoken. However, with his concentration else where, the movement likely wasn't detected until he was already being dragged backwards and away from the younger man.

The ground didn't stop moving him until he was pressed back against the nearest wall, arms and shoulders strapped in by the stone itself. It wasn't an uncomfortable hold- at least not for the time being, but struggle as he might he wouldn't be able to get away and would only end up hurting himself.

When she was satisfied with her work, Toph relaxed her stance. Her face was turned towards Duo, hiding worry as best she could. Something was wrong with her friend. He wasn't physically hurt it looked like, but he was ... not there.

Her small fists clenched at her side.

"What exactly is going on here?"

Haku was just as helpless as she had been when the whole thing started, and when the two of them started trading blows she could only drop the gun and throw her hands over her face as she cowered back away from them.

All at once it was over, though. With a rumble of the ground and the sound of shifting stone, Duo and Heero had gone momentarily silent and the noise of the fighting no longer reached her ears.

Slowly she lowered her hands, tears rolling down her pale cheeks as her eyes swept over the area, seeing Duo pinned by a certain new arrival.

"T... Toph..." she hiccuped shakily, "H-he's not himself... s-something's wrong, i-it's like we're not even here..."

Quatre had followed just behind Toph, and while Duo was clearly the larger problem, he was at least subdued for the moment. He felt that pull towards Heero that he'd felt since they'd escaped Dekim's hands. And even though this Heero was different, it was still there. The strangeness of it didn't worry him as much as it probably should, so he tried to ignore his doubts over the odd feeling. He went over to Heero and knelt down next to him.

"Do you think you can still get up and walk?"

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