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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Toph listened, but wasn't so much paying attention to him as she was Duo's voice. She didn't need to feel the wall behind him to know that the man was totally convinced that they were trying to hurt him. She recalled him having said something about alternates.

"You okay, Haku?" she asked, not looking at her. The android sounded shaken, and Toph was concerned. Hey, it happened.

Y'know, maybe Duo just needed a good slapping about the head. She was willing to do it. Who knew, maybe it'd work. If nothing else, maybe it'd shut up his yelling.

Haku heard Toph, but it was Duo's voice that was still ringing in her ears as he went on, unable to recognize anyone around him as his friends in the castle.

She shook her head to Toph's question, tears still rolling down her cheeks.

"Sally? Duo...that was years ago..." His concern was dripping into his voice. And if Duo was talking about Heero killing Sally, and sides...

"Duo, none of that...it already happened. Why are you thinking that its happening again?"

This was news to him. No wonder Duo wanted to kill him so badly. Killing Sally was just...wrong. He couldn't imagine himself doing it to his version of her.

Heero moved to stand next to Haku and Toph, watching Quatre try to get through to Duo.

Harth stood a good ten yards from them leaning against the dining table. With his enhanced hearing, he could hear all they were saying. With his spell cast, he could see both what Duo was seeing if he focused enough, and what the others were doing and saying as well. Though with Heero and Haku there he dared not venture forth.

Just didn't want any unnecessary confrontation.

Duo stared at Quatre, flinching as the others neared, as he saw Heero's cold heartless eyes fall on him. He just couldn't believe Quatre. He was seeing it with his own eyes! But this already happened. It already--

Castle... Aah. Duo hung his head, wincing at the strain of trying to remember and the clashing memories just confused him. He didn't know what to do, or he didn't until he watched Heero send in the order to have him be picked up by Trowa again.

He narrowed his eyes, scowling at Heero. It's all he could do. For him it was too real, and none of Quatre's words were helping, it was only serving to confuse him.

"Quatre, if you don't let me go, Trowa's gonna haul me off and do who knows what. You heard him just now! Help me!" He cried out in frustration, struggling against the binds. It wasn't working, Quatre. It just wasn't.

Toph folded her arms across her chest before moving towards the big noise maker. She didn't like this- a friend was hurting and she didn't know how to help.

"We should probably get him into bed or something, try to get him to sleep it off. If nothing else, we at least need to get him back to his room. The last thing we need is his noise catching the wrong kind of attention." Like the shadows... did anyone truly know where those things could and couldn't go, or how they would respond to the sound of an inhabitant in pain or peril?

She reached up to his chest, grabbed his shirt, and by using her Earthbending hold on the stone around him effortlessly pulled him down to the ground to sit against the wall. He was still restrained by the wall and the floor, but at least now he was in a more comfortable position, and probably one that made him feel smaller and more guarded and less like an exposed target. Maybe that would help quiet him. Or maybe not. At least he wouldn't be uncomfortable while they deliberated.

Toph wasn't exactly one for much physical contact, but she made an exception. A hand remained on his knee while she crouched beside him. She felt his heart rate and listened to his breathing.

"It's like he's in the worst nightmare he's ever had, and he can't get out of it," she muttered to no one, gaze off somewhere in the distance.

"Nightmare..."

Something pinged in Haku's mind at those words, red eyes studying Duo's face from a distance. She sniffled and rubbed at her face, trying to banish her tears and focus on what Toph was saying. What about that sounded so damn familiar? The memory wasn't far, but it was hazy at best.

"I... I agree with Toph, we should get him away from here... e-even if it doesn't make him stop yelling, the shadows might think us as easy targets because of it..."

"Trowa isn't here Duo! Heero is NOT trying to hurt you! He's not even the same Heero that we knew...but...I am going to help you Duo. Okay?"

They all had nightmares, but if this was a nightmare, why was Duo so awake? Sleep walking couldn't explain all this. But if this was Duo's nightmare, and he was talking like this, he wasn't going to calm down anytime soon. Remembering what Trowa was capable of gave Duo enough trouble on a good day. If he was trapped in a nightmare with the threat of Trowa on the way...not only was Duo scared, he was also more dangerous.

Getting Duo out of the common room and back to his bedroom was a good idea, but moving him in state would be complicated. Toph could move him with her earth bending, but it would be much more unneeded stress of Duo. Maybe the best thing to do was move everyone away from Duo and let Quatre work on getting him settled down.

Looking over his shoulder, Heero checked for shadows and spotted Harth standing by the tables. He kept his eyes on him, watching to see what he would do. There was just something he didn't like about the guy. It was odd. He didn't even know the guy.

Harth only briefly looked to Heero when Heero looked at him, then turned his attention to the others. He bore no recognition for either Heero or Haku, just simply watching before slipping into a chair, but he continued to watch from the table.

Tophs action certainly did change things. He didn't feel like he was being held up, as if someone much bigger had grabbed him. Like the hand of a gundam. He was still bound, still shaking. Now he just felt small, pulling a knee up and pressing himself against the wall behind him.

He just couldn't believe that Quatre wasn't helping him. That he was stuck here with no escape. Nothing the other boy made any sense! He hunched his shoulders, tense with strain and glared up at them defiantly. He'd fight em' all off if he had to.

Edited 2012-03-17 02:57 (UTC)

Toph's hand remained on his knee as she listened to the others. From the feel of his heart racing and breathing hitching every time Quatre spoke, or refrained from moving, he was doing little more than scaring Duo even more. Or at least upsetting him.

She could feel him tensing, and put her other hand against the wall. The stone snaked around him sneakily, holding him tight and secure. If he'd tried to lunge at anyone like he'd been restrained, he likely would have dislocated something or pulled a muscle, and that pain could have been confused for something they inflicted. With more restraints, he could probably wiggle, but he wouldn't be able to get enough momentum to hurt anyone, not even himself.

"Maybe we just need to back off, or knock him out. Something."

Haku caught Heero looking around the area, and for some reason she couldn't quite understand she started following his gaze. Her vision landed on Harth, half hidden by shadows but still recognizable even at that distance.

Nightmares. Dreams. He had walked in her dream. They talked, without even physically being face to face.

Was he the one doing this to Duo? Was he the reason he couldn't see anyone as his friends?

She started to point him out just after Toph had suggested knocking him out, but something stopped her. Her vision distorted, seeing metal walls instead of stone ones. Where there should have been torch light, there were dim yellow lamps that barely lit anything up, and voices that didn't belong to anyone there.

The castle flickered in and out of her vision, changing places with the strange walls that she didn't recognize. And it hurt. It wasn't a pain that came with her nerves being damaged. It was something else, like a warning going off only without the actual noise.

She didn't cry out, but her hand went to the wall and she rested against it heavily, trying to find her voice if only to warn them about Harth being there.

"No..." Quatre shook his head, glancing at Toph. "I'm not knocking him out when he's already afraid. Duo...I swear we're not going to hurt you. I would never do anything to hurt you. You still trust me, right?"

Heero kept his eyes on Harth, even as he looked away from him. There was just something about him that bothered him. Like he had seen him before somewhere or just thought he did. It was awfully suspicious that Harth would be watching them, yet with the way Duo was screaming it only made sense for people to start gathering.

Shaking his head, he looked away and back to Quatre and Duo before he noticed Haku acting a bit strange. He watched her as she leaned against the wall, trying to work her mouth to say something and she couldn't. Was it a malfunction?

"What's wrong?" He asked her, placing a hand on her shoulder and turning her to look at him.

Well really he was just trying to act like the curious bystander, too shy to step over and join them or ask what was wrong. So he remained where he was and watched them all. With the way Heero looked at him, he was wondering about him again. Wondering if he'd seen him through that casket or he had some kind of sensory abilities he had yet to understand.

Or perhaps Haku had mentioned him? Or Quatre? He knew that both of them encountered him in their dreams.

He wasn't afraid of them finding out about him dream walking, not in the least. Catching Heero's eyes again he gave him a look. 'what?'

"Trust you?" His eyes went hard.

"I don't know if I can at this point!" He winced a little, a headache brewing all of a sudden. He squirmed in an effort to grasp his head. "Aaah."

Damn. What was-- He looked up at them, eyes wide with surprise. Was that? "--Toph...?" Right next to him. He flinched as she suddenly turned back into the soldier.

"Wha... What? What is this?" Gaah! Okay. He swooned, nausea and a wicked headache taking him. If he were standing, he'd have fallen to his knees.

Toph snorted at Quatre's comment.

"I was just kidding, geeze. Do you really think I-" she stopped when he spoke her name.

"Duo?" she asked quickly, eyes wide. She grinned widely.

"Hey, guys, I think he's- ... uh oh. Haku?" she turned her head to aim an ear and listen. "Geeze, we fix one, and another breaks. What's going on?"

She still hadn't noticed Harth. His movements were too far away to catch her interest, as her focus was on the ones in her immediate area.

Haku could still hear her friends talking, but the voices that were pushing in from whatever she was seeing were getting increasingly louder, drowning out the others.

Two voices. Just two. One was louder than the other. Yelling things. Angry.

She closed her eyes, trying to will it away, trying to force her systems to repair whatever was causing the obvious error, but it could find nothing. Her HUD read as everything normal, which it clearly wasn't.

"I-- I'm--..."

She wanted to say she was okay, to keep them from worrying about her the same way they worried about Duo, but her voice just seemed lost.

Slowly she opened one eye, then the other. The castle was gone, and the area she was seeing was suddenly so much darker than it had been a moment ago. The voices finally had faces with them. One she didn't recognize, but the second... he looked different, but that was definitely Duo tied to a chair, hair long like his double's was. He was bleeding, beaten, bruised, and the man that she didn't recognize was still delivering blows to him.

"Ohgod..." her voice came out a weak whimper, hands moving to her head and fingers clutching at her hair. She didn't want to watch, but she couldn't look away.

The blond pilot could feel Haku start to panic and the fear seeping into her. He closed his eyes and tried to ignore it. Duo panicking, he could handle, even his fear he could handle. But Haku's on top of Duo's was starting to make him dizzy.

"What are you afraid of Haku?"

Heero pulled his hand away when Haku clutched her head and whimpered. Things were getting out of hand very fast. Duo was calming down but no where near ready to be released, and now Haku was seeing things. What was making each of them experience this?

Turning to look back at the others, what he perceived as reality changed in an instant.

In a blink of the eye, the castle was gone. In place of stone walls and vast empty spaces, he found himself in the cockpit of a mobile suit. A gundam to be precise, but he knew it wasn't his because on the vid screen in front of him, he was watching his suit flying desperately towards the falling colony. Oh no! Was he experiencing one of Duo's memories? Why it have to be this this one?

He watched, frozen in his seat, as his counterpart tried to blast the colony to pieces. A few thousand civilians dead for the sake of the Earth, and when he watched the blast fail completely, it was the entire population that joined them. Every single person his counterpart had failed to save was on him now and he could feel it as if he were him. The anger and anguish he felt for killing those pacifists and for that little girl was nothing to what he was feeling now.

All those deaths were on him.

Oh! Harth raised a brow as he watched, tilting his head as if he were confused as to what was going on over all. Why was Haku freaking out, why now Heero? But of course he could see everything, perceive everything. Heero had just received one of Duo's dreams as Haku had.

How incredibly interesting. Now all he had to do was observe the aftermath.

Duo turned his eyes to Quatre, watching him swoon slightly from whatever what was effecting him. He sucked in a sharp breath, shaking there as two people, one of the soldiers and Heero, they were acting strangely now. He shut his eyes tight then opened them, the reality of his situation blurring between the reality of his dream state and what was really happening. He grimaced and wobbled in his rock imprisonment.

"I...I think I'm gonna be sick." He said, grunting slightly from the blurred vision. Maybe not sick, but he was incredibly dizzy.

"L-lemme out."

Edited 2012-03-20 02:55 (UTC)

This was getting too weird for Toph, and she stood, a look of worry on her face as she scanned everyone, trying to figure out what was going on, exactly.

What were they reacting to? Why was everyone scared?

"Guys?" They were seeing something, and she wasn't. More shadows? Ah crap.

She blinked when she heard Duo's plea. Let him out? She wasn't too sure of that. But he said he was going to be sick. That could prove to be messy and dangerous in his current position.

"... f-fine, just don't run off," she demanded, putting her hand against the wall behind him and pulling the wall back into itself, freeing him. It didn't matter if he ran, though. She could likely catch him again with little incident.

But what about the others? They were freaking out. She had no idea how to handle that.

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sakedrinking - 2012-03-20 05:52 (UTC) - Expand

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