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The Road to Kindness	By : shinigamiinochi Category: Gundam Wing/AC > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 7934 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing/AC, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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The Road to Kindness

Chapter 8

Part 12
　

In his more conscious thoughts when he woke up every morning, Duo realized that ever since Wes had kept him chained to his bed in that windowless bedroom, that was all he ever dreamed about, all that his nightmares contained. The never ending, soulless darkness that, never the less, seemed alive and intelligent, the feeling of hands, hurting and dirtying, on him, and the sensation that, no matter how hard he tried to fight, he couldn't move. With the exception of that time when he had dreamed of Shi urging him to fight back, to try and move instead of just assuming that he couldn't, he had always awoken after dreaming of suffocating, or bleeding to death, or sometimes, on a particularly bad night, both.

Before, he had dreamed of being chained down, unable to escape with the idea that very near to him, was a beautiful light he could never reach. But now, since Wes had kidnapped him, he dreamed something different. The darkness was still there, shadows invading his lungs and making it hard to breathe, and he still couldn't move because something was weighing him down. But now there was this feeling of being trapped in a very small space. Claustrophobia. And he understood somehow that even if he moved, he would not be able to leave the space, so it was pointless to even try. He laid in there and stared into eternal darkness, wanting to scream for Heero. Heero would protect him from the darkness, just as he always had. Even in his dreams, Duo understood this concrete fact. If he could only find Heero, then this nightmare would end. In the face of his brilliant light and strong embrace, the darkness would recede in fear, no more than the shadows cast from a candle's flame.

But he didn't dare call out for him, even in his deepest yearnings to see him. If he did, if he screamed in fear like that, it would only draw his attention. The Boogieman. He would come for him again, and in this darkness, there was nowhere he could hide. The Boogieman lived in the darkness. He always had. And he would find him here, where Duo was blind. He could smell his blood and fear, and hear his terrified heartbeat. As he stared into the dark, for the very first time, he saw something shift in the shadows. It moved in the darkness near him, but farther than he could ever reach, far past the barriers of his enclosed space. A thing that was impossible. As it got closer, Duo realized that it was a person.

At first, he thought that it might be the Boogieman, coming back to hurt him again, but he didn't feel the same strange mix of fear, relief, and revulsion that he usually did. The figure finally stepped out of the darkness and he saw that it wasn't the Boogieman, or the horde of nameless, faceless shadows that belonged to the painful hands that often visited him here. It was Yuki, his friend. He felt an indescribable joy at seeing his beautiful, white-pale face and wanted to throw his arms around him, cling to him, but at the same time as that joy, he felt an equally powerful sadness. His heart hurt so badly, he would have curled up into a pained ball if he could only move.

Why? Why was he so sad just to see one of the only friends he had ever had? And then he remembered. Yuki was dead. As though summoned by that terrible memory, he saw Yuki clearly in the darkness. His long, black hair fell limp and without any sheen over his shoulders, and his skin was paler than it had ever been before. He was wearing one of his kimonos, an elegant, soft gray one, but the color was hardly noticeable. The cloth was splashed with blood so dark, it was almost black. The same blood that marred his neck, which was slashed wide open. As the specter approached, he lifted his head showing Duo eyes that were completely black, as though they were filled with the same darkness that surrounded them.

"Yuki..." Duo rasped, suddenly finding it hard to speak, as though something was burrowing into his throat, trying to choke him.

"Why..." Yuki spoke and his voice sounded strange, as though his mouth were full of liquid, "... why should you be allowed to live when I am dead?"

Agony ripped through Duo's heart, filling it with guilt at those cruel words, delivered in a cold, cynical voice that was so far removed from the quiet, but kind boy he had known.

"I'm sorry," he cried helplessly, "Yuki, I'm so sorry..."

"You're sorry? What makes you so special?" the Japanese boy accused, "You're sorry, and yet, you're still alive. I died because of pettiness, while you get to go on. And why? What makes you better than me, when you are just throwing that life away?"

Blood, thick and red-black, streamed down Yuki's feet, forming a puddle on the invisible ground. It grew and grew until it touched Duo's bare skin. It burned like molten lava, right down to his bones, but for some reason, he couldn't scream at the pain.

"You're so incapable of choosing between Wes and Name. If it were me," his voice turned as bitter as the medicine Wes had made him take, "If I were the one still alive, I wouldn't have had any trouble making that decision at all," his inky eyes narrowed, "You're pathetic."

"I can't..." he could feel hot tears running down his cheeks, startling real for a dream, "I can't chose... it's too hard... thinking about not seeing one of them again... it hurts."

"And what's so hard about it?" Yuki asked.

"You know..." that hateful voice sounded, drowning out the rest of what Yuki had to say like a swarm of angry hornets and Duo pressed his hands to ears, frantically trying to block it out, but it was pointless. The voice was in his heart, "You've always known, all this time..."
*****
Duo slept in a tangle of different nightmares, all woven together in an incoherent jumble of fear and anxiety, but as he woke up, the one with Yuki lingered more than the others, like a bad taste. His head throbbed dully as he remembered his late friends' words, and hated himself for them. It didn't matter if what he had said in the dream had been true or not. Yuki never would have said those things. Yuki had been the sweetest, gentlest person he had ever known. His death hadn't just been a tragedy, but an abomination, and it filled him with equal amount of disgust as it did sorrow. There wasn't a day that went by that he didn't feel some measure of sadness and regret about it. And he had turned him into a grotesque monster to suit his own feelings of guilt.

Duo rubbed tiredly at his eyes. He hated that he couldn't even tell how long he had slept for. Some part of him felt like it had been for a long time, but he still felt exhausted, as though he hadn't slept at all, or maybe that was just because of the constant stream of nightmares and his level of stress. But, despite his small headache and tiredness, he felt... better. Well, not so much better. He still felt like he had been hit by a truck, his throat was still sore along with his muscles, but he could think a lot more clearly. The cotton in his head had dissipated and so had a great deal of the heat. The antibiotics must have worked a bit on his fever and delirium, which meant it was a new day.

That didn't help to give him any perspective, though. He didn't know what day it had been yesterday and it could still be any time at all right now. It made him feel so disoriented, but not having that heavy fog around his mind was an utter relief. His mouth was dry and he hoped that the next time Wes opened the door, he would have the orange juice with him, but it wasn't as terrible as it had been before. Duo frowned, thinking about what little he could remember of before he had fallen asleep.

He just didn't understand Wes anymore. Ok, fine, so he had decided not to kill him or punish him for running away. That was hard enough to link to the monstrous man he had always known, but this was something else. Wes was... gentler when they had sex now, not so unconcerned if he bled or otherwise seriously hurt him. But every now and then, he would do something, push in or grab him too hard, and he could feel Wes' usual violence simmering under the surface of his every movement. It wasn't gone, like he had wanted to believe, just... contained. It was a constant threat, something to throw Duo off balance even more. Every time Wes fucked him now, he lived in fear, waiting for him to hurt him and every time he didn't, it twisted his stomach and nerves into knots. He felt like he was getting an ulcer, waiting in dread for Wes to turn back into his old self, to grow tired of being nice and just snap. It would be nice, only to just stop being so confused and put off balance, but he didn't think he had the strength of body or mind left to withstand the blonde's typical abuse.

But now and then, Wes did things like he had done yesterday that didn't just confuse him, but disturb him. Like going out and buying orange juice, a clichéd drink for when you were sick, and stealing those pills... Wes never did anything unless it benefited him in some way, but what was the point of this? Was he trying to win him over? he had told him that he didn't need drugs to make him see his way. Was this part of that plan? It just wasn't Wes' style, something subtle like that. As much as he had changed, he was still the kind of man that was all or nothing. He would rather make some single, grand gesture than coddle him like this.

So why? He couldn't take the idea that Wes might have just done it, not to be manipulative, which was entirely possible if Wes was in the mood to play games, because he cared about him. Yuki's words rang in his head, asking him why he deserved to live when he couldn't even make this essential decision. Wes or Name... who did he want to be with more?

Even though it had just been a twisted dream, he had meant what he had said to Yuki. The choice should be obvious. Any intelligent, healthy, well-adjusted person would chose Name. She was kind, loving, and no matter what he did, she was prepared to take care of him for the rest of his life if he needed her to. But he wasn't well-adjusted by any standards. He vividly remembered those first couple of days he had lived in the Yuy household, how displaced and lonely he had felt being in a place like that, surrounded by people who cared about him. He had waited, desperately, for them to tell him what they wanted from him, what they needed him to do, to justify him being there, like he had been nothing more than a live-in servant. Or more aptly, a dog waiting for a command. He hadn't been able to comprehend something like family, having people to rely on and who simply wanted to take care of him and shelter him because they loved him, not because he was a commodity. Those were alien concepts to him and had made him feel like a fish out of water. And on top of all that, he ha felt this indescribably powerful guilt that he was missing Wes.

From the moment he had told Name, Heero, and the others the truth about his life with Wes lying in the hospital bed that Wes' actions had put him in, everyone had been telling him that he should hate the man. For the very first time in the eight years he had spent as Wes� pet dog, people, regular people, not other whores who had dealt with men like Wes before, were telling him that what had happened to him was wrong, it was horrible. His lonely existence, which he had seen as normal, wasn�t right. He should want to rip Wes right out of his life, like a blood sucking tick, and stomp him into nothing more than a forgettable smear. He had assumed, listening to their disgust of the man that they all expected him to just... move on and forget that anything bad had ever happened to him and forge this new, normal life. And when he had been unable to do that, he had felt so ashamed, like he was spurning all of Name�s gifts to him by being incapable of living up to her expectations.

In those moments, laying late at night in a new bed that didn�t smell like sex and seat, made up of a full, soft mattress instead of an old, hard twin one, he had felt Wes� absence acutely. It had left a large hole in him, leaving him fumbling for something familiar and failing. Everything in that house had been different than what he had been used to and, if he hadn�t been so fatigued from his injuries, he would have had a lot of sleepless nights that first week. It wasn�t just that things were nicer, the house was bigger, or that there was no one there to yell at him. The smells had been different, the air cleaner, removed from Wes� smoking. Waking up to differently colored ceilings had disoriented him and he had found himself, in odd moments, yearning for the apartment, for the smell of Chinese food that, during the summer, had been so thick it had reminded him of the rotting dumpster food that his diet as a child had mostly consisted of. He had missed how the pipes would shriek every time you turned on the water for a shower. He had even missed the sound of Wes� snoring.

Those lonely feelings felt like an intruder, wedging themselves in between moments of name�s warmth and Heero�s patient friendship. He had hated himself for them and had assumed that there was something very, clinically, wrong with him. He should feel nothing but relief and happiness, he had berated himself. Name had saved him from absolute hell, had given him a home and a chance at a healthy, full life. She had bought him all of those things for his room, had agonized over how to decorate it so he would be happy and feel at home there, and he had been incapable of letting go of his past to pay her back, to show her that all of her hard work was going to be paid off. His inability to be normal like Heero, Quatre, Trowa, and Wufei had made him feel like a shithead, this broken loser that was nothing more than a walking husk that had nothing of value to offer, and he had assumed that, if his new found family ever found out about his feelings converning his rapist, they would only ever be disappointed in him. And that was the worst thing, his greatest fear. Not their anger, their being disappointed in him.

And, as usual, all of his pessimisitc thoughts abou tthem had been wrong. That night when Name had caught him wide awake and he had been so tired that he had finally confessed to missing Wes, she had been so understanding, so patient and kind, just like she had always been to him, even back when she had been hesitant to trust him. Even then, she had listened to him and treated him, not like how most adults treated kids and teenagers, but with the utmost respect. He had never had that in his life before, someone who respected him, like he was someone worthwhile and special, and giving Name�s wealth and power, adn how other powerful people treated her, it scared him sometimes. But then she would smile at him, or hug him, or bake him something for no other reason than she liked seeing him happy and that fear would turn into a love for her so intense, it made him cry if he didn�t keep a very firm control over it, a love that, like her respect, was quite frightening and wonderful to him at the same time.

He had underestimated his friends, too. Maybe Name was more mature, easier to forgive him and try to understand his feelings, even though he knew that most adults were no more mature or less arrogant than the average young teenager, but his friends, especially Wufei, were too far removed from his problems to acknoledge them, too used to the shades of white and black and being told what they should think and feel to get why he was having such a hard time letting go of Wes, he had thought. He was still a bit ashamed ofthe hypocrisy of those thoughts.

Maybe Heero, Quatre, Trowa, and Wufei didn't have his experiences, but they weren't normal and they each had their own share of heartache. Heero had to deal with a lot shit because of his wealth, bad reputation after his reaction to his father's death, and possessive ex-fiance. Quatre came from a rich, upstanding family, too, and if you watched him, you assumed he had a wonderful, normal, and well-adjusted life bordering on perfect. He was so friendly and nice, bubbly and hyper at times and so full of light that Duo had trouble dealing with him sometimes. But he knew now that underneath that shimmering sun was a pool of shadows. The media portrayed the Winners as the perfect family; a horde of smart, beautiful daughters, a son with a wealth of potential to take over his father's position, and a strong completent father who gallantly raised his cildren by himself after his wife's tragic death. A loving, solid family that, unlike the Yuys, had no troubles, no black spots to be gossiped about.

Quatre's father was a master at keeping his personal problems away from the spotlight, Duo had to give him that, but it was all a lie. The man treated Quatre like a bad smell because of his mother's death and now that he knew about him being gay, he dind't want to even see or talk to his only son. His traditional values were apparently more important to him than his family and Quatre felt isolated and rejected by his own flesh and blood because of that. duo had been surprised to hear from the blonde that he completely understood his dual feelings for Wes because he felt them, too, for his own father.

Wufei came from a wealthy family also, although not on the same level as Heero or Quatre, but because of his sexuality, he had been forced to leave the boy he loved, revoke his social status within his clan, and move to completely different country where his way of looking at the world had been drastically altered. Of all of them, Trowa was the closest to understanding him, the closest to his own past. Like himself, Trowa didn't remember anything about his parents beyond second hand accounts and pictures. His older sister had been his entire world growing up, so it must have been terrible having the government arrogantly state that after all those years, his sister was suddenly unfit to raise him because she wasn't married and worked in a circus. Even more terrible, the relative they had placed him with had ended up being a pedophile. Thankfully, unlike Duo, he had been saved before the violence and abuse had consumed his entire life, but not before some serious damage had beeen done. Trowa had never been especially close to his uncle, but he had wanted to be. Because, Trowa had told him, his family was so small and his uncle was one of the only people who had known his parents well, he had desperately wanted to love and be loved by him, so his actions had been very traumatic to him as a child.

Somehow, they all understood how he was incapable of feeling only hate for Wes, that his relationship with the man was just too complicated for that. But that hadn't stopped him from feeling guilty about it, about his complete inability to make the obvious choice, the choice he knew that he wanted to make. Duo heard footsteps out in the hall and sat up quickly. His head immediately swam in confusion and he realized for the first time just how long he had been stuck in here, either laying down or sitting or kneeling. He couldn't remember the last time he had stood upright under his own power. That was bad. If he got the chance to make a quick getaway, his legs might be too weak or just the act of standing might make him too dizzy to run. He needed to start stretching, if only to keep up his strength, even though there wasn't a whole lot of room in here to do it.

Again, Duo found himself incredibly relieved that he had the clarity of mind again to have these thoughts and hoped that the antibiotics would keep the fever at bay long enough for him to figure a way out of here. The footsteps stopped in front of the closet door and, as the knob turned and the door opened, the strong, heavy scent of hot food hit him like a fast moving truck. His stomach clenched and growled angrily at him, feeling hunger for the first time in what felt like days, having been too sick until now to care about food. It had to be morning, Duo realized as Wes walked into the closet with a tray holding a bowl of what looked like cxream of wheat, a bowl of blueberries, and the remainder of the orange juice. Next to the juice was another large, white pill. The blonde man put the tray on the ground and placed a hand on Duo's forehead. He grunted in approval at the reduced heat.

"You're taking the medicine before you eat a single thing," Wes demanded, "I don't want to hear any complaining."

Duo wisely kept his mouth shut, even though he desperately wanted to devour the sweet smelling cream of wheat. He obediently let WEs put the terribly bitter pill in his mouth and swallowed a small bit of the orange juice he was offered. Once the tall man was sure he had swallowed it, he sat in front of him and proceeded to feed him the cream of wheat and blueberries. Wes did that for every meal he brought him, too stubborn to take off Duo's cuffs. Now that he was feeling less dizzy and shaky, the brunette was sure that he could feed himself. His wrists were restrained, but not his elbows. He would have to do it slowly to keep from making a mess, but he could probably pick up the spoon and, with some crafty finger desterity, get the cream of wheat to his mouth on his own. But he thougt that Wes liked feeding him. he had no idea why when he would have been pissed at having to do something like this for Duo in teh past, but he wouldn't care for him like this if didn't enjoy something about it.

The cream of wheat was instant, the kind you could buy from the grocery store that you just had to add water or milk to, then microwave for one to two minutes, Duo realized in disappointment. It was too overly sweet and watery to be anything else but instant. He immediately berated himself for that disappointment. He had been eating this kind of oatmeal ever since he had tasted some as a child at the grocery store out of one of those stupid, tiny cups they gave out as free samples to taste. He had loved the creamy, hot taste of it, especially since it had been so damned cold out at the time, and had been further shocked to learn that it was only a couple of bucks for a box of twelve packets of the generic, original flavor. He usually used two packets at a time, so it was just two bucks for six whole meals!

That had been crazy to him and it had ended up being one of the few things Wes would buy him during the winter months, since Duo could make it on his own and he was so grateful about it those two bucks, Wes could weasel quite a few things out of him with a promise for a box. He fondly remembered when he had first moved into the Yuy's house and Name had asked him what foods he liked before she went grocery shopping. He had just stared up at her, unable to process such a question. What difference did it make what foods he liked? He hadn't realized that she had been asking what foods he wanted her to buy for him. His old self, so hurt and tired and lost, had been incapable of understanding such a request, just assuming that she would continue to buy whatever she and Heero liked to eat and he would eat the same thing and learn to like it. Just like it had always been with him. There were so few foods that he wouldn't eat, easily remembering what it was like to nearly starve to death and he was just too tired to care at that point.

Still, the obedience that Wes had beaten into him had had him answering her question without realizing that, whatever he said he liked, she was going to end up buying. He had told her that he wasn't that picky, that food was just food, and it had taken her several minutes to get his favorites out of him. He had told her about the cream of wheat, and apples, and that he really liked yoghurt and milk, but everything else was the same to him. Name had looked sad at that and he knew now that she had realized that the problem wasn't that everything was the same, but that he had tried so little different foods, and what he had tried was always stuff out of the bargain aisle or bland and generic, that he didn't really have an opinion.

Thus, her long experiment at buying different, but healthy, things for him to try had begun. Just in that first week, he had gotten addicted to things like fresh fruits and vegetables, chocolate milk, and fish, especially salmon, something that he couldn't have tried in his wildest dreams before then. Hell, decent salmon went for twenty bucks a pound and Name hadn't settled for just decent. It made him cringe to think of how much she spent on the fish she brought home for him, but he knew that if he begged her to stop she would just tell him that the cost of the fish was nothing to her compared to how much Duo liked eating it, and it was really good for him, since he had to make up for an entire lifetime of terrible nutrition.

And then there had been the cream of wheat. One day, before Duo had gone back to school, it had been terribly cold out and Name had stayed home to make him breakfast. When she had brought up a bowl of the stuff to him after he had been napping, he had thought he had died and gone to heaven. This cream of wheat had been perfect; thick instead of runny, rich instead of bland, and she had even mixed cinnamon and blueberries into it. Duo had never put any in his. He hadn't been aware that you did that to cream of wheat and even if he had, he had never had fruit or cinnamon to put into it and he seriously doubted Wes would have let him get any. Fruit was horribly expensive now a days, especially blueberries and raspberries.

She had made it for him by scratch, not from a box or pouch. Name could have easily bought a better quality of instant cream of wheat, but she had said that she didn't like all the additives that were in them when the homemade was so much better. He hadn't had the instant stuff for many months now and he discovered that he wasn't just disappointed by it, but he actually didn't like it at all anymore. It was... an odd revelation. He had never been picky about food. He had always just eaten what was in front of him, no matter what it was because he had believed that food was food. He didn't like the feeling, it was too far removed from who he had always been. What right did he have to say that he didn't like a food that was being offered to him freely? Wasn't it better than having nothing?

He had never had this concept of 'quality', that he needed to have something that was better than something else. Cheaper had been better, only because he had had little money. But after living with Name and Heero for so many months, he realized how much he loved to eat expensive food. Not because he held any illusions that, because they had cost more, they were therefore better like some people thought, but because that kind of food was fresher or tasted better than the food he had been forced to eat. It made him realize what he had been missing all of these years, just how terrible the food he had been eating really was. The thought that this new life of his had changed him that much, might even had made him spoiled was painful, but so was the knowledge that he should have had better, that he had done more damage to his body than he had ever realized thanks to his crappy diet. It upset him, knowing that people who could afford better food also got better nutritional value. More than that... he realized that he didn't care if he was spoiled. He liked Name's cream of wheat. He loved everything that she did for him that was so much better than what he had been given in his old life and he didn't want to go back to that.

But he ate the cream of wheat, just grateful that Wes was feeding him anything, let alone one of his comfort foods, yet another concept he hadn't been aware of before Name had taken him under her wing. It soothed his sore throat, regardless of what it tasted like or how runny it was. But at the same time as he understood that, he felt an intense yearning for his home. It was the beginning of Summer, but he had a craving for Name's cream of wheat. He wanted out of this closet, he wanted his own goddamn bed and to see Quatre and Trowa and Wufei! He wanted his cats. He wanted to know how Heero and Name's trip had gone. No matter what he felt for Wes, he didn't want to be here anymore. He wanted to leave it all behind him.

These smells, the color of the ceiling and walls, the flickering light of the refrigerator, these feelings and memories that made him literally sick to his stomach if he dwelled on them for too long, like a tidal wave of ichors in his gut, heart, and head. He wanted to purge himself of them, like how you felt horrible when you had the flu and had to throw up, but as soon as you did, it was a huge relief. Or lancing a badly infected wound. He didn't want to have to get used to this again or settle for things when he had just started to discover something better. Something cleaner. All of his wants were tangled up in his head and it was impossible to sort through them. To stay or to go... this place held so much of him. Could he really let it go any easier than let Wes go? Let Name go? He had always called the Yuy's house his home because there was so much pain and revulsion here, but that didn't mean that this place wasn't a part of him, too. A part of him that he hated, that he wanted to cut off of himself. But even if he did that, would he just long for it again, like he had when he had first moved in to that pretty white house, or was he past all that and he was just being overly sentimental, over thinking everything out of fear?

He watched Wes put the bowl back on the tray with intense focus. After eight long years, the man hadn't changed at all from the moment they had met. His current actions confused him, but even in the simple task of cleaning up and putting utensils and glasses back onto the tray, his eyes were cold and hard. Duo didn't think that the man was capable of warm looks. He might smile or say things like 'I love you', but those eyes never changed. When he had been younger, he had thought that they were like a shark's eyes. Cold and dead, devoid of anything that was human, no more than a doll's eyes.

But that wasn't true. When Wes looked at things, when he looked at him, it wasn't with some dead, stupid stare. His gaze was sharp instead of dull, he analyzed things in a cold, detached way, calculating and planning out his every move based on what he observed. That was one of the reasons why Wes looking at him, watching him all of the time, had always disturbed him growing up. It hadn't just been that it was such an invasion of privacy, but also that every time Wes looked at him, he felt like he was analyzing him, sizing him up and judging him, deciding what to do with him. To play with him or kill him.

He had felt that way when he had been very young, that the blonde, with every sharp look, was making the choice to keep him alive or slit his throat because he had outlived his usefulness. It had put him on edge for years, had given him more than just a couple sleepless nights, every time he heard those footsteps outside his room, his heart hammering in his chest so hard that, as soon as the footsteps were far enough away, he had jumped out of bed, rushed to the bathroom, and vomited. Over time, he had gotten thicker skin about it, but deep down inside, it had still made him squirm. For the first time in years, as Wes looked at him now, he felt as he had when he had been seven years old.

"You need a bath," Wes grumbled as he took in his previous charge's rumpled clothes, the dried blood on his arms, and how his bangs were plastered to his forehead with sweat, "as soon as you stop being foolish, I'll give you a warm one and wash your hair for you."

Duo flushed in embarrassment as he realized that he probably stunk by now, especially from all of the sweating due to his high fever. He still had that strange smell people got when they were sick and the thought of being allowed to take a bath or shower was heavenly to him. His heart warmed at Wes' words about washing his hair. The older man knew how much he liked that, how it often comforted him when he was depressed, hurt, or sick and he felt gratefulness start to well up inside of him, the same terrible gratefulness that he had felt when Wes had freed him from his bed. He loathed himself for feeling that. But feeling Wes' large hands on his skin, washing away the dirt and blood and bad things-
"Duo?"

Duo looked up in absolute terror from his couch in the shower. Searing hot water fell down on his naked body, turning his pale skin red, but he shivered, feeling only fear, revulsion, and cold. He expected to see Wes standing there, looking down at him like some kind of God, his grey eyes as cold and piercing as shards of sharpened stone. Instead, it was Heero, looking scared and startled, and perhaps a bit embarrassed, too, but his blue eyes were still warm and safe.

"Heero?" he asked in a tiny, child-like voice, the same voice he had had at age seven, so cautious and resigned. For a moment, though the confusion and flashbacks, he had a moment of pure clarity. Heero was here to help him.

Heero nodded and kneeled down so they were at equal eye lovels. Duo felt a wave of relief and love so strong, he became dizzy from it. Heero wasn't Wes. He was nothing like Wes. And he would never hurt him like he had, on his body or in his heart. Suddenly, he felt completely safe.

"Yeah, Duo, it's me," Heero said softly, his voice cracking a little at the other boy's name.

Duo saw a hungry need in those eyes for something, but couldn't figure out what it was and was too far gone in his memories to ask. Heero reached out to touch him and the American pressed himself against the far wall of the tub, scared by the suddenness of the moment. In his mind, he saw Wes reaching for him as he tried to hide under his bed away from him. Wes caught the sleeve of his shirt and pulled him forward. Duo's sleeve ripped and he started to crawl back into his hidey hole, but Wes had pulled him out enough to grab his hair and used it as leverage, his mature face contorted into a furious snarl.

He thought that Heero would continue to grab at him and started to panic, but he was shocked as Heero let his hand drop and he backed up a little. Duo suddenly realized that he hadn't shied away because he was scared that Heero was going to hurt him. It was the other way around.

"Don't touch," he murmured, his heart racing in fear, "you'll get dirty, too."

His blood was everywhere, on every inch of his skin. He was covered in a thick layer of filth, of cum and dirt. No... he was filth. A useless, dirty thing. He had been useless and dirty before, living on the streets, surviving like a rat, but Wes had truly made him filthy with his heavy hands, thick cock, and sickening lust. He had turned him into a living, breathing piece of trash. He couldn't let Heero touch that. His kind, beautiful Heero... he couldn't let him become tainted by that perversion and violence, couldn't let him know how it felt, to be dirty no matter how hard or frequently you wahsed yourself. An uncleanliness that was in his heart... He shook with the thought of making Heero that dirty, terrified of hurting him like that.

Then, Heero smiled at him. It was so bright and calming, the way Shi would smile at him when he knew he was feeling depressed. There was kindness in that smile, this alien, healing sensation that he just wanted to curl up with.

"That's ok," Heero said so effortlessly that Duo had a hard time comprehending how he could be that patient and understanding, "I don't mind getting dirty."

Duo stared at him in shock as tears gathered in his bets friend's eyes. How could he say that? how could he not mind what a tainted person he was, and not be afraid of his dirtiness infecting him? He felt something in his chest, brilliant and warm, nearly spill over. It hurt. That nice feeling. In his cold, shriveled heart, such a feeling was pure agony. Heero reached out again, lightly touching Duo's hand, and this time he didn't flinch or draw away. He gently pried the soap out of his friend's hand and placed it on the edge of the tub. Duo shook his head frantically in denial, horrified at the thought of his blood on Heero's tan, clean hands. Warm fingers, a light touch, that started to ease away his chill better than the hot water ever could.

"There's too much blood," he moaned, beginning to feel hysteric and close to screaming, seeing the blood, as dark and real as the water pelting his bare skin, but this time Heero didn't back away, he continued to touch his hand and the buzzing in his head screaming at him that he couldn't let Heero touch his filthy blood, that there were rivers of it and it was going to drown him, started to fade.

Duo tightened his arms around his knees, feeling a chill rush through him. The blood... it was there because... because Wes had-

"I can't clean it no matter how hard I try," he rasped, his voice rising as his heart raced, fingernails digging into his skin harshly, "I can't get clean."

In that moment, he was sure that he was going crazy. His skin itched, feeling the blood on it, staining him, and incredible pain raced up his spine from where Wes had hurt him with his cock, even though some part of him that was just beginning to resurface knew that it couldn't possibly be there, which made the feeling all the more powerful and real and disturbing somehow. He looked down between his legs and saw the thick, crimson wetness there, still on his thighs even though he had been sitting under the hot spray for so long. It raced down the drain like red ribbons. He wanted it to stop... he wanted it to go away! All of it, the dirt and the pain and the blood and this itchy feeling, like his skin was crawling, trying to get off of his body in repulsion. Or like his body was trying to reject it like a dangerous virus, the same skin that that man had touched, had caressed like those ugly, fat, cruel men would caress the arms or backs of the women they took from the street corners before they shoved them into their cars or dragged them off to some dark alley or cheap motel.

"He touched me..." Duo murmured and did not realize he was saying anything out loud at all, so far gone in that memory of that day, a day eight years gone, but felt like it had happened just hours ago, "... for hours... all I over... I can't get the stench off."

He wished Heero hadn't taken the soap from him. He needed to scrub his skin off. That was the only way he could get the blood off of him. He had tried before, but he had only made his skin red and sore. He needed to scrub harder, that was all, but Heero had taken the soap away from him. He looked back up into Heero's blue eyes and felt that dizziness again. For some reason, when he looked at his best friend, those crazy feelings felt distant, unimportant somehow.

"Where is the blood?" he asked, his tone holding some sort of intent and purpose while still remaining soft and attentive. The sound of his voice helped to ground Duo in the present. No one in his past had ever talked to him that kindly.

Duo glanced down briefly at his thighs again, unable to stop it like a nervous gesture, but looked up at Heero again, needing to keep him in his sights like he needed to breathe.

"Everywhere," he whispered, "It's always everywhere."

Always. Because some part of him, outside of the traumatized child, knew he had been here a thousand times before now. He had relived this moment of his past in his darkest nightmares. His violet eyes followed Heero's every move as he gathered a washcloth and towel, putting the towel on the counter, and approached the tub again.

"I'm going to help you wash it off, okay?" Heero asked him.

Duo suddenly realized that, unlike Wes, Chris, and every john he had ever had, every adult he had ever had contact with, the Japanese boy wasn't telling him what he was going to do. He was asking for his permission to do it. He wanted to know if it was ok for him to touch his body instead of just doing whatever he wanted and expecting him to deal with it. No one... no one had given enough of a shit about him to... to respect him enough to ask if something was alright with him, to give him the trust to stop if he told them to.

The damaged child that had risen in him, given a voice and presence for the very first time since he had been seven years old, since Wes had violated him and stolen his virginity from him and he had pushed what little childishness and innocence he had left in order to grow up so he could survive his sudden, violent immersion into that adult world, warred briefly with his older, saner self. The teenager, overwhelmed with this shocking power to say 'no' and the respect Heero had for an ex-whore like him, wanted to venture past one of the last barriers he had between child and adult, to let his adult love for Heero spill over and press his lips against his. The child wanted to bury himself in his arms, the very safest place in the world, both against the outside forces of the cold, unsympathetic world, and his inner demons, like a kid would a parent. After all this time, after all those years Duo had ignored that child and denied all of its impulses, it would no longer be pushed aside. The child easily won the inner struggle with startling strength.

"Please... help me..." the child begged in a barely audible but powerful voice in its affectiveness, speaking the words that he had wanted to say all these long, eight years, but had refused, burying the desire deep down, in the shifting darkness that made up most of his heart.

His teenaged self watched in alarm as Heero's beautiful blue eyes filled with tears and one escaped down his left cheek, but the child was oblivious, only wanting to be sheltered. Heero moved with surety, but also slowness, still being sure not to spook him. Without removing even a sock, he climbed over the edge of the tub and knelt next to him, his clothing quickly becoming soaked. He picked up the soap and turned the water temperature down from scalding to warm, but Duo didn't even feel the difference. His body was numb, the warmth of the water giving him no comfort, and yet Heero's body heat soothed the chill better than a roaring fire and a soft blanket.

Duo trembled and wrapped his arms around Heero's soaked chest and buried his face in his sweater, sobbing loudly. Heero was going to make everything all better, he knew he would. He always did. Heero would protect him the way that no one in his entire life had been able to protect him. That was why he had run back here. He had known that, no matter what bad things happened to him, Heero would make them go away.

"Don't let the bad man get me," he pleaded in a childlike voice with a desperation that shocked even himself, "I'll be good! I'll do anything you want, just don't let him get me."

His heart raced intensely as Heero hugged, his strong arms wrapping around his own, bare back.

"I promise, I won't hurt you and I won't let anyone else hurt you, not now, not ever," he heard the other boy promise him.

Coming back to himself outside of the fuzzy memory was almost a shock to his body, returning to the warmth of the shower and Heero's arms around him to the cold isolation of the closet. Wes' proximity did nothing to lessen the chill he felt. Although he had been out of his mind back then, he remembered most of what had happened that night that Relena had paid those boys to attack him. He had told Heero all about the first time Wes had raped him, all the sordid little details. Being lured to this apartment with the promise of food, Wes drugging him and choking him and making him bleed... he had even told him about the mother cat that had comforted him afterwards. He never could have told him about those things if he hadn't been in such a terrified, childish state.

He remembered the terror he had felt when the child in him, confused about where he was, or rather, when he was, had reasoned that, if Heero was with him, that meant that he had run away and put his best friend in danger. A fear had ripped through him so strong, he had felt physically ill. He had blamed himself then, in the way he had blamed himself later when Chris had kidnapped them, but Heero hadn't. Heero had told him that it wasn't his fault. He had told him that he didn't mind being in danger, if that meant keeping Duo safe. He didn't think that Heero had realized it then, but he had been crying. The water had made it impossible to tell, but his voice had hitched and his eyes had been red.

He remembered Heero telling him that none of it mattered, Duo's feelings of being dirty and his desire to keep Heero clean, all he cared about was Duo being happy. No one had ever said those words to him before, that all that mattered was his own happiness. The thing of it was... and how was it that he was only realizing this now... he had never been happy his entire life. When he had gotten a decent meal or Wes had shown him one of those very brief, but wonderful moments of fatherly attention that had burrowed themselves painfully into his heart, he had felt warmth, relief, and affection... but he had never been happy. There had always been this... bitterness, hesitance in him that had made that emotion impossible.

Even when he had been with Solo, Shi, and the others, he had felt detached somehow. He loved them, he knew that he loved them, but he had also felt guilty when he had been around them. He had felt like he had been using them, using their friendship to make himself feel better about his situation. Every time he had shown up at their corner, they had stopped whatever they were doing to be with him. They had fed him countless of times, used what little money they had had to bandage him up if he was hurt or get him a warm milk if it was cold out. And there had been absolutely nothing he could have given back to them.

Wes took care of him. He might have done a shit job of it, but he clothed him, gave him food when he did his job right, and sheltered him from the streets. His friends had only been able to rely on each other and themselves to keep going. He could have given any of them the money he had made that night. It hadn't been much, but it would have gotten all of them fed or they could have saved it up for something important. If he had done it once, Wes might have just beaten the shit out of him, sent him to the hospital or something else just as bad. A second time, he would have undoubtedly killed him. But if he had timed it right, he could have gotten them five hundred bucks, easy, maybe more. Instead, his fear of Wes had kept him from doing that.

They had understood, Shi had even taken him aside when he had mentioned it and scolded him, had told him to never, never put his life in risk like that. It had warmed him, that Shi had been so worried about him, but, inside, he had asked himself what was so great about his own life that he should protect it instead of trying to help the only friends he had ever had. He knew now that those feelings of guilt was a massive flaw in him, a crack in his personality created from living the way he had, both on the streets and under Wes' violent rule, this belief that, any scrap of attention, affection, and care he got, he had to repay somehow because he wasn't worthy of it otherwise.

He knew now that they all would have felt miserable if he had gotten hurt for their sakes. But those bad feelings had always kept him from really feeling happy during their times together. Between their struggle for survival and all the things he had to do for Wes... it had been painful, that friendship. Amazing, but hurtful. It hadn't been until he had slept over Heero's house for the first time, had been under Name's motherly care, her concern for him even before she had known what was going on, the warmth of that house and their little family and how they had respected him, that he had felt that emotion for the first time. He had never felt it with Wes. Never. Would he ever?

Wes would never be Heero. Why couldn't he just accept that? He kept comparing the two of them and they never came up equal. Why did he keep thinking they would? Hell, why did he keep thinking that they should be equal? When Heero had washed him that time, it had felt so comforting to him. Those hands were almost as strong as Wes', he had seen the kind of damage they could do when his friend was pissed off, but he knew, deep down in his heart, that Heero would never ever turn that strength on him. He never knew when Wes would, but it had always been a surety for him that he would feel that power and violence eventually. Even when he washed him, he felt wary. If he was honest with himself, the only times when he didn't feel anxious were when Wes was hurting him, because he knew he didn't have to wait any longer.

　　　　　　　　　 �If he raped you, then why are you protecting him?� Trowa asked. Duo looked at Name again.

　　　　　　　　　 �He�s all I have,� Duo said and Name shuddered at the dead look in his eyes, �He�s the only parent I�ve ever known. How could I have betrayed him? I�m only alive today because of him��
Wes stood with the tray in hand and left to put the dishes in the kitchen sink, completely missing the shocked, almost horrified look on Duo's face as that memory, on the heels of the previous one, hit him with all of the force of a freight train.
"... he raped you... why are you protecting him?"
Duo felt unsettled to the depths of his core from that one, simply memory; sick and in pain, lying on a hospital bed, surrounded by people who barely knew anything about him, but had wanted to help him and shelter him without needing anything from him in return, and seeing that bewilderment on their faces, their pain and confusion at his reticence to give up his abuser's name... he hadn't been able to comprehend any of it. Why couldn't them understand? he had thought. Without Wes, he was nothing. Yes, the man had hurt him and made him feel like shit his entire life with him, but he had done more for him than anyone else had. Why couldn't they understand that being raped didn't mean anything compared to his fear of giving up Wes' identity and the feeling that he shouldn't because he owed the man everything?

But... that was such a flawed way of thinking, he knew that now. Thanks to Name and all his new friends, he was able to come to a very simple conclusion of his life with Wes: he didn't owe the man shit. Hadn't he already told Wes that? Just because he had saved his life in Boston, it didn't mean that he owed him his life, that his life and his choices belonged to him. The fact that Wes seemed to think so, that just because he could have easily left him to die and, by some miracle, hadn't, Duo should be grateful, had infuriated him. Why? Why should he feel angry at Wes thinking that, when he had been thinking the same thing, believing the same thing for most of his life? Wes had taken him from the streets, had fed him and clothed him, had probably saved him from death in one form or the other. He had taught him things. Because of Wes, he had been able to go to school, learn how to read, and even met Heero. Because of all those things, he had believed that he owed Wes his loyalty.

The question wasn't why he should feel angry at Wes. The question was why hadn't he realized that himself believing those things was just as wrong and twisted and damaging as Wes believing them, that in reality, they were the same disease? For the first time in his life, he understood something. He didn't believe that Wes had done right by him, that they belonged together and that he could never leave him because he owed him so much, because those things were actually true. He, as a child, had thought that they were, but that rage he had felt as Wes proved to him that they weren't. If they were, he never could have forged another life for himself with Name and Heero. Because, and he had never thought this before or rather, he had never realized how important this was, for all those moments that he had longed for Wes, had felt lonely without his presence and had been unable to think about anything except for him and the life he had forced upon him, there had been an equal moment when he hadn't entered his thoughts at all.

There had been times when he had just basked in Name, Heero, Quatre, and Trowa's love for him, when he had laughed at some joke or smiled at some kindness, when he had just lost himself in playing a game with Heero and Trowa or talking about a book he had just read with Quatre. And in those moments, he had forgotten all about Wes. He had forgotten about his scars and his nightmares, about his bad health and bad memories, about being a whore and that, somewhere, Wes was probably looking at him, thoroughly pissed off, and plotting something nasty to do to him in retaliation. In those moments, his old life had died, if only for a moment, and he had been his new self, completely and entirely. In those moments, he had been happy.

For the first time in his life, he understood that Wes had been lying to him in one form or the other, and he had allowed himself to be lied to, not because it was pretty or comforting, but because he had absolutely no other way of thinking. Wes had been right all those years ago that it was better to get a street kid, but it had nothing to do with explaining what prostitution was or having to deal with some shocked kid crying for his mommy. It was because, before Wes, he had had nothing. He had had nothing to return to, nothing to compare the man to. No father to add Wes up to. So, when Wes had told him that he was shit, that his only purpose was for fucking, or that he didn't deserve food or a shower unless he was good at being a whore, or, more importantly, that he owed Wes for giving him what little scraps he had, those things had quickly turned into beliefs in his heart and in his mind because no one had ever told him differently. And as a child, all he could do was listen to the only adult he had to tell him how he should act and live his life.

But now, he understood. He only thought that he should be loyal to Wes, only hurt when he wanted to go against him, because Wes had conditioned him to think and feel that way. It wasn't because there was any truth in it. Wes had wanted him to believe those things because it would tie them together forever. It would make it nearly impossible for Duo to have the freedom to even try to escape from him. Wes had wanted a slave and he had gotten that. Not from love or kindness or any of the hundreds of things Name had done that would make him care for her and feel bound to her, but from abuse and pain. He had broken him down, had fucked with his mind, and now, he would be conflicted for his entire life. He would always wonder if he loved Wes, would always think of him as his father, would always have moments where he would fall back into that old pattern of obey or I'll hurt you.

He had told Name once that Wes was the only person he had in his life. That wasn't true. That had changed. But those other things... he could move away from them, but they would always be there, in his head. He would always be subconscious and meek, would always have the instinct to obey and ignore his own needs for other people. He would always look down on himself, maybe not as badly as he had in the past, but it would still be there. He would always love Wes. Wes had seen to that. It hadn't been a choice, anymore than a child had a choice to care for a parent. Even if they hated them, some part of them would always love them and miss them when they were gone. Duo wrapped his arms around his stomach, feeling a sharp pain there and in his head. Sorrow fell over him like a high wave and he realized in a dim, miserable way, that he was sobbing and had been for a couple of minutes, his cheeks already wet with tears. Wes had destroyed him... he would never be like Heero or Quatre or Trowa or Wufei. He would never be normal, never be whole...
"... he raped you..."
Duo squeezed his eyes shut and hid his face against his knees. In the kitchen, he heard running water coming from the sink, but it sounded like whole worlds away from where he was in the dark closet. No, he didn't want to remember... to remember what Wes had done to him, how it had made him feel... that terrible moment when a cruel, unknown criminal had drugged him, pinned him down, made him feel more vulnerable than he had ever felt in his entire, sordid life, and, for the first time, had shown him what it felt like to be violated. Had shown him the terrible pain Sunshine must have felt right before he had died. He didn't want to remember that Wes was that man. Rape... the sick thing was, if it had happened to anyone else, he would have told them all of the things that Name and his friends had told him. It isn't your fault. You aren't a bad person. Get out, let that dysfunctional relationship go because it's nothing more than a toxin... but he had been incapable of believing or acting on those things for himself.

He kept wanting to blame himself, kept wondering what he had done wrong to deserve this. But he hadn't done anything! Not to Wes. The man had taken him as a helpless child, had raped him, tortured him, and then forced him to work for him while denying him his most basic needs. He had treated him worse than he would have a dog. Wes's voice in his head telling him that he loved him, that he would take care of him and never whore him out again began to fade in the face of those facts and was replaced by another, the same one that had struck his heart so painfully and deliberately before.

'And this is the man you want to spend your life with?' it asked snidely.

This time, he didn't lash out at that voice or deny the truth in its words, because it was the same question that had been hiding inside of him for a very long time now. Why did he want to be with Wes when, even when the man loved him, he did nothing but hurt him? What kind of life was that to live? Hadn't he run away from Wes because he hadn't wanted to live like that anymore, always scared and on the verge of a mental break down? What, exactly, had Wes' declaration of love and loyalty changed? How did his sudden lack of violence and threats make him any less of an abuser?

For a moment, Duo felt Heero's hands on his back, caressing him lightly and gently, a kind of touch that Wes was incapable of copying. He shuddered, feeling the phantom warmth of those hands. No matter what he felt for Wes, if he loved him, needed him, if he was the only father he would ever have, his only connection to his past... no matter what he was to him, the love he felt for Heero made that other love look ugly. If Heero were here, if he could see him for no longer than a minute, Duo knew without any doubts that his best friend would give his conflicted thoughts about leaving Wes or staying with him all the clarity that he would need.

Heero's light would destroy Wes' darkness.

But Heero wasn�t with him now, so how could he make that decision? How could he find the willpower to let go of Wes once and for all? With that thought, with that one step closer to realizing what he really wanted, Duo felt his need for home acutely. But it wasn�t enough. All by himself, he was weak. Heero was strong. Wes was strong. But Duo had always been weak. Wes� darkness was just too powerful for him to beat all by himself. Nearly every last piece of him wanted to give up. He wanted to surrender, to tell Wes yes, not because he had finally decided that he loved Wes more than Name or even because he believed it would be safer for his new family if both he and Wes disappeared forever. It was simply because... he was tired of fighting. He was tired of this push and pull between the two of them. He was tired of being afraid and confused and conflicted. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to let go of everything that mattered, to forget.

�You always knew,� that hateful voice returned, but the bitterness and somehow dangerous tone was gone from it, �you might have tried as hard as you could to deny it, like a child who deep down knows that one day, he must grow up, but from the moment you opened that door to one of Name�s guest rooms and saw that bedspread and books and pillows, all those little things she had painstakingly picked out and hoped you would like, from that very moment when you realized, subconsciously, that she had intended for you to stay as a part of her family, not just as a guest for a week or two, you have always know that you can never come back here. You have always known the answer to that riddle; Wes or Heero... you just refused to listen to the answer.�

With those words (that they were just in his head, spoken by some twisted part of his conscious, subconscious, or whatever was irrelevant) he felt his tears stop as though someone had flipped a switch. It, or he, was right. Every word that voice had uttered was true, and he felt that rightness in his heart, as though it had been waiting for him all this time. even before he had consciously realized that he needed to make a choice or what the choice was, he had made his mind up long ago, he was just stubbornly ignoring it, childishly not wanting to act on that decision because, as long as he was conflicted, as long as he refused to choose one way or the other by saying that the choice was impossible, he didn't have to lose anyone.

This entire time, he had been painting this picture of Wes as the father he had always desperately craved to have. He had stubbornly clung to old memories, trying to find all of those rare moments when the man had been affectionate or kind to them, and had tried to add them up to equal some grand, beautiful truth. But they were so few, so weak and pathetic, that both as a child and now, he had scrambled to make them seem more important, to give them a greater value than the moments of pain and darkness so they could measure up. But it was a lie. He had actually set out at some point in his childhood and had consciously tried to fool himself into believing that Wes could give him what he needed, that he cared for him and was capable of love if he could just be a good boy because... because...

...he was lonely. Through the hunger and cold, the very first thing he could remember, his first, infantile memory, was loneliness.

The truth, in all of its harshness, was that Wes was just obsessed and abusive. He didn't love him. The truth was that he had never, and would never, be what Duo needed. And he would always hurt him. There was nothing else and there had never been anything else, no matter what he had chosen to see and believe. Hadn't this kidnapping proved that to him? He had been unwilling to see it before, but the longer he was away from home, ironically, instead of becoming more distant from that life, he felt his need for it more intensely, and he could see how wrong his current situation was. Wes said that he loved him, but he had locked him away in the dark, had tied him up and made him bleed. He had promised to not whore him out anymore, but had continuously raped him.

He had been in the dark for so long... he had lived there, had breathed it in, let it fill him up, just like in his nightmares. He had existed in that dark place for such a long time that he clung to Wes, had let him fill his empty life with something, not caring that it would eventually destroy him, it had been so much better than the nothingness before him. That had been Sister Helen's true legacy to him. She had shown him what it was like to have someone in your life that cared for you, who actually wanted to be by your side. Then, she had taken it all away from him. He had gone on, believing that things would be exactly the same as it had been before she had come into his life, but in reality, on the inside he had been rotting. Then Wes had 'rescued' him from that. Wes had taken Helen's place and filled that emptiness with him.

Name's love and kindness had come too late. That thought was so painful, but as wonderful as her affection for him was, he still couldn't let go of Wes. The man had filled him up too completely, too thoroughly, and it was too hard for him to accept that Name was really the one he needed. If he had met her as a child, even two or three years after Wes had kidnapped him, he probably would have fallen into her arms easily, but after eight years...

Duo realized something else. All those years craving some kind of affection from Wes had created that intense pain he had felt every single time he had called him worthless or stupid or pathetic, every time he had failed Wes in some way and had blamed himself for it. He understood. No matter what he did, no matter how well he behaved or if he did every single thing Wes told him to do, no matter how terrible or what mark it left on his soul, he would never be good enough for Wes. He would always do some wrong, something that Wes would punish him and make him feel like shit for. The man had always had the knack for making the smallest error feel like some major flaw in him.

He had always seen that as his fault, every tiny thing that he did wrong, every time Wes used his fists or belt or cruel words to 'correct' him. But now he understood that it wasn't his fault, just like Name and Heero and the others kept trying to make him believe. It was a flaw in Wes, to not take him as he was. Their entire lives together, Wes had tried to change him. What sort of love was that? If you had to change a person, how could you possibly be in love with them? Heero, Name, Trowa, Quatre, and Wufei all loved him for who he was, and they had seen him at his worst, had seen him for all his flaws and had loved him for them instead of trying to break those weaknesses. But Wes... the same man who claimed to love him and be unable to live without him, was incapable of it.

Wes had done some really unspeakable things to him. He remembered then, the sharp, horrifying pain as Wes had hit him with the baseball bat on his upper, left side. He remembered the heat that had blossomed there and the startling sound of two of his ribs cracking. He remembered how the wound had become an iron ball in his side up until Chris had squeezed the exact same spot, bursting his spleen. But more than all of those things, he remembered how, deep down inside, he had felt betrayal. And what had he done to warrant getting struck with a fucking baseball bat?! Oh, that's right. His school nurse had started asking the wrong questions and when Wes had accused him, he had tried to defend himself.

That wasn't nearly the only time he had been hurt for some minor infraction, many of them he had been completely unaware he would get punished for. Thanks to Wes, he had come close to death so many times, but he had never told anyone anything until he had met Heero, because of his fear of his pimp, and because some part of him was scared of getting Wes sent to jail. He had actually felt strange guilt over that possibility. He had lied for the man thousands of times. he had stolen for him, Wes gleefully using the fact that Duo had stolen while he had been living on the streets.

But those times had been different. He had only ever pickpocketed food or enough money for a hot meal, or clothes that had been left unattended. The most expensive thing he had ever taken had been a pair of shoes from a boy around his own age. The boy had taken them off to go rollerblading in the park. He had put them into one of those tiny lockers by the bathrooms you had to pay the attendant a dollar for the key. It had been easy figuring out how to bypass the flimsy lock and nab the shoes. They had kept his feet safe from frost bite that entire winter. But Wes had forced him to steal money from the wallets of his one time customers, sometimes even driver's licenses, family photos, or social security cards, if he needed to blackmail them. Even drugs, at times. If one of his mules or partners were acting suspicious, Wes would send Duo to them for a night and Duo would snoop around their place while they were sleeping for any incriminating evidence, knowing full well what Wes would do to the person if he found any. he had also know that the least penalty he would get if he were ever caught was a trip to the hospital. The worst being a bullet to the head. The only time he had ever refused to steal for Wes was when he had slept over at Heero's house. The thought of stealing from his friend and his mother had been a line that he hadn't been able to cross.

He had done terrible things, all for Wes' sake, things that he could barely remember and had absolutely no desire to...
//Duo didn't sleep. He nearly dozed off a couple of times, but every time he did, he saw the sight h had come home to. Wes and Chris kneeling on Wes' bed, the little girl laying there, her olive eyes open and staring at nothing, one bare leg visible, almost completely stained with blood, only a few glimpses of fair, unblemished skin. The dead girl. Her hair had been blonde. Why was that the thing that he remembered the most vividly? Her eyes hadn't been pretty, or that ugliness could have been because of how much like a fish or doll they looked in death, but her hair had been so beautiful, curly and clean. And then, in his head, Wes saw him standing there in the doorway and smirked at him. Somehow, his cold grey eyes were so much worse than that cruel, sadistic smirk. But that hadn't happened. Wes and Chris hadn't noticed him or, if they had, they had been too busy talking about how to dispose of her body to care about his presence.

Still, that threat had stayed with him, the fear that what they had done to that girl would happen to him. How long did he have before Wes decided he had outlived his usefulness? How long before Wes strode into his room and slit his throat? That fear had kept him wide awake in a state of paranoia. When he had felt the need to go to the bathroom, he had just laid there, too scared to move, as though Wes might descend upon him if he even breathed too loudly. His heart hadn't stopped beating rapidly since last night and he felt incredibly sick from stress and not sleeping. He kept wondering what was so great about his life that he should be so scared of Wes murdering him, and hadn't he, in the worst parts of his training, prayed that the man would go too far and end it all? But the fear stayed alive in his heart, inexplicable and as impossible to get rid of as that image of the girl's eyes staring dead at him.

According to the clock, it was that strange part of the morning when it was still as dark as night, but a brand new day nonetheless. Things had been silent until about ten minutes ago, when he heard Wes stirring in the bedroom next to his. He had heard Chris leave about an hour after he had slipped into bed last night, thankfully. He couldn't deal with the bear of a man on a good day, it was hard enough knowing that Wes was here. His bladder felt like it was going to explode and he knew that he couldn't just lie here, waiting for... nothing, exactly. Better to be up and aware when Wes came looking for him. He thought that if Wes came in here and fucked him as he laid here, he might actually go crazy. Duo slipped out of bed, trying to be as silent as possible without even realizing he was sneaking. He walked to the door and waited, peeking out. He stood there a full twenty minutes until Wes emerged from his own bedroom. His heart pounded, waiting for the blonde to turn and walk in his direction. Instead, Wes continued down the hallway towards the kitchen. Duo waited a bit longer, sure he was going to come back his way and grab him, shake him, and tell him that he knew Duo had seen them last night, and he was going to shut him up one way or the other... for a moment, the boy pondered his chances if he tried to escape. The mere thought sent equal terror and pain through him. Escaping Wes... even if Wes was going to kill him, it was impossible. He couldn't run from him, that hadn't changed since the first time he had tried and had his head bashed into the floor for it.

Duo heard Wes rummaging around in the kitchen, followed by the sound of the coffee maker doing its things and knew that, soon, the entire kitchen would have the thick smell of whatever roast it was he drank. The fear settled. If Wes was making coffee, he would start to make breakfast as well and read Chris' report. Duo had no idea what was in the report, only that every morning, instead of reading the newspaper, the tall blonde would be reading the packet of papers. The very first time he had seen this behavior and had stood on his tip toes, trying to read some of it out of natural curiosity, Wes had backhanded him and told his that what was in there was none of his damned business, but Duo could guess. In a way, the thug was like any other business man. He had an empire to run, employees to keep an eye on, and profits to track. Things that Duo had no real interest in beyond gauging Wes' daily mood. And the fact that, once the man had his coffee, he wouldn't leave the kitchen for some time.

Duo crept down the hallway and quickly used the bathroom. He felt silly about creeping around the apartment when he had already been living there for two years and there was no threat now that hadn't been present before, but it still made him feel better when he got there and Wes wasn't breathing down his neck. When he was done, he walked normally back to his room and got dressed, no longer worried about Wes hearing him and coming after him. If he was going to hurt him for last night, he would do it in the kitchen. He had to have heard the flush of the toilet anyway. He put on the shorts and t-shirt he had worn yesterday, since they weren't dirty enough to warrant putting on something else, and it already felt like it was going to be hot again. If he was going to sweat and feel miserable, he might as well do it in dirty clothes instead of ruining clean ones.

He didn't even think about keeping his night clothes on even though it was barely morning. He wasn't going to sleep anyway and if Wes was up this early, there was a reason for it. The intimidating man was already sitting down at the kitchen table, drinking from a steaming mug. This morning, like only a few before it, he didn't have a pile of papers to through. He was eating from a plate of toast and scrambled eggs, and there were additional aromas in the air that would have normally made Duo's stomach growl quite loudly.

But behind those delicious smells of breakfast, there was another one, a nasty, insidious one. As Duo approached, his eyes became glued to the sight of a large bag made up of black blankets that had been tied closed. Because of the color, he couldn't see any stains, but he knew they were there, just like how he didn't have to guess what was in it. The bag reeked of an odor that no amount of chinese food, cigarette smoke, sex, or scrambled eggs could cover and he gagged with each step he took. Wes saw him and pushed a second plate away from him, towards the other side of the table. Duo hesitated, but for only a second. He wasn't so far removed from living on the street that he didn't instantly have the desire to grab food and go hide in the dark with it, but in living with Wes, offered food, offered free food, shriveled his stomach. After that first sandwich, he had no appetite for anything Wes gave him that didn't come with some sort of price or a reward for something he had done.

But at the same time, he didn't dare turn any food down. Not because he was never sure when he would see food again, but because he knew what Wes would do to him if he refused it. He sat up at the kitchen table on the opposite side of Wes, who had pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pants pocket and was pulling one out. Duo noticed for the first time that he was dressed well in a suit, which meant he had some business today. He held some hope that the man wouldn't be around that much, and that the business was good business, so he wouldn't be in a foul mood. He looked down at the plate of food like it was some grand riddle he needed to figure out, but for the life of him, couldn't even understand. It was three pancakes, already coated in butter and syrup, as well as two strips of bacon. Wes had the rest of the bacon on his plate. Duo still had a hard time eating rich foods like cheese or onions, even the bacon was touchy for him, and eggs were too expensive, so Wes never gifted him with them, so the pancakes were an odd treat. Wes lit his cigarette, the flick of flame from the lighter startling Duo.

"Eat it," Wes ordered gruffly, but not angrily, taking a drag from the cigarette.

Duo cut up the pancakes, just like how Wes had shown him to do, carefully holding both the knife and fork the right way, and took a bite. He had half expected it to taste terrible, a cheap prank from a man that often like to play nasty games with him, or maybe bitter from some kind of drug or poison, but they tasted fine. Wes wasn't exactly a good cook, but they weren't raw or burnt and Duo wasn't a picky eater. The taste of food on his tongue threw a switch in his stomach and, if only for a minute, he forgot about the bag and his fear of the man sitting a couple of feet away from him. He ate the pancakes as though he had never eaten anything like them before and gulped down the glass of water Wes had put by him in mere seconds. Wes finished his breakfast, coffee, and cigarette and watched Duo eat, calculating something. Duo didn't think about it that much, Wes almost always looked at him like that, so while it bothered him a great deal, it wasn't something that alarmed him at the moment.

"I'm going on a trip this morning," Wes told him as Duo finished eating.

Duo wisely kept his mouth shut, even though he wanted to ask a dozen questions. Wes would tell him all that he wanted him to know and nothing more. Questions would just gain him a broken nose and no answers.

"I'll be gone until tomorrow night," the blonde informed him nonchalantly, "and in the meantime, you are going to do a chore for me."

The small brunette felt a thrill of relief go through him, but didn't let it show on his face. Two whole days! He would have freedom for two days... Wes didn't trust him enough to go on jobs when he wasn't around, so he wouldn't have to see any customers until he got back. And if this 'trip' was important enough for Wes to be dressed up like that, it meant that Chris was going to be going, too.

"You are going to get rid of that," he nodded to the bag in the corner.

Duo paled, his meal feeling like a lump in his stomach. 'That'... there was no way he could do that... he knew what was in that bag... he didn't even want to go near the thing. He couldn't touch it, couldn't pick it up. And he couldn't be responsible for something... something that 'important'!

"Wes... I can't..." he shook his head, his voice small as he knew what was going to happen the second the forbidden words were out of his mouth.

Wes stood up, crushing the used up cigarette in the ash tray and strode over to Duo without any sense of urgency. Duo scrambled out of the chair, but couldn't avoid it as Wes back handed him so hard that he felt, his lip splitting by the force of it. Blood dripped down his chin, but he barely even registered it through the pain.

"No... no..." he cried, pushing himself away from Wes until his back hit the wall, more in denial of what the man wanted him to do than his fear of getting hit, "Please, Wes... I can't do something like that-"

Wes hit him again, this time with his fist instead of just an open hand. Pain exploded in his right cheek and eye and he saw bright lights in that eye, then blackness, then muted colors in his already poor vision. Later, his cheek and eye would blacken and he wouldn't be able to open it fully without excruciating pain for at least two days. Wes grabbed him by his long hair and slammed his head against the wall. Duo shook, not from the pain but from the violence and the reminder of Wes' power. The fear he had had earlier of Wes killing him returned. Wes knelt down, but still managed to tower over him. Despite Duo's refusal to do what he was told, Wes didn't look angry, and that terrified the boy.

"If I do that," Duo said in a barely audible voice, his lip throbbing with every word, "...I'll get caught. I can't... I can't... do something like that, I've never..."

"Shut up," Wes snapped and Duo did.

Wes stared at him for a moment and the brunette felt the pain in his face acutely through that predatory glare.

"You have no right to any opinion," the man said coldly, "You are my property, and when my property cannot do what I have purchased it for, I don't take it back or try to get it fixed," he cupped Duo's bruised cheek, as though he were caressing it, but instead squeezed it, making pain burst there through the haze that the impact with the wall had made in his head, "I trash it."

Duo felt a pressure around his neck and panicked, thinking that Wes was choking him, only to realize that it was all in his head.

"If you can't do what I want you to do," Wes continued in a matter of fact tone, "I'll kill you and find someone else who can," he let go of Duo's cheek and stood back up, looking down at him, leaving Duo trembling, "What I want you to do is simple. You don't even have to cut her up, Chris and I did that already, so stop bitching about it. There's a dumpster five blocks from here in an alley on Coon St. Leave the bag there. I have a man who will pick it up tonight. I don't have the time to do it myself. Understood?"

His tone told Duo that it wasn't a question. Not at all. He nodded shakily, knowing that he didn't really have a choice. He could do this, or Wes would get someone to dispose of his body in that dumpster. He was a lot more scared of what Wes would do to him than getting caught by the police or touching that bag. Wes walked away from him to wash the dishes. Duo took a few minutes to get to his feet, still trembling a little. He looked at the bag and felt like he was going to throw up. Wes gathered his keys and started to walk towards the door, but before Duo could even feel relieved about him leaving so he could gather up the courage to do this, he turned back around and regarded him with a cold look and cruel almost-smirk, just like the one he had seen in his head all night long.

"And don't bother trying to run away when I'm gone," Wes said with an amused tone, "If you do, I won't cut the bottoms of your feet this time," grey, reptilian eyes glanced down at Duo's legs, just long enough to give Duo a confused chill, "there's this very special ligament in the knees that, if its cut, the person will never be able to stand up again for their entire lives," he looked back up at Duo's face, enjoying how horrified and sickened the nine year old looked and his voice turned cold and threatening, "If you run away, I will find you and make sure that you will only ever be able to crawl or lie on your back," he smirked, "the perfect whore, really. maybe I should do it anyway. What else are you good for but fucking and giving head? You don't need your legs."

With that terrible threat delivered, Wes left the apartment. Duo watched him and stood there in the kitchen in a complete daze as those incredibly cruel and menacing words soaked into him.

"Maybe I should do it anyway."

His guts twisted and he felt cold. Very, very cold. Duo could actually feel his flesh crawling. He swayed on his feet, feeling faint. His legs felt faint.
"If you run away, I will find you and make sure that you will only ever be able to crawl or lie on your back."
Duo walked slowly and calmly to the bathroom, his vision so gray and distant, he only got there through instinctual memory. He very carefully lifted up the toilet seat, but when he went to kneel down, a phantom pain shot through his knees and he fell on them in shock. He grabbed the toilet and violently threw up into it, not caring one little bit that the meal Wes had given him had gone to waste. Knowing the man's penchant for sick mind games, he had probably known all along what that threat would do to him. He was probably still smirking that ugly smirk right now... and yet the knowledge that this might be all a nasty prank did nothing to diminish the sinister look he had seen in Wes' eyes when he had delivered those heartless words, nothing to delude himself that the threat wasn't very real.

Even when he finished, his stomach spasmed and ached, but he barely registered the pain over his terror and revulsion. His body shook as he sat there on the floor, feeling like he had just crawled out of an ice box. He felt like there was nothing inside of him, that he was just skin and nerves. He wanted to stand up off of the cold, tiled floor, but was terrified of using his legs. It was a silly, childish fear, and he knew that, but even the thought of moving them scared him. What if he tried and he felt that phantom pain again? How could he feel that pain just from some words, just from a suggestive threat? It was like Wes held some kind of God-like power over his body and mind. He was even scared to close his eyes because when he did, all he could think about was what it would be like, not being able to use his legs or move his knees...

Duo retched over the toilet again, but his stomach was empty, just making it spasm. His body was shaking so badly, it felt like he might have a seizure. When the spasms stopped again, he realized that he felt wetness on his face and wiped at it. He looked down at his arm and saw a mix of blood and tears, but didn't even care about the blood. He could still hear Wes' voice in his head, coldly telling him that he didn't need his legs, he was just a whore, so all he needed was to be able to suck a man off and let them fuck him. He felt like a doll with detachable parts and Wes, his master, could take off anything he didn't want or need and just... toss it away. It was his body, but it wasn't. He had no control at all what Wes did to it. If Wes wanted to cut off his legs, he would do it. Duo had no free will, no ability to say no and protect his own, natural body.

Duo leaned his head against the icy cold rim of the toilet and started to sob. He tucked his knees close to his tiny body and truly felt them for the first time in his life, felt the strength in them, how they helped him run and walk and how grateful he was for them. It took him an hour to get the courage to try to stand up, but when he did, he was so dizzy and faint headed that he had to sit back down for another twenty minutes. By the time he could stay upright, he had no idea if he was shaking because of his fear or the cold of the floor. He flushed the toilet and walked slowly back towards the kitchen. The entire time, Wes' words continued to play over and over and over in this head, like a recording that he couldn't shut off.

Anything Wes did to him, any cruel thing he said or did, he had become quite adept at pushing deep down inside and locking it into some dark, pulsating box where he would beat at it mercilessly until he forgot about it. Oh, he never really forgot. It was always there, just under the surface of his thoughts, waiting for him to fall asleep so it could give him fuzzy, but horrible dreams. But when he was awake, they faded away and he never tried to remember them. None of them were exactly pleasant. But this... this couldn't be pushed down. It refused to go and no matter how hard he tried to just move past it, it demanded his complete and total attention. It reminded him, terribly, of when Wes had raped him the first time, those same feelings of isolation and hysteria and being absolutely nothing, not even the lowest sort of human being.

And that feeling of danger, of not being safe, that hadn't left him since that first night together. In two years, he hadn't felt safe. Even when he had been living on the street, he had moments when he had found the perfect hidey hole, the perfect place where no one could find him and hurt him. There was no hiding from Wes. And now, Wes was gone and wouldn't be back for days, but he didn't feel as though the threat had gone. It was as though his presence were still here in this apartment, like a lingering ghost.

The bag was waiting for him in the kitchen and his mind painted dark, terrible stains on the dark fabric, making it look even more ominous. In that bundle of old sheets was the dismembered body of that pretty blonde girl... he wondered if her eyes, if they were still in her head, were still wide and shocked. Duo felt like throwing up all over again. He didn't even want to look at it... but he still realized the transition in his mind. he had stopped thinking that he wouldn't do it, and had started to think in terms of inevitability. He was going to do this. A sense of betrayal swept through him. No matter what Wes acted like or said, this wasn't just... just a sack of rotten meat he had a chore to take out with the trash!

It... no, she had been alive, a breathing, thinking human being. And no matter where she had come from, that she had had a family and a real name, for a moment, the two of them had been the same, had experienced the same pain at the hands of the same man and to just drop her off, discard her like everyone before Wes had discarded him really did feel like a betrayal. But what could he do? What choice did he have? If he didn't do this, the Wes probably wouldn't just kill him, he would-

Duo cut off that thought as quickly and thoroughly as he could manage. He didn't want to start dry heaving again. No matter how terrible this was, his fear of getting caught or that he was helping to cover up a murder couldn't complete with his terror over Wes fulfilling his threat. He took a deep breath, ignoring how queasy he still felt and grabbed the bag, wondering if he even could pick it up. It was both heavier and lighter than he had thought. Lighter because he had assumed his thin arms would have a harder time lifting it up. Heavier than her size would have suggested. It wouldn't be a pleasant trip, but he could manage it. He hoisted the bag up into his arms and carried it to the door. He could have dragged it to save the strength in his arms, but couldn't bring himself to do something like that. He got the door open and locked it behind him with the spare key Wes kept in one of the kitchen drawers.

The second he got the door locked, the heat hit him like a tidal wave. Somehow, while he had been in the apartment he hadn't felt the heat. And with that heat, he also smelled the bag strongly, as though the heat were already working on the rotting flesh. He wrinkled his nose, realizing that it was only going to smell worse with this heat wave. But it wasn't the first time he had smelled a dead body and, judging by Wes'... business practices, wouldn't be the last, so he kept going. On the street, he got a few curious, perplexed stares and realized that the image he presented was probably a bit odd, a long haired boy carrying a large bundle of sheets through one of the worst summer heats they had seen in years, but they either minded their own business or it was just too damned hot for them to give a shit what some little brat was dragging around.

If it had been twenty degrees cooler, Duo would not have struggled so much, but in that heat and humidity, even two blocks was hell. He was sweating so hard that the bag almost fell from his grip several times and he had to stop to adjust his grip, and his feet slid in his sandals, but he walked slowly so he wouldn't trip, making the trek to Coon Street take twice as long. He wanted nothing more than to hurry and get this macabre chore over with, but he couldn't afford to fall. And was it strange that he cared significantly less about the bag breaking and him getting caught than skinning his knees? He had skinned them hundreds of times before, but he knew that, today, the pain would be excruciating.

It was still early morning, around six o'clock, so there weren't a lot of people out and about, thankfully, but just two blocks away from his goal, someone finally approached him. It was an elderly woman with white hair that was plastered to her face with sweat and she looked like she was struggling just as much as he was as she carried three bags of groceries. Still, she stopped in concern and even went as far as to speak to him.

"What are you doing with a big bag like that, sweetheart?" she asked kindly.

Duo's heart ached, but he pushed it aside. The woman wrinkled her nose as she was the only one that had gotten close enough and stayed near him long enough to smell the bag's contents. He didn't miss a beat.

"My daddy didn't make the garbage this week," he lied with an easiness that had become second nature to him these past two years, "We had to throw out some meat, cuz our fridge broke. He was supposed to bring the garbage to the dumpster down the street, cuz it's starting to smell so bad, but he forgot to before he went on his trip today. He won't be back for a couple of days and it smells really gross," he wrinkled his nose, too, to emphasize this point.

The old woman frowned in that way that some women did when they were judging things.

"It sounds like your daddy forgets things a lot," she said worriedly.

Duo felt a thrill of paranoia, but just nodded, waiting for the questions to start. Do you have a mommy, where do you live, what does your dad do for a living...

"Do you need help carrying it?" she asked instead.

"No," Duo shook his head, trying to stay calm even as he had the sudden urge to tell her the truth, and hating himself for how easy this was, not just lying to someone who was showing him a very rare moment of kindness, but how detached he felt, how the lies came so instinctually, they felt they were coming from someone else's mouth, "It isn't heavy."

The old woman paused and Duo was certain that had it been cooler, she would have pressed the issue and tried to carry the bag for him, but the heat made people hastier, less patient, and she hurried on her way. Duo continued on his own way until he finally reached Coon Street, but his an obstacle that Wes hadn't told him about. At the mouth of the alley, only about ten feet from the dumpster which sat in a shadowy portion of the alley, was a very tall, metal fentce. The door on it had a heavy padlock, the kind you needed two keys to open. The alley no doubt held the back entrance to some of the shops that made up the surrounding buildings and the gate was an extra measure to deter thieves. Duo understood now why Wes was using this alley to leave the body, and why he had ordered him to do it. Someone as skilled as Wes could easily bypass the lock, but no crony would have the tools to break it.

The fence was too tall and awkward to climb, no matter how tall and limber you were, only the door had a decent foot hold. But the bars were just far enough apart for someone as thin as Duo to pass through. You also had to be short because a bar ran across the top of the five foot tall door from one side to the other. It was impossible to crouch under that bar and squeeze through, so only an emaciated midget, or a thin child, could do it. No sane person would try to get in here to dumpster dive. There would be more accessible alleys elsewhere, so the likelihood of someone besides Wes' compatriot finding the bag was slim and, knowing Wes, he had thought of all those slim chances.

Duo stared at the fence. He could squeeze through, but what about the bag? There was no way it could fit through, and he couldn't throw it hard enough to make it over the gate. It was too heavy for him to lift it very high, let alone throw it, and he was too scared of the bag breaking, worse than that... it seemed... what was the word? Disrespectful. He had never been prissy about touching dead bodies before. He had stolen from corpses dozens of times and he was used to filth. It was because he had know her. Even for just a second, he had seen her when she had been alive and it felt so wrong to him to just throw her body over the fence. So... if he couldn't lift, push, or throw, what did that leave him...? Pulling?

Duo, bolstered on by this new idea, examined the top of the fence more closely. While it was clearly too tall to climb over, he could probably throw a rope over it and use it to hoist the bag over the top. The trick would be getting the bag to go over the top without getting stuck or snagging, and it was going to fall, but he might be able to catch it, and it was a better idea than just leaving it at the mouth of the alley or pushing each individual... piece through the bars. He put the bag right next to the bars and slipped between them. It would have been taxing, and perhaps painful as small as the gap was, but he was so sweat that it wasn't that difficult. however, the heat had been working on the metal for the past few days and he burned himself a little, the worst on the side of his face and his knees. He drew himself up on the fronts of his feet to keep from getting his toes burnt, though.

The longhaired boy ran deeper down the alley, hurriedly looking for some rope before he was spotted back here. He didn't dare go through the dumpster. The rusty, green metal was even hotter than the fence, making the smell coming from it pungent, and there was no way, even if he stood on a box, that he could get inside of it without burning his palms and fingers. He would need all of the strength and feeling in his hands in order to finish this, so he settled for looking around the bits of trash that littered the alley. There was no rope, but he found a large stack of flattened cardboard that was held together by packing twine. He untied it, noting that it would be just long enough. Rope would be better, but he couldn't risk leaving the bag here to go find some and it wasn't like he was trying to lift furniture. The twine should hold.

Checking for anyone at the mouth of the alley that might try to investigate what he was doing, Duo went back to the other side of the fence, tied the twine to the bag and tried to throw the other end of the twine over the fence. He missed. The twine was just so light that it didn't carry too far when he threw it. He tried again, and again. By the time he had thrown hard enough for the twine to go over the fence instead of through it, an hour had passed. He was sweating and breathing hard, his heart hammering in his chest from both paranoia and exertion, all this activity in the heavy heat making him dehydrated. He pushed back through the bars and saw that the twine was still a good two to three feet beyond where he could reach, but at this point, he was too far along to be deterred. He grabbed another large stack of cardboard and dragged it over to the fence.

He backed away from it and took some deep breaths, looking from the cardboard to the twine. If he misjudged the distance, the least he would have to look forward to was a broken nose. He ran at the cardboard, as fast as he could. He wouldn't be attempting this a second time. Even if he didn't manage to break something, he felt too close to heatstroke to get this much speed again, and he knew that, the longer this took, the faster his luck was going to run out and he would be seen. Duo, not slowing down, jumped onto the cardboard and used his forward momentum to make a desperate grab for the twine. his fingers just barely brushed against it, but he quickly curled his fist around it, pulling it down instead of missing and hitting the fence. He almost screamed in triumph, realizing immediately that he hadn't actually believed this would work.

'Won't be able to do that when Wes slashes your knees,' a cruel, almost snide voice chimed a matter-of-factly in his head.

All of the strength went out of Duo's legs, although he somehow managed to keep a tight grip on the makeshift pulley system, and he fell onto his knees, shaking again and feeling a strong chill despite the uncomfortable weather. His stomach spasmed as all the things he had tried to leave back at the apartment, his fear of Wes fulfilling his threat, his revulsion at the phantom pain in his knees and legs and just how little his life and self was worth, and his complete and utter horror at the cruelty and... inhumanity of it, as well as how he would live if Wes went through with it, came blooding back, slamming into him like a wave. For the very first time, he was grateful that Wes had given this job, it gave him something to focus on and use to stop those feelings from overwhelming him.

Duo, pointedly ignoring what that voice had said, stood back up like an ungainly newborn deer on shaking legs and wrapped the twine around his arm so it wouldn't slip out of his sweaty hands. The bag gave some resistance as he pulled it up, but not much. To his relief, it went over the top easily without tearing and he got it over to his side of the fence with a careful tug, although he was panting and it felt like his heart was going to explode, sweat actually drippong off his bangs. He caught it very easily, the bag being big enough that it was easy to track where it was going to fall, but the weight of it falling from that height almost knocked him onto his ass.

As he frantically grabbed at the bag, his left hand wrapped around something that was hard and disgustingly wet, something that couldn't be anything else but bone. Even worse, the bag was now so warm that it felt like the pieces of her had come back to life. He almost dropped the bag with that thought. He hesitated for a moment. Guilt surged in him again, hiding and not forgotten. This girl wasn't him. She probably had family. A mother and a father, grandparents, aunts and uncles, maybe even a brother or sister. They were probably wondering where she was right now, terrified for her, something that no one had ever felt for him. No one cared that Wes had kidnapped him and no one ever would. He was nothing. But this girl... they had probably known she was missing right away.

If he did this... if he just dumped her body and walked away for Wes' man to take care of things, that family was never going to know what happened. They would always wonder if she was still alive for the rest of their lives, all because of him. He was an accomplice to all of this. And he wasn't doing it because of some big, noble cause. He was doing this out of fear and selfishness. But... if he didn't do it, Wes was going to-

Duo pushed the bag up and over the top of the dumpster, hearing it fall inside of it with a muffled thump. He didn't think about what he had just done or what he was supposed to now, that this grisly chore was done. He didn't even wait around for the man to show up, to make sure that no one took the bag. He moved like a zombie, like a train that has no choice but to follow the path of it's tracks, squeezing through the fence and walking away from the alley like he had just woken up from a bad dream, the details of it already fading.

Duo didn't remember the walk, but he suddenly found himself at the park, which was just fine with him. He liked the park. Even when it was crowded, it seemed quieter and more peaceful than anywhere else. There was a fountain and lots of places for a little kid to hide. There was even a pond where ducks liked to swim. There were a ton of them in there as he passed it, no doubt taking refuge from the sun. Duo loved the ducks, like he loved most animals and, usually, he would take the time to root around for scraps to feed them with, but there was already a group of kids there, tossing pieces of bread into the pond, and Duo wouldn't be welcome among them. He didn't want to be around people right now anyway.

Duo came across a woman sitting in one of the benches, a stroller next to her. It was one of those that had different compartments for diapers or whatever else moms needed for babies, and Duo spotted a bottle of water in one of them like a beacon. The woman was so engrossed in the book she was reading, nicking it was easy, only an explosion or the sound of her baby crying would rouse her. He snuck behind the stroller with swift, but careful movements that were second nature to him, quietly unzipped the compartment, and snagged the bottle. There wasn't even anyone around to see him do it.

With his trophy in hand, Duo moved quickly to the shade of a large tree, far away from anyone else. The tree did little to lessen the oppressive heat, but at least he was out of the sunlight. He sighed, laying against the trunk of the tree, feeling the hot grass on his bare legs. He could almost imagine that the last couple of hours had never happened. Almost.
"You will only ever be able to crawl or lie on your back. The perfect whore really."
Duo felt the acid taste of bile climbing up his throat and defiantly unscrewed the cap on the bottle, downing all of the water in one go. The water felt unpleasantly heavy in his small, empty stomach, but he didn't throw it back up, thankfully. With the heaviness of having consumed something so quickly came a lethargicness, his insomnia and taxing morning finally catching up to him, making his eyes slide closed.

A voice in his head told him that he couldn't fall asleep here, not in public, not where he was vulnerable, but it was faint, like a murmur. He fell into a very deep, disturbing sleep full of nightmares and visions of blood and dead, olive eyes.
End Part 12
　

Review Responses:
Yeni: Like I said to the others that have requested this, I won't be making an alternate universe like that. Someone else is welcome to write it (just give me my due credit for the characters), but I can't in good conscious write a story that dark, but thank you for the review!
loverofyaoi: Duo will never tell Wes about getting his spleen removed. Even though Chris was the one that made it burst, he actually blames Wes for having to have the surgery and even if he did, he's scared that Wes will just laugh it off like he has done everything vital in Duo's life so far. I'm always glad to see that I have a few fans left! *lol* I never know if this this story is popular or not. I haven't exactly gotten scathing reviews of it, but it doesn't seem to have a huge fan base or anything. So, I was bit surprised at the amount of emails I got asking why I haven't updated.
Thank you so much everyone who reviewed or favorited this story! I'm sorry that it took over a month for this part to come out. I had a lot of problems with the content in this flashback. Quite frankly, the thing about the knees squicks me out, but I thought it was a perfect example of what an asshole Wes was, is, and always will be, no matter what he promises Duo. How can anyone live with a person like that and not be dysfunctional? This entire part was going to be longer. I was going to include the entire flashback, but it just got too long, so I broke it off here.
I'll try to get the next part out faster, but the other reason why this took so long is I was gifted with horror games ^_^ Friends of ours came over and got me Fatal Frame 4 (and anyone who knows my obsession with that series can understand why I found little time to write this last week and a half), and Silent Hill Downpour came out at the same time. Silent Hill HD came out today (haven't collected it from Gamestop yet), AND I was playing Arkham Asylum before all that, so I have to finish that game as well. Allll the games for Shii.
　

　

　
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The Road to Kindness