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Beyond the Looking Glass	By : shinigamiinochi Category: Gundam Wing/AC > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 1983 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
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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Beyond the Looking Glass

Chapter 3: Dolls

Part 3
　

"A house is a place of shelter. It's the body we put on over our bodies. As our bodies grow old, so do our houses. As our bodies may sicken, so do our houses sicken.

And what of madness? If mad people live within, doesn't this madness creep into the rooms, the walls and corridors, the very boards?

Don't we sometimes sense that madness reaching out to us? Isn't that a large part of what we mean when we say that a place is unquiet, festered up with spirits?

We say "haunted," but we mean the house has gone insane.""

-Rose Red
June 8th, 2066
'Heero, I know it is difficult, believe me, I do know, but� if I must die, and we can no longer be together, please, promise me this�'

The characters, written in an elegant, cultured script, burned into Heero's head. He felt like he had on the day of the car accident that had taken his parents' life. He felt like he was falling back into black water, like he couldn't breathe. He could feel the icy water, like pricks of needles in his throat and lungs. And he could feel the glass that had cut his wrist, making it burn like fire in the cold water. He could feel his scars there, like they weren't scars at all.

"Ko... suke..." Quatre read the stylized kanji slowly, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion, "that's..."

"His name is written the same way that I write mine," Heero said what Quatre was struggling with.

He felt all of his friends' eyes on him, but he didn't care. His own eyes remain solely fixed on the aged paper, the faded ink, and the perplexing characters. His name. His name, written in the same style and strokes that he always used, in a century old journal, written by the same boy whose spirit was now stalking him. How could that even be possible? He remembered the visions that he had seen while here in this mansion. Memories of a chestnut haired child playing with another child that looked exactly like he had looked as a child. A child with his same name. What did it mean? Was it just a coincidence? It had to be. What else could it be?

Quatre studied his friend intently as the rest of them looked at him in shock. Heero was completely fixed on the old journal, his brown eyes intense and his face as pale as the rest of theirs. He couldn't even begin to understand what this could mean, if it meant anything at all. It could just be a strange coincidence. Heero had a very common name and there weren't infinite ways of writing it. He knew that the Yuy's were very, very old family in this area, so it wasn't inconceivable that this Heero might be their Heero's ancestor. Maybe that was why he was being spared from the cuts that kept appearing on all of their bodies. Maybe Duo's ghost was mistaking him for someone he had known during his life. Quatre hoped that that was the case, because it might be something they could use.

"It's written the same..." Relena said hesitantly, not sure of what to make of what Heero had said, and deeply hated the burst of suspicion in her, "what does that mean?"

"It doesn't mean anything," Trowa said in that sharp, no nonsense way of his that was also calm and without anger, "I would be more suspicious if it was my name in that book, or Quatre's, or yours, Relena."

She flushed darkly, feeling as though she was being accused of something and immediately felt guilty of whatever it was.

"This is an old house, owned by an old Japanese family. We don't even know who this Heero person was to this boy. A brother, a cousin, a friend, maybe someone he knew in the village. Heero is a common Japanese name, and an old fashioned one. So what if it's written the same? There are only a handful of ways to write Heero. It doesn't mean anything."

Quatre could feel the turbulent, nauseating fear of his friends start to ebb away, leaving his mind thinking more clearly. Trowa didn't speak very much, he was never chatty, but he had always been good at speaking clearly and concisely and was very convincing. And of course he was right, it didn't mean anything, not in their current situation. It was a name in a journal, not a crowbar.

"What is important is the journal itself. Where did you find it?" Trowa asked Heero, diverting all of their attention from their earlier suspicions.

"In Duo's room," he said automatically, as the room had easily become that in his mind, with the journals and kimonos he had seen there, "I saw it earlier, but I hadn't been able to read it then."

"We are moving backwards," Quatre murmured.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Relena asked, crossing her arms over her chest defensively, desperately not wanting to hear one of his psychic epiphanies again, not because she no longer believed in them, but because of the damning information they had about this place.

"Exactly what I said. We are moving backwards. The full moon when the sun should have risen. Ancient writing that is now starting to become more visible. It isn't that time is starting to stand still or even moving backwards. We are. In this place, time has stopped and now, we are catching up with it. Or slowing down to meet it, however you like. See?" he held up his cell phone and the wrist watch he was wearing.

He had shown them before, how it was day time, even though the moon was still out. This time, both clock were frozen still, even though both his phone and watch had plenty of battery life. One by one, they all looked at their own watches and cell phones. All of them were still working, but the digits weren't moving.

"It isn't some kind of electrical interference," Quatre explained, cutting off Wufei before he could even start the argument, "if it were, other things would have been affected, and there's no electrical sources to cause something like this. We are trapped here. We've... become a part of this place, this... environment and now subject to its laws. If that's too scientific for you, then fine. Duo is dragging us down to the dark places where he lives. I don't know much about him, about his spirit or this haunting, but it's probably like they say in the movies. For him, time stopped at the moment of his death. Now that he has his hooks in us, time will stop for us as well."

"I think so, too," Trowa agreed, "I think that's why we can read this journal now. And I think that, the longer we stay here, the more... changes we are going to see around us. But instead of panicking about it, I think that we need to use it to our advantage."

"How are we supposed to do that?" Relena asked, panicking at this idea, that even their time was being stolen from them by that... thing, "I mean, if we're going to follow movie rules, then this ghost's power is just going to grow the more that our time runs out! He's already powerful enough! What if those changes are meant to harm us? It's not going to just be limited to some journals!"

"That's not true," Zechs interrupted her, "I'm not a psychic, but I think that this spirit isn't growing in power. He isn't just... waiting to gain enough momentum to kill us. He's playing with us, like a little kid playing some sadistic game. He's enjoying himself. He sealed us into this place and has made himself known to scare us. I think he is just as powerful now as he was since the moment he stepped through the front door. Time stopping for us only means that he can play with us for as long as he wishes to."

"Not only that, he's willing this to happen," Trowa told them, "The locked doors, the moon, our watches... maybe it's just instinctual for him, but he's bringing us down to his level, but we're still hungry and thirsty. We're still tired. We aren't going to last forever and he knows that. He has to. All those people that came to this place and disappeared... they're still here. And they're still dead. If they weren't, we probably would have seen them by now. So it isn�t so much that he has brought us to the past, that�s too simple.

�It�s like Quatre said. This place� this time is where Duo lives. A place controlled by the past that he remembers, a pocket of time that we can�t leave. I don�t think that there�s a single thing we�ll see or experience that up to his will and memories. We aren�t going to stumble upon any of the people that have been in this mansion before and it might even be the case that rescue is now impossible. Even if our parents were to come to this mansion, even if they got past the closed doors, I don�t think they�re ever going to find us. I believe they will just find an empty mansion and we�ll be nothing more than ghosts.�

Every one of them, even Trowa himself, felt an ice cold chill go down there spines at his words. Though they hadn�t admitted it out loud to each other, they had all been clinging to the hope of someone coming to get them out. Even Quatre, though to a lesser extent, had been hoping that he was wrong about everything he believed about this place and their �host�, and that being saved was possible. But with the words spoken out loud, brought out into the open like pus from a festering wound, he knew he couldn�t lie to himself about the reality of their situation. Duo never needed to shut the doors or make the windows unbreakable. He had only done that to frighten them.

The six of them were silent for a long time, each mixed up in their own terrible, dark thoughts. In the silence, the myriad of sounds of the house were even more awful. The creaking of floor boards above their head that might have been someone pacing upstairs or simply the old wood settling, a light sound like wind or perhaps crying, sounds that were indecipherable but somehow still frightening to them. Finally Wufei broke the silence.

�You�re just guessing,� he pointed out to Trowa, trying to remain a voice of reason, but his words sounded pathetic even to himself, �You cannot possibly know any of that for certain, none of us can. This isn�t a movie or some old ghost story. And even if some of those tales got it right, there are so many, we can�t possibly discern the truth from fable. We shouldn�t be concerning ourselves with why this spirit is tormenting us, but with trying to survive.�

Trowa didn�t believe a single word his friend was saying, hearing the fear and uncertainty in a voice that was usually so factual and sure, but he nodded anyway.

�But maybe that�s how we survive,� Relena piped up, �Maybe some of the old stories and movies did get it right. Maybe the reason why we can suddenly read his journal is Duo wants us to know what happened to him. Maybe if we can expose his killer, give him a proper burial, or whatever the reason is he�s a ghost instead of passed on, he�ll go away and we can just walk out of here!�

Her voice was strained and so full of hope that some part of Trowa wanted to slap her, while another part felt sad for her, sad for all of them as he looked around and saw how much they wanted to believe her. But Quatre looked the way he did when one of their classmates got an answer in class wrong and he was holding back shouting out the right answer. It was Heero�s expression that made that own hope of Trowa�s die surely and swiftly. His Japanese friend didn�t just look unconvinced of Relena�s theory, but disinterested, as though he were swept up in his own thoughts, waiting for them to catch up to him and be done with this foolishness.

He wanted one of them, especially his lover, to speak up, to tell them what they were thinking that made them so sure that this track was wrong, but he knew just looking at him that Quatre wasn�t going to say anything. Trowa didn�t really blame him, knowing the fair haired boy well, he knew that even if he believed the worst, he was going to try to keep it to himself as much as he could. They were all walking a tenuous high wire, one that was ready to snap and send them plummeting into madness at any moment. Trowa supposed it might be better to lie and give his friends hope if there truly wasn�t a way out of this situation. But their grasping at straws like this awoken some deep anger in him that frightened him. It was a part of him, but at the same time, it felt completely alien.

�Not all ghost stories end that way,� Trowa heard himself speak before he could stop himself, his voice sounding oddly gruff, �In some stories, the protagonists try all that they can to unearth the ghost�s past, but even when they succeed, the spirit kills them anyway,� his voice softened, �Sometimes there is so much hurt and rage and horror that it can never be undone. All there is, is lashing out at everything living.�

�But there�s no proof that Duo is like that!� Relena protested, �Besides these cuts and locking us up in here, he hasn�t really done anything to hurt us.�

�She�s right,� Zechs said, backing up his sister and crossing his arms over his chest with a thoughtful look on his face, �I want to know why this Duo is haunting us. He looks like a teenager, and those wounds� he must have died young and in a very violent way. All those old tales about ghosts and wrongful deaths are just stories, but the reason for them was to seek justice for crimes that could never be solved, bringing to light a secret that could never be unearthed unless the slain spirit spoke up for itself in some way. Perhaps that is all what this one is trying to do, force us to find some clue about who killed him.�

�You�re wrong,� Heero interrupted him, his brow furrow and looking far off, as though he weren�t so much arguing with Zechs as speaking to himself.

Their dark haired friend looked both contemplative and disturbed, as though he had come to some grand conclusion. His eyes cleared and he finally looked at them, none of them liking the look there in those dark brown eyes.

�I�m sorry,� he said remorsefully, �I don�t know why, but I didn�t realize it until now��

�What is it?� Zechs asked softly, afraid of what Heero had to say.

Then the older boy realized that it was not Heero�s words that frightened him, but the boy himself. It wasn�t fair, and he hated himself for it, but he was scared of the person he had once thought of only as his friend. Heero� who was the only one of their group not marked by numerous cuts, who could suddenly see things that only Quatre should be able to see, who had somehow had the thought to go back for a journal that no one had been unable to read until he had, a journal that bared his name� He was scared of anything that Heero had to reveal to them.

�There was this story my great grandfather used to tell me when I was little,� Heero said, �I� I don�t remember the exact words, my memory of it is fuzzy. He told me that, a very long time ago, all of Japan was plagued by a great, dark evil. It turned the hearts of men into those of demons, and all sorts of black spirits roamed the land, soiling the crops and killing livestock and people alike. The country was threatened to become like the abyss of hell. Just when the people had given up hope, a girl and a man appeared at the chasm, the heart of the evil. The girl was beautiful, with long hair, pale skin, and eyes the color of jeweled flowers. She was young, but was blessed with an incredible, heavenly power. She fought against the immense evil, resisting all of its attempts to pervert her and turn her clean heart to black. At last, as she was weary and tiring, she took all of the evil into herself. With all of her will, she commanded her father to break the veil the evil had emerged from and use the shards to pierce her earthly body and cast it into the abyss. The father wept, but did as she bade, taking her life with the pieces of the sacred veil, and casting the maiden�s soul as it grasped the evil into the darkness where the two of them would dwell. Japan was restored to light and to this day, the maiden in white with the jeweled eyes still holds back the darkness,� Heero finished the story, feeling as though he was missing some pieces to the story he had known since he was a child, but was unable to recall them. He took a deep breath, �I hadn�t realized the connection, or even remembered that story until I read Duo�s journal.�

�I don�t understand�� Relena said in confusion.

�Do you think that your great grandfather was talking about Duo?� Trowa asked, �That the girl in the story was actually a boy?�

�No,� Heero shook his head, �but I think that the details of that story are too close to what I�ve seen. My family has lived in this area� I don�t even know how long. Several centuries. My grandfather told me that the story was actually a local legend and that he had heard it from his grandfather as well. I think that the story is very old, and maybe at one point in time, it was believed by the local religion. This town used to be a place of Shinto worship, remember?�

They all nodded. There were still some traditions and holidays of the old religion that the town celebrated, and they had learned some of the local history in school. It was of public record that a very long time ago, the town had actually been the site of some holy place, a place that people would come to for prayer. The actual reason and significance had since been lost, but you could see abandoned temples here and there, in the deserted parts of the woods and edges of town.

�I think that Duo had been sacrificed, back when this town was more superstitious, because of that story,� he concluded.

�In his journal, Duo mentioned that he knew he was going to die,� Zechs said thoughtfully, �He acted like it was for the greater good��

�It makes sense,� Trowa agreed, �All of the things we�ve seen� Heero�s story mentions a girl with long hair and jeweled eyes, wearing white. White isn�t a common color in traditional clothing, it�s considered a blessed color, something pure. Duo wears a white kimono, and he has amethyst colored eyes. Not to mention those cuts� it�s too much of a coincidence. We all saw that cell, how small it was, the chain� I think it�s logical to assume that he was a ritual sacrifice, not simply a murder victim.�

�Why would anyone do that�� Addison whispered, �Why would someone sacrifice a child��

�The same reason why human beings have been sacrificing each other for centuries,� Quatre said, �For power, to gain favor from a God or Demon, or to quell one�s wrath,� he pondered that statement for a moment and his lips quirked into a very small, but bitter smile, �In a way, we ourselves are sacrifices, offered up to sate Duo�s lust for blood.�

Trowa�s horror at those words was written on the face of every one of his friends. He felt the phantom feeling of an imaginary noose around his neck, tightening ever so slowly, minute by minute. The cuts on his skin burned so badly he wanted to scratch them bloody all over again.

�What did they do, look for a child that fit into the story?� Wufei speculated angrily, �Did they just pick up any boy or girl off the street with long hair and violet eyes?�

�No,� Heero shook his head, �Duo wasn�t just some random child they kidnapped. This was his home.�

�How can you possibly know that?� Zechs protested.

�Because of his bedroom. Because of his age. And because of his journals,� the Japanese teenager pointed out, �He wasn�t just crammed into a cell when it came close to the time for him to be sacrificed. He had a bedroom filled with his own toys, kimonos fit for both a child and a teenager. Perhaps he was born into it, chosen, and the cell connected to his room was meant for the day he was destined to die. In his journal, Duo talked about accepting his fate, about knowing what was going to happen to him. He didn�t talk with anger for being murdered, but about doing his duty. He was given toys, he was cared after. He was allowed to write about his feelings.�

A terrible thought came to him then, a thought that he did not dare share aloud to any of his friends.

�A room full of toys, and a door small enough for only a child to go through without ducking� but Duo isn�t a child, he�s a teenager, at least fourteen or fifteen years old. If that�s what he looked like when he died� That spirit in the mirror that I saw in the Courtyard, he said that it was Duo�s father�s fault, that he had been sentimental� Did he mean that Duo should have died as a child? That the person who eventually killed him was his own father?�

Heero tried to think about his own father, about his kind dark eyes and the way he had held him as a child, but for a brief, terrifying moment, he could not remember what his father had looked like. The color of his hair, the shape of his face, the sound of his voice� it was all mixed up, if only for a few scant minutes, and Heero felt more terrified than he ever had since being trapped here.

�A sacrifice�� he murmured, �a real sacrifice, is about giving up something you love. Killing a stranger, or someone you didn�t care for, could never be considered a sacrifice.�

Heero felt tears prick at his eyes and a deep sadness filled him, but he didn�t know why, why he felt like his heart was ripping in two.

�If that�s the case,� he said louder, �this isn�t a matter of finding out who killed Duo and trying to bring the truth to light,� he looked at Trowa and the taller boy felt chilled at the expression in his eyes, �This wasn�t a secret, it was something the entire community knew about, even if they didn�t talk about it. Duo isn�t doing this in an attempt to speak out and be heard. He�s lashing out in rage and pain. I don�t think there is any chance of quieting his spirit.�

�You�re speculating again,� Wufei pointed out, sounding tired, �He was a human once. If someone had hurt me, I would want that person brought to justice. If that were impossible, then I would want everyone to know about it at the very least. I wouldn�t want it to end with my death. Isn�t that why there are ghosts, to continue on?�

Wufei saw it again in his mind, his wife walking down the hallway in this old mansion, wearing her white dress, and he felt that terrible hope blossom in his chest again.

�Maybe it wasn�t trick. What if� what if it had been her��

�You still don�t understand,� Quatre said softly, �People, all of us, are all looking towards our deaths. When a person is told that they will die of old age, after their full lives are lived out, they look to the future. But if a child is told that they will die in just a few years, they only live in the present. They have no future and never grow old. Such a person would always remain a child. That is what we are dealing with, a child full rage and pain, given the powers of a God.�

�Stop it!� Relena cried, horrified by what Quatre was saying, �Just stop saying those things! I don�t care if you are psychic, or what you know, none of us needs to know those things!�

�Then don�t ask questions when you don�t want to know the answers,� Trowa snapped at her, �This is the reality of our situation.�

�Our reality,� Relena practically bristled at that, �Then what exactly does Quatre expect us to do?! Just wait here in the dark for us to starve to death, or for that spirit to kill us?!�

�I expect us to try and find out the truth about Duo�s murder� his sacrifice,� Quatre said calmly, �not because I think it will help us at all, but because the only alternative for us is to wait to die.�

Trowa looked at his lover and for a moment, he felt like he was looking at a total stranger. Quatre�s face looked so blank and empty. So dead. He did not know if his boyfriend was lost in a vision, if he was sensing something that the rest of them could not, but he felt like they were worlds away from each other. When they first walked through the doors to this place, Quatre had been set on fighting against his visions and not letting them control him. But now he was surrendering to them, Trowa could see that. Not only that, he had already surrendered to what he saw as their fate, their fate to die in this place. He would go through the motions with them, but in Quatre�s heart, they were all ghosts, walking around in the skin of the living. In that moment, Trowa truly hated Quatre, just as much as he loved him.

Suddenly, Quatre�s eyes cleared and he seemed to come back to them. It was like watching someone deep in a coma finally wake up, but his expression was one of terror, robbing Trowa of any relief. Quatre watched in horror as a prick of red appeared by his boyfriend�s right ear, a trickle of blood trailing down into his ear. That tiny, innocent look prick opened up and the fair haired boy felt like screaming as a large gash formed on Trowa�s cheek, opening it up all the way to the corner of his mouth. It was like watching an invisible knife rake across his face, but worse. The cut was not clean in the way that a sharpened knife would make. It was messy and ragged, deep and terrible.

Trowa made a sharp noise of pain as he felt something tear through his cheek. The other cuts he had sustained thanks to this mansion had been pitiful in comparison. It was just a cut, but it felt like the worst pain he had experienced in his life. What had cut him felt sharp, but thick, and he could feel it ripping through him, tearing his skin and not just cutting it, an edge that was both dull and sharp.

�Like thick glass,� he thought.

Blood gushed down his face, neck, and into his ear. Some of trickled into his mouth and he quickly spat it out in disgust. Quatre continued to stare, his face paper white, as Trowa�s blood soaked all over the right side of his t-shirt.

�Oh my god,� he distantly heard Relena gasped and it served to thrust him out of his stupor as he realized that this was not just one of his visions.

Trowa instinctively clasped his hand to the cut, trying to stop the torrent of blood.

�Don�t touch it,� Quatre snapped at him, and dug into his pack for the first aid kit he had brought with him.

He grabbed a thick piece of gauze and pressed it to the cut. In mere second, the gauze was soaked with dark, thick blood. For a moment, Quatre felt frantic, wondering if his lover was going to bleed to death. He felt something rake across his back, something too rough and thick to be a knife and one by one, he heard his friends gasp and cry out in pain. Quatre could feel blood soak into his own shirt and drip down into his jeans and boxers, but he was too worried about Trowa to care for a moment. They all grabbed gauze and tore strips of cloth from their shirts to staunch their collective bleeding. He felt Heero grope at his back as he cared for Trowa, pressing gauze against the long and thick cut.

These cuts weren�t just getting bigger, Quatre dimly realized, they were cutting deeper. If it kept on like this, Duo would not need to kill them, they would run out of means to stop the blood and would bleed to death. Or worse. What if one of the cuts appeared at their throats or cut into their organs or arteries? They were already running out of medical supplies.

Eventually, after far too many minutes, Trowa�s cut stopped bleeding. It had seemed as though it would never clot, that the blood would just continue to gush out of the deep wound as though his lover were anemic. Seeing it slow did nothing to assuage Quatre�s fears. He could feel his own wound throbbing, burning intensely as though it were infected. He wanted to scratch at it or tear his hear out at the pain.

�Is this what Duo felt as he died?� he wondered, �This pain, all over his body, the blood flowing out of him as he got weaker and weaker... This terror, not knowing how to make it stop?�

He shivered and saw those eyes in his mind, their cold flatness, the lack of any light, and yet somehow filled with hate, anger, and an immense sadness. Was that their fate? He had only been thinking of it in terms of whether or not they could survive. But maybe he should have been thinking about what would happen to them when they did die...

They catalogued their injuries; Wufei had a gash across his ribs, Zechs from his right shoulder to the middle of his chest, each gaping and terrible to look at. Relena had one that trailed across her breasts, but managed to hide it from her friends and brother. If she had been with his female friends, she wouldn�t have cared about the deep gash and would have even asked for help in caring for it, but the thought of lowering her shirt for her male friends made her skittish, especially Heero. She couldn�t bear him looking at her chest like that. For the very time, she was hit by the fact that she was the only girl in this group of six. For some reason, that unsettled her. She was even glad when her brother did not ask her about her own cut.

�It will probably scar,� she thought glumly as she looked at it.

�If you live long enough for it to heal,� a much more bitter voice chimed in.
*****
The Remnant raised a hand, what once was real and living as the rest of it had been, but was now bloodless, as cold as wood, and covered in slashes and cuts, and pressed it to the mirror surface. He remembered the feeling of the cold glass, even though he could not feel it now. Eyes the color of amethyst marbles, with the same dullness, stared into the world beyond the mirror glass. It was dark, filled with shadows and the barest of light, but those dead eyes could see every detail of the hallway, and the six intruders that stood there. The dim light in that world was a brilliant searchlight compared to the darkness of his mirror. There was no reflection of the other world here, only pitch, blacker than the darkest night, bereft of warmth or cold or touch or sound. Just him. Him... and the Other. Yet still he pressed his hand harder against the pane, in hopes some spark in his shadow of a soul would allow him to feel its coldness, so much more inviting than the nothingness he felt.

He hated them, the intruders. They brought warmth with them, warmth of blood and beating hearts, laughter and tears and fear. Things that he fought to remember, but often could not. Things that had happened to him once, a very long time ago. But not to him, not really, to the other of him that no longer existed inside of him. He wanted them to leave, but it wouldn�t want that. It wanted to rip them apart, to feel their warmth go cold, and then into nothingness. It wanted it like a starved dog lusted after a piece of bloody meat. A part of him, the part that belonged to it, wanted it, too. That part of him was, moment by moment, swallowing him up. Soon he and it would have no barriers between the two of them, like a broken mirror.

They did not belong here. This was the temple of dust and death and decay and pain. His temple... no, it�s temple. Unlike the Kami that The Remnant�s living self had once worshipped, It did not require worshippers to bow or bring offerings. The Other�s prayers were suffering, it�s offerings blood and despair. It would continue on, whether it was worshipped or prayed to, or forgotten completely. To the living of the village that existed just below It�s hill, most of the Kami and the ways of old had been forgotten, but they still worshipped The Darkness, even if it was only in their dark dreams.

In this dark place, the intruders� light, their warmth and living, was unwelcome. But he was with the intruders. At first he had thought that he was like him, a shade. A thing with a face, but hollow inside, filled with unwanted things, things that did not belong to him. But some fragment, some shard of The Remnant resonated with his presence, something long forgotten and so warm that it was painful, an intruder in his very self. A part of him wanted to tear him into pieces so small, no force in heaven or earth could possibly recognize his shade as human, but another part desired to reach out, as he had done before. He wanted to feel what he had felt when the intruder had placed his hand over his on the mirror. It had hurt, a crack forming throughout him the same as the mirror, and he had lashed out. It scared him, that feeling, and yet some part of him wanted to feel it once more.

�He came back, just as he promised he would.�

That warmth blossomed and he wanted to rip it out of him with what had once been his fingernails. He wished that he could still bleed, still tear into his flesh...

�No.�

Was it possible for the darkest shadows to grow darker still? For cold to turn to ice, for nothingness to turn to the abyss? The Remnant felt vines of ice and pain and darkness squeeze around what had once been his heart, causing the constant pain that he had felt since the moment of his death to radiate through every inch of him, as steady as a heart beat. He lived in darkness, in nothingness, but whenever the Darkness came for him, he realized over and over and over again, after all of these centuries, that he did not know what true pain was, true loneliness, true despair, or true cold. He never had. When It was there with him, in the constant dark that was now his home, he felt like he was dying all over again, like his very soul, his essence, was being shattered like thin glass.

Words whispered in his ear, words full of hate and glee and malice, like a child pulling the wing off a fly for the pure joy of watching the insect writhe. The shadows suffocated him, the cold made him burn, and the pain was so unbearable, he screamed as much as a wraith like him could scream. In silence, but a silence that the Darkness could hear. But for once, the thing did not laugh at the remainders of his humaness.

�No,� it said again, if such a thing could be described as speech or thought, though the Remnant knew that he only called it speaking because he had no other word to describe the feelings and words piercing through his head.

A hand... his hand, and not his hand, a hand that looked like his with the same paleness, the same long, slender fingers ripped open with cuts and splashed with blood, but moved with a force that was as alien as the living beings in his house, and as familiar as the boy with the warm brown eyes and ebony hair, gripped at the front of his kimono above his heart.

For a moment, the Remnant forgot that he no longer needed air and gasped for it. The vines around his heart burrowed inside of him and agony filled him.

�It is not him,� that cold voice said, �He may share his face and his eyes and his hands, but that is all. He is like you, a shell. A thing that looks as though it is another thing, but there is nothing inside.�

Please... please I want to go to him, the Remnant pleaded without words, I want to see him, just once...

Those same vines around his heart wrapped around his legs, rooting him to his spot in the shadows.

�Why?� the Darkness asked and the Remnant could feel it�s sneer, �He is nothing. He is a sack of meat that looks like the man you once loved. He has the memories of another. Do you think if you call his name, he will rejoice and hold you as he once did? Even if he is that man, what reason have you to speak to him? Do you think you are that boy that died, the one he made promises to? Do you truly believe he will face you with anything but hatred?�

The vines pulled the Remnant away from the mirror, away from the site of those familiar eyes, and into the Darkness. Hands as pale and as cold as ice gripped his face and the Remnant looked into his own eyes in the blackness. Eyes of rage and evil and pain and insanity. His own lips kissed his, and brought forth the taste of blood and death.

�I am the only warmth you will ever feel and I am all you will ever be. �I will not permit you to see him,� the thing smirked, �But I will gladly kill him for you, for the both of us. You and I can cleanse ourselves in his blood. Isn�t that what you really want?�

No, no I am not you! I don�t want to kill anymore...

A laugh pierced through the constant silence, a laugh like shattering glass and screaming.

�You are me... and I am you. You are the same murderer as I, and you have killed thousands. You will kill the world that has caused us so much pain.�

The Remnant fought against the shadows, but only felt himself be pulled further into the Darkness, smothered by it.

He felt another part of himself crack and shatter.

Heero... you never should have come back...

*****

They somehow managed to come to an agreement that the best course for them, the only course really, was to investigate the mansion, to try to come up with some answers about the malicious spirit that was stalking them. But they couldn't seem to agree on what that meant. Trowa and Quatre wanted to go back to Duo's bedroom to see if any of the other journals were clearer. Relena and her brother wanted to explore parts of the huge mansion they hadn't discovered yet, and Wufei wanted to go back to the room with the ornate door that they had been unable to open.

"We already tried," Zechs tried to reason with Wufei, "and we don't have the kind of tools that would allow us to break it open. I don't think we're going to find a crowbar in this place. And even if we did, it's probably as impenetrable as the other windows and doors that are impossible to open in this place."

"But that's my point," Wufei argued, "Why is that door locked? All the other doors in this place, besides the ones that Duo does not want us to open, are unlocked. There must be something in that room that he does not want us to see."

Trying to reason what a ghost was thinking, talking about his wants and intentions still made him feel ridiculous, but something about that door and their inability to open it intensely bothered him.

"Even if there is something in there is a vital reason why Duo is keeping that door locked," Quatre said wearily, "as long as he does not want us in there, we won't be able to go in."

Wufei wanted to continuing pressing, but he knew that his friend was right. They were like sheep, constantly being herded this way and that, in whatever direction this spirit wanted them to go in. If he did not want them to find out about his past, what possible hope did they have? But if that were true, why could they read that journal entry? Wufei wanted to believe that there was some kind of possibility that Duo had attempted to reach out to them through that journal.

"Heero, what do you think we should do?" Quatre asked the only one of them that had yet to speak up about their next course of events.

The fair haired boy's voice was soft, but Heero saw the calculating look in his light colored eyes. He did not need to have Quatre's gift of third sight to know what his friend was thinking. For whatever reason, be it his looks or his name, his similarity to a boy long, long dead, Duo had reached out to him. He had shown himself in that mirror in front of him, he had spoken to him out in the courtyard. Heero had seen pieces of Duo's childhood, and his words in that journal. Quatre wanted to see what Heero would say, as the one of them who had some connection, tangible or not, to the spirit that was haunting them.

"I think that going back and rechecking all the rooms we have been in is a waste of time," he said, choosing to say what was actually on his mind instead of manipulating Quatre, knowing his childhood friend would know he was lying anyway, "There might be something useful in them now, and there might not be. I found that journal by pure chance, there's no reason to think that we'll find any others. I think Relena and Zechs have the right of it. But more than that, I think we should track our progress. This place is huge, without some kind of map or guide, we'll just get lost. If we're really serious about exploring this place, I think that's the most logical course."

He saw the acceptance of his idea in all of his friends' eyes, even Wufei's, but a worry picked at him. Would Duo continue to reach out to him when he was with his friends? It seemed like each and every time the ghost had spoken to him, or given him a vision, he had been separated or distanced from his friends. If they continued to journey through the mansion like this, in this tight knit group, would Duo remain silent? With that thought, Heero suddenly resented his friends' presence and felt bitter about ever rejoining them.

Those feelings bewildered him when he looked around and saw all the fear in the others' eyes, their desperation in their fear to not be alone, to grab onto each other and never let go. For some reason, that same fear escaped him. He was frightened, yes. How could he not be? He was as trapped and helpless as his friends were. But at the same time, there was something about this place that did not scare him as badly as it did his friends. When the floorboards creaked above their heads, he did not jump or feel overwhelmed by dread. When cold, dead, violet eyes stared at him from the mirror, he did not scream, but instead felt sad.

He was scared of his own impending death, but at the same time, he kept thinking about the first time he had seen Duo. He remembered those sad, lonely eyes through the mirror. Beyond everything else, even his fear at seeing a ghost, Heero remembered how he had felt pressing his hand to that pane of glass, the cold barrier separating him from touching the spirit's pale, bloodless hand. If that glass hadn't been between them, could he have touched him? What would he have felt, nothingness? Coldness? The touch of a hand long since dead? There had been pain as something had sliced through his palm, a pain worse than any other he had felt in his entire life. A pain like a blade made of ice and agony so terrible that, for a moment, he had wanted to cut his hand off to make it stop. And then, as quickly as it had happened, that feeling had left him, and the sensation of his warm blood had actually been pleasant. But through that pain, there had been some emotion, some warmth in his heart that he couldn't understand.

Was it strange that he was more frightened of the visions that Duo had shown him than his actual fate in this mansion? He shuddered as he remembered the image of that man feeding his own child to the carnivorous vines. And he was terrified of seeing that other spirit again... the one in the courtyard mirror that had taunted him. His friends called It Duo, the same as the boy that had reached for him in the mirror, but Heero knew that it wasn't. It had Duo's face, but he refused to believe they were the same. All of that malice, all of that hatred, he would not believe it had come to the sweet little boy he had seen in his vision. That thought, and his desire to know what had happened to that smiling child with the pet crow and friend that looked just like him, kept the fear from filling him like it had the rest of their group.

They double backed, going down the same hallway they had when they had come across the door leading to the courtyard earlier, but this time took a right instead of a left. A long corridor greeted them, this one looking even darker than the one they had just come from. Such a thing was impossible, but Wufei and Zechs turned on their flashlights as well Trowa's anyway. It did very little to keep the shadows at bay, as though they were eating the late as greedily as the vines outside had eaten Relena's sandwich, feasting on it. None of them spoke about it, but Heero saw it all on their faces.

The hallway was incredibly long, even just at a glance, straight at first, then curving off again to the right, like some large snake, with sliding doors made of rotting wood and paper leading to rooms like ribs. The group stood there for a moment, looking off into the unknown dark. Heero counted twelve rooms easy, six on each side of the hallway, and those were only the ones he could see in the weak beams of the flashlight. With a heavy sigh, Zechs dug a pad of paper out of the duffle bag he had brought.

"This... is not going to be fun," Trowa muttered under his breath.

'This was my idea,' Heero thought, looking from door to door.

This was just one hallway, one of many in a labyrinth... how many rooms were in this place? How many floors?

'At least we have all the time in the world,' he thought morosely.

"Ok, no one wander off, everyone keep an eye on someone else," Zechs commanded and looked pointedly at his Japanese friend.

Each of them took one hand in theirs. Heero found Relena's in the dark. Her skin was icy cold, but slender and soft. It reminded him of something, but the memory escaped him before he could get a proper hold on it. It was out of character for him, but as he felt her hand shake in his, he gave it a reassuring squeeze. Even in the dark, he could feel her hesitate and knew she was smiling at him, though neither of them could see each other. Something in his heart throbbed, but it was wrong. Instead of her face, he only saw the face of that little boy. That pale face with the earnest smile, and eyes like flowers, the chestnut of his hair only making those eyes seem more brilliant.

'What is happening to me?'
End Part 3
Author's Note: omg, I almost didn't make it. I missed out on posting for this story last Halloween, so I resolved to post SOMETHING this year. I wanted to finish this entire chapter this year, but between trying to get training done for my new job (nothing exciting, just an extra couple hundred bucks in my pocket every week) and getting ready for Nanowrimo, I had to rush to get to a point to post at all with this part. Hopefully it doesn't fully suck -_-
Anyway, Nanowrimo starts in four hours (holy shit), for the next thirty days, I will be completely consumed in it. For further news on what I will be working on, check here: http://thegrackelknows.livejournal.com/69447.html
Oh yeah and HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!
I will commence writing Roads in December as usual ^_^
　

　
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Beyond the Looking Glass