The lovely weeping willows didn't seem to play gently in the warm breeze to him as Trowa pushed the wheelchair up the incline built beside worn stone stairs; they seemed to be waving goodbye to free life. The trickling of the fountain's pond they passed was sickly and the smell from it's lily pads was rotting. The clean entrance of the building looked to be faded yellow instead of off-white to his eyes, and the first slam of cool air from it's open doors made him flinch. It was the sort of place where people would never speak above a whisper, unless they were screaming, and they always had plenty of needles to take care of that, didn't they?
The nurses behind their neat little desks were all dressed in white and all had thin lips they'd keep pressed together, and somewhere, Quatre knew there were lots of doors with little glass windows built right in.
It wasn't hell here at Shadyvale, but something worse. A purgatory where days stopped mattering and years could pass by at an alarming rate while you finger-painted and talked about your emotions with stone faced doctors.
Trowa must have sensed some of his misgivings, because the wheels of the chair slowed and then stopped, and his tall friend walked around to the front to kneel down before him.
Quatre saw the way Trowa's eyes flicked over his face, taking in the hallow cheekbones and shocked eyes he himself saw every time he could bare to look in the mirror without crying, and that was all right. Weren't his own eyes moving over the healed but still so uneven line of Trowa's jaw even as he caught that examination in his friend? To think, Trowa used to have a face that belonged right on a marble bust, a Grecian god, and now though still handsome, it was a face you would look at and slowly notice that something just didn't jive. At least his teeth were fixed. For a while, even through the random bursts of screams and crying jags, Trowa's five-year-old gap-toothed mouth had made Quatre burst into hysterical giggles that sometimes left him feeling faint.
Neither of them was going to win the Best-Looking Man award anytime soon, Quatre thought with a wry smile.
The smile didn't set Trowa any more at ease though, judging by the small frown that appeared.
Quatre looked strongly into that face in silence for a minute, sporting his own stubborn frown and daring Trowa to speak first, then cracked with an exasperated sigh. "I just don't see why all asylums have to look like just that. A nut house. The coats, the grounds, the… The silence. I can't imagine being here. I can't imagine… What it's like… For him."
He meant to sound strong, but when the last came out in a soft squeak, Trowa didn't seem to look down on him for it. The brunette just nodded, quietly, then reached to lay a hand over his. "It's not that bad. It's actually nice here, Quatre. The best in the area. It's clean, and there are private rooms, and the staff is very-"
"I know all that!" Quatre felt a flare of guilt when Trowa winced back, and it made him bite his tongue for a moment before he freed his hand from under Trowa's and instead brought it to lay over the other's, as though he would now give comfort. "… I know I'm biased. None of them will be clean enough. Or happy enough… And it -is- a good place. I just…"
"I know." Trowa nodded, and for a wonder, Quatre thought he really did know. Trowa wasn't agreeing that he blamed Quatre, but he understood that the blonde did blame himself, and would need time to get over that. In the meantime, nothing would be enough and he'd have so many debts he had to pay.
They looked at each other for a few moments, then the click of low heels (white, Quatre would have bet) came up to them. "Mr. Winner?"
XxXxX
The walk to Duo's room was long, but it didn't feel long enough to Quatre. How could a walk from the rational world of the sane to the off the cliffs world of utter lunacy really be completed in three minutes? Was there really such a small line between the two polar states of mental health? Sometimes, he wondered.
The room behind the glass was nice. There was that word again. Never awesome in a place like this, or terrific, but 'nice'. It was clean, of course, and white, and… Bland. No curtains. No hard objects. That mattress in the corner, and papers on the floor with pictures on them.
Duo, even in this state, looked like a ruby in that environment, but it hurt Quatre's heart to see him.
He sat with crossed legs on the center of the floor, staring up and out the window with the vacant eyes of the drugged. Around his face, his shorn locks were wispy and clean, but uncombed. It was shocking not to see the rope down his back, but to instead see the feather ends on the nape of his neck. That rope, that Quatre could remember holding onto as he kissed Duo's ear and they arched together towards the finest of pleasures, feeling it's weight in his hands and hearing Duo telling him it was okay, baby, come on, come on, just...
Quatre closed his eyes, but could still see Duo's image burnt onto the back of his lids. Dead purple eyes, short auburn hair burning in the sunlight through wired-windows, the shadow lines of them over pallid flesh. Duo was smiling… But there wasn't nothing -Duo- in that smile.
"He looks well." That came from Trowa, and Quatre could have reached out and grabbed him by the shirt front, shaken him and screamed at how he could say it. Instead, he kept still with his hands clenched on the wheelchair's arms.
"Oh yes! He's doing wonderfully." The rustle of papers from the nurse to his right. "Just yesterday, he was talking a little with some of the others in the activity room."
Talking? And that was good? No. Duo would have had them laughing, would have started a conga line or a game of strip poker. That wasn't good, not for Duo. Maybe for this lump of boy shaped clay, but not for Duo.
"Really?" Interest from Trowa. "Is he still having those episodes…? Or can Quatre visit him again?"
A hesitation, and Quatre knew the answer even before it came from her mouth. He knew, and had known for weeks. No visits, not after the last one had sent Duo into a rage, screaming and wrenching him from his wheel chair, dragging him across the floor and clawing at the nurses who tried to get too close. Like a dragon with it's horde, or a lion over a fresh kill. No visits.
"Well, Mr. Barton, there's been a lot of progress, but we're still quite a ways from regular visits, or any outings."
"I see." Calm. Trowa radiated it, and Quatre tried to take it into himself, tried to breath it in, to make his heart beat match it's soothing tones. "What about the bullet wound?"
"Still healing nicely, Mr. Barton. There will be a small scar, of course, but it's healing nicely. He hasn't torn it open again since the first week, and there's been no new bleeding."
He felt Trowa's hand on his shoulder, and was glad for it, his own rising shakily to lay over it and squeeze. "That's good. What about his weight?"
The rest was business. Quatre blocked it out. He didn't want to hear about the regularity of Duo's bowel movements, or his new tree picture with brown and green finger paints. He didn't want to hear about the drugs they put into him daily, or his new friends (who just happened to drool and stare vacantly too), he wanted to see Duo. He opened his eyes again, and watched through the glass.
Was Duo thinking of him, like he was thinking of Duo? Behind the glassy stare, Quatre thought so. Duo always thought of him, didn't he? Always. He remembered hearing that, from within the grip of a sweet morphine dream. It was all for him.
Duo was lost in some nowhere world, but there, maybe he still had what he wanted. There Quatre haunted his mind, and smiled, and they rode the Ferris wheel ALL night long.
Maybe he would smile if they could talk. He'd grin and give his usual victory sign when Quatre told he had won… Because now Duo haunted him too. Awake or sleeping, that grin, those husky words, they followed him. He knew without turning around that there would always be a pair of purple eyes over his shoulder, and they would always be hungry.
And behind those eyes… Well, maybe there were more eyes. The blue ones that had been stolen from him at the end of a gun.
XxXxX
Trowa was quiet as they left and that was good. Nice, even. Trowa knew when to keep still and just offer his silent strength. He didn't comment on the tears that tracked down Quatre's cheeks and colored his collar darker, nor the way Quatre's hands shook in his lap. Trowa was nice. Real nice.
And together they'd go home to Quatre's nice mansion, with it's nice and ready to help staff, and everything would just be nice.
Until that night, when Quatre would wake up in the dark with a scream just behind his lips. He's shake and shake, and look to the moon beyond his curtains and see Duo's face instead grinning down, waiting to eat him up, to eat everyone up, and then he'd stay up until dawn and wait for the knock on the door to tell him all over that someone is dead.
The nice day could begin all over again. And over. Until he was sitting there beside Duo, smiling and staring.
Trowa was gentle as he picked Quatre up, noting again how sickening easy it was to do so, and tucked him into the front seat of the car. He brushed the lax hair from the blonde's pale brow, stared down at the miserable face, then backed away and softly closed the door before jogging around to the other side. Quatre was silent on the ride home, and Trowa found oddly fascinated by the look on his face. It was pinched, and knowing, and accepting… It was a look he couldn't remember having seen for years. His usual doll-like attractiveness was replaced by this abused look, and damned if he didn't want to take it away.
They drove down the country road with leaves fluttering up in the after wake of the car, and through the clear window as they left that sterile building behind, Quatre's wane face watched the puffs of clouds overhead as though they bore the faces of old friends.
((Finish. No, it's not a happy ending, not exactly though there are hints of it, but I am happy with it. This and the first part of this story have so far been one of my favorites to write, falling short of only my first. I hope you enjoyed reading it, and if so, will sample my others. Many thanks for all reviews, as they are the fuel that keeps me going.))