If That\'s What You Want Me to Do

Title: The Edge of Nothing
Sequel to: If that’s what you want me to do and Of Suicide (this is the last one).
Warnings: Suicide, and something else that would ruin the story if I told it to you now.
Disclaimer: Don’t own characters.
Other: Thank you to all who reviewed. It was greatly appreciated. I’m sorry, this may not be up to Of Suicide standard but I hope that you enjoy it anyway.

The Edge of Nothing

"Ha okay," Duo said to himself. Maybe he didn't say it though. It was his voice, but he hadn't opened his mouth, or moved his lips. His vocal chords had stayed in a normal rest position. He blinked a few times, wanting to laugh, but he had laughed. When he took the pills. He laughed so hard that he cried. That he choked on his own pain. Staring at his face in the mirror he laughed at everything, at least it sounded like laughter; for it would only make sense to laugh at one's entire life.

And now he was on the floor staring at the bathroom lights above him as they danced and circled the ceiling cracks. His eyes began to tear as they blurred away reality.

One last memory, a wilted flower of a memory, bent its stalk upward and reached for his consciousness.
Bright yellow light, a woman with violet eyes, a smiling face, and thick brown hair cascading down her shoulders. Both objects loomed over him, unfocusing, and of the same intensity. That's how it started, this new memory. Something was wrong though; her image appeared watery and far away. Two hands reached in and lifted Duo out of the water. Two chubby baby hands reached for the woman.

"Careful." S." She whispered and pressed him to her chest. A soft flowery scent mixed with paper powder met his nose; his hands played with the sharp jut of a collarbone. He laughed.

In the bathroom Duo screamed, a raging scream, from deep inside his chest that betrayed all his pain. Still the dull empty pain of his sorrow clung to the very marrow of his chest, breathing warmly against his heart it refused to dislodge itself, even when vocalized. He didn't want to die; he just didn't want to suffer anymore. He knew Heero would be back soon, knew that Heero really didn't mean to leave the headache medication out. Picking up the bottle at first hadn't given him any ideas, he read it carefully; wondering if Heero got headaches from Zero, wondering if he woke up in the middle of the night seeing the face of every man he had ever killed. Wondered how he dealt with it...

And then, then he thought of how he would never fit into Heero's life. After all he had never and would never fit into anyone's life. How he didn't even have a life of his own, just coping. That was his life, coping. Then it was easy to swallow the pills, one after another. Thinking that nothing would ever work out, that it never had worked out, that there wasn't anywhere to go anymore... anywhere to run to except his death. All those things made the act of pill swallowing bearable. He took the rest of the bottle and glanced in the mirror. The white portions of his eyes grew in anticipation, to calm them he lay down. His breathing became slightly faster, his heartbeat a little more rapid. There was strength in death, in waiting for it. In being able to meet it.

Tears obscured his vision again, but he couldn't stop screaming. Maybe the fear had crawled up his spine, through his neck and straight up to his mind where it slowly devoured his senses. Maybe the pain licked his heart now, maybe it was icy and bitter and too hard to keep locked inside. Soon he had a reason to scream. He tried to move but it hurt too much. The pain was now physical. His mind flashed to Heero, to his lips, soft and gentle when they kissed his head. He sobbed and managed to turn over, in a last effort to move he curled up and realizing that it didn't matter anymore what he wanted, that nothing mattered he let his mind and body bite into the pain and carry him away.
That's how Heero found him curled up on the floor like that, barely breathing, and with a weak pulse. That's almost how he arrived twenty minutes later in the hospital, only his pulse had dropped exactly 3.2 points, Heero was counting.

He counted many things as he waited for the doctors to tell him something, even though doctors always lied or kept information from you, they still said something. He counted the tiles, which were large and expansive across the floor and ceiling and tiny and miniscule across the walls. The walls contained 682, the floor contained 72, and the ceiling contained 80. The beads of swen a n a man's face next to him: seven. He counted how many times the nurse in charge of the information desk looked up from her paperwork which was: three. He counted how many people came into the room: twenty-nine. He counted how many people cried: fifteen. He counted how many people left: ten. He counted the number of people who left crying, five. He counted the people who were told that their loved ones didn't make it: three. He counted magazines and purses and wallets. He counted the hair colors, the nationalities, and the sexes. He counted other things, things that meant something, things that he didn't want to pay attention to. He counted the minutes and seconds, and the doctors and nurses that entered through the emergency and IC door.

Right when he was in the middle of counting eye colors a doctor came out, stopped by the information desk, and then approached him.

"Heero Yuy."

Heero nodded, looking into his eyes, studying him.

"I'm Dr. Radcliff, the emergency physician. We pumped Duo's stomach, he is however still comatose."
Heero blinked.

"He's still in intensivre. re. We." Dr. Radcliff paused, too acutely aware of Heero's gaze. "His vital signs are stable, but we aren't sure if or when he'll come out of the coma. Comas are tricky; sometimes patients come out of them in days, weeks, months. Sometimes however it takes years. The longer someone stays in a coma, the less chance there is of recovery."

Heero nodded.

"When he does come out of the coma it's very possible that he could have brain damage."

"Can I see him?"

"Once we move him out of the IC--"

"Let me see him." Dr. Radcliff noting that Heero hadn't ceased to stare at him since the beginning of the conversation shuddered a little and nodded. He gave the nurse at the information desk and O.K. signal before pushing the doors to the IC open.

Duo's lips were flat; the corners of his mouth and eyes drooped. He no longer looked to be in pain, but to be sick, very, very ill. Heero stared only briefly before turning away. A human, a body, somehow they always looked even lessve; ve; somehow the illness, the death was always intensified when set against the pale walls of a hospital. He shoved a piece of paper into Dr. Radcliff's hand. The paper had a number and his name attached to it.
On his way home Heero stopped by a park. In all the time he'd lived there he had never visited the park. Sometime while he sat in the hospital it had begun to snow, and it was still snowing. The white flecks dripping like acid onto his clothes, his eyes, seeping into his thoughts, engulfing them in a world of silence. Heero sat on the edge of a fountain, the snowflakes still blowing into his hair and down his neck. He stayed there, not looking at anything, just watching a blade of grass blow in the wind, watching the snow accumulate. Watching it collect like sludge as it dripped into a form, its acidity melting; becoming less intense.

He heard people talking, walking right by him, not noticing. He heard the sound of heels, and expensive shoes, the sound of boots, of wheels, the ruffle of clothing, of bags, the swish, swish of a coat, and eventually a voice.
"Hey! Hey man." A homeless man stood in front of him, a bottle of alcohol one hand, a shopping cart handle in another. There was a hole in one shoe; the man's left foot was standing directly on the piece of grass Heero was concentrating on. "You've been sitting there for fifteen minutes." The man sniffled and drank from the bottle. He studied Heero a while.

"Your lips are turning blue." Heero stared harder at the ground. "You deaf?" The man continued "Hey what happened to you?" He pushed at Heero's body. Heero felt the texture of a glove against his sweater. He looked up into the man's face.

"..."

"Yeah," the man said taking another swig of alcohol. "Some people they just aren't cut out for talking. They can't do it. It's too tough for them. People aren't cut out for a lot of things, especially life, and livin' in general." Heero stood up. "But not me," the man continued as Heero began to walk away. "I'm tough as a... a freaking snowflake. See ya around man."

Heero waited, but time had become something different. Each hour each second doomed Duo even more than the previous second did. It sucked the life out of existence. It was now more than a deadline, a marker if you will. It stood at the end of life, at the beginning, looming over it. Its bony smile knowing all. Heero took all his clocks down, he threw away his watched and he waited. He waited, and he avoided.

He grew small inside of himself, as the time ate away at him. His paranoia drove him to stop listening, because time always floated around, last week, last month, last year. Ten twenty five, eleven fifty two, nine PM, all these words stuck themselves into conversations, advertisements, news, and television. He waited, the sick sort of waiting. The waiting for the report from the doctor who has just diagnosed a relative with aids or cancer or schizophrenia. Who has just, with his pen and stethoscope and his analysis of a cyst or bump or mole or mass of black stuff in the lungs, or wide space in an adolescent brain, written death down. It was the waiting, the waiting where you didn't want to believe in hope. Where it almost seemed better just to close the book. Just to receive the call that they were dead, and that now you could breathe again, you could look at a clock again, break down and tear at your hair so that sometime eventually you could live again. Even just breathe again.

A week later Duo came out of the coma, Dr. Radcliff called at around noon.

"Duo regained consciousness at six. He opened his eyes, and followed simple tests, but he won't speak but will respond to his names and to commands"

Silence

"Occasionally it takes patients a while to recover from a coma."

Click. And Dr. Radcliff had forgotten to add that brain damage and mental retardation were highly possible. Heero knew that already.

When Heero arrived, Duo lay restrained with his head facing the wall with his eyes and mouth open, drool sliding out of his mouth. Heero looked at the nurse who was tying the restraints more firmly.

"He hurts himself if we don't restrain him." He waited until she left, securely closing the door.

"Duo." The eyes looked towards him.

Nothing.

"Do you know who I am?"

Nothing.

That's how things went for a month. Everyday Heero had to tell him who he was, and everyday he would ask again if Duo knew his name. He would ask about everything, the gundams, oz, L2. He named every name he could think of, every place they had been to or fought at

Nothing.

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

No answers, no body movement, no recognition.

Dr. Radcliff suggested having Duo committed to a nearby mental institution, after all the medical bills were becoming expensive, and the hospital needed the room. He tried to say it in his nicest most mannerly way, but the frankness of Heero's glare had somehow frozen his capacity to lie.

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

It rang in Heero's ears as he worked, as he watched Duo, as he went back to his apartment, as he ate, as he slept. It lurked behind his eyelids, as hollow and gruesome as blood splatter. His dreams were wide and deep and black. Magnifying its sweetness to horrifying levels of emptiness and loneliness and pain. It sucked at the very stitching of his mind, pulling with sharp pointed teeth at the rapidly loosening threads.

And maybe, just maybe, the nothingness got too wide and too deep to stomach. To fight off. Maybe the nothingness swallowed him whole.

And then after a dream, after the sweat of fear and paranoia that never left his brain had dried away: late at night past visiting hours he snuck into Duo’s room. Duo was awake, eyes open and wide. Slowly Heero reached into the belt of his jeans, a handgun rattled softly in his hands, he loaded it, cocked it.

Duo's eyes widened.

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

The nothing was so loud that Heero tasted it. It felt like a blood clot, wet and gooey and iron filled in his mouth. A small hard disgusting thing. So loud that in the thick of it he could only hear two bodies sitting, very close. He heard himself inhale; he heard Duo’s eyes calm.

And then, then of course he pulled the trigger.

A squeak, a squeak and Duo's wide eyes were the only things that stood naked in the nothingness. The blood that poured out the hole in Duo's head and onto the pillow was nothing, the nurse screaming in the hallway was nothing. The sound of the gun dropping was nothing, his sobbing was nothing. His shaking was nothing.
Just Duo's eyes. They were something. Because in them he could see the tiny glimmer that hid right behind Duo's sarcastic smile, his sharp words, his energy, and cynical but enthusiastic view. His eyes screamed at him, raged at him, not to pull that trigger. And the squeak deafened his ears; the sound of air being choked out, right behind a vocal chord vibration, right before a word...
--
The end... I dislike happy endings….