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Title: Five Gundam Pilots Sitting in a Row
Fandom: Gundam Wing
Rating: PG-13 (for dark themes: murder, suicide)
Pairing/Characters: hints of 1x2 and 3x4, but only hints
Disclaimer: Gundam Wing and all related characters and objects are property of Bandai and other assorted people. I do not own them, I only own the story and I'm not getting any money from it.
Warnings: Character death... more character death, suicide, angst, dark.
AN: Written for gw500 prompt 223 -row, I was thinking about the prompt and I thought about 'row, row, row my boat' which led me onto nursery rhymes which resulted in this... ^_^;;



Five Gundam Pilots sitting in a row
Knock them over, down they go:
This one quickly, this one slow,
This one tumbling to and fro,
This one hits the ground just so,
Just one left and he lets go.
Five Gundam Pilots brought down low.


The room was dark as he sat on the hard wooden chair, patiently waiting. There was nothing to do now but wait. The enemy would come for him, and they would never see it coming. After all, he hadn’t seen it coming when they had destroyed his life, so he might as well return the favour.

There had been no warning signs, no drum roll, no ominous music or atmospheric thunderstorm before everything had gone to hell. Despite their intelligence gathering, there had been no hint on the Preventers’ radar of civil unrest above the usual background noise of grumbling irritation with the government.

Nothing had seemed to be wrong, until everything was wrong.

Five Gundam Pilots sitting in a row
But Ozzies aren’t their only foe.
One is caught by a lucky shot;
They lay him in the earth to rot.
Four Gundam Pilots left to go


It had been an ordinary hostage situation, a bank held up by four men with guns. The Preventers had surrounded it almost immediately after the call came in and Agent Chang Wufei had been in charge of the situation.

Their hostage negotiator had managed to get most of hostages out of there easily, too easily it almost seemed. He gritted his teeth, as hindsight added another thing to his list of things he should have noticed then.

The shoot out that followed was not planned. The newspapers claimed it was down to Preventers’ negligence. Wufei could never have been accused of that, but a dead man makes an easy scapegoat. In the calm that followed the storm of shots and screams, Agent Chang was found, a bullet in his brain, his eyes staring sightlessly upwards. It had seemed impossible to them, ridiculous even, that after surviving the war some idiot with a gun should get lucky. They had not doubted it though… perhaps things would have been different if they had.

Of course, they did not know then what he knew now. They did not know about the man in the crowd, the supposedly innocent bystander that Wufei had thought he was protecting who shot him at point blank range. They did not know that until they had found the real surveillance tapes of the incident.

As they stood at his funeral there had been words of his valour and how tragic it was that he should be killed like that, in the line of duty. The four of them stood in silence and ignored Relena’s tears and the overly kind words of people who never knew him.

He clenched his hands into fists, feeling only the cool metal in his right, and nothing else.

That was where it had begun.

Four Gundam Pilots sitting in a row,
Someone hates the status quo.
Car bomb takes out one more man
All part of their master plan
Three Gundam Pilots left to go


The next incident had happened right in front of him, and every time he closed his eyes he saw it replayed again and again, and he heard his own yelling echoing in his ears. He broke over and over again as it unfolded behind his eyelids.

There had been no reason to be suspicious. They had still thought Wufei’s death lay at the hands of one of the hostage takers, but they should have been more cautious. They should have been more careful, but the war had been over for years, and there was no reason to worry.

No reason until Heero’s car had blown up in a ball of flame as he pulled out of the car park one day, right there, in front of him.

He still could not believe that it had happened, that the invincible, invulnerable, Heero Yuy had been destroyed by a car bomb. He had survived self-destructing his gundam, the Barton Coup, but plastic explosive beneath his seat had done for him.

There had not been enough of him left to bury. He recalled that with a morbid laugh. They put an empty coffin into the ground and they had stood, faces set, the three of them, determined that this murder would be avenged.

He had given himself up to it once again. He stood there and let the ice cold rage and lust for vengeance over come him. He wrapped it around himself like armour, numbing him to everything else. From that moment there was no other path for him, and that path led right here, to this small room, with no windows, waiting for them to come for him.

Three Gundam Pilots sitting in a row
Asking what they want to know
One gets just that bit too close
Tortured and now he’s a ghost
Two Gundam Pilots left to go


They left the Preventers after that. They had not been able to stay within the rules they knew they were going to break. They visited from time to time, though mostly after dark, letting themselves in, because there were still some things that official channels could get more easily.

They asked questions, they poked their noses in, and they had eventually found the tapes, the ones that made it clear that Heero’s had not been the first murder.

He had been killing the scum that had killed Wufei, he remembered, when Trowa went missing. He was only a lackey, barely worth wasting time over, except that he was the one who had pulled the trigger. So he killed the murderer, and he had no mercy.

That was when he got the phone call. Trowa had not returned, he had not checked in.

It was five weeks later when they had found the body, displayed on their front doorstep. Trowa’s body was twisted, mangled, his skin a mass of burns and cuts and bruises, his green eyes savagely attacked by what was probably a red hot poker.

There were no crowds there for Trowa, just the two of them and Catherine, who refused to look at them, blaming them wordlessly for his death. They had not let her see the body, but neither of them comforted her as they stood there. They had no time for sympathy, only anger and hatred.

He had not cared what she thought, he only added another layer of rage to his armour and straightened his back.

Two Gundam pilots sitting in a row
Don’t believe in accidents though
Private jet falls to the ground
No survivors, one more down
One Gundam Pilot left to go


The papers had said it was an accident, but he did not believe in coincidence. He did, however, believe in sabotage and he knew exactly what would make a top of the line plane suddenly decide to take a swan dive into the Pacific Ocean.

Quatre’s body, and those of the Maguanacs, had been recovered from the wreckage and this time, the funeral had been huge. People had come from far and wide to witness the event and mourn a man they had only ever seen in newspapers.

He had not gone. Instead he used the time to break into Quatre’s house and recover the files he had obtained. He knew his friend would have understood. There was no longer time to mourn the dead, only time to make their deaths worth something.

Quatre had been following up on a lead from where Trowa had gone missing and just before the plane had gone down he had called him and told him that he had information, and how to get it if anything happened.

Quatre had always planned ahead, even beyond the grave his gift for strategy was a help.

And there it had been, in black and white. The answer to his revenge, but now there was just him, and he had to do this alone.

One Gundam Pilot left, just one
On his own now they’re all gone
He waits for them to come and kill him
Self-destructs and takes them with him.
There were five and now there’s none.


So he sat and waited for them to come to him, because he was the last one left and he knew that they would not leave the job undone, and neither would he.

But he was prepared and they were not, because they were about to meet the God of Death and they would never see it coming.

The whole building was rigged with explosives, enough to turn it into a crater, and all it would take was a push of a button and the whole thing would go sky high. His thumb flexed over the top of the controller, twitching to finish the job.

There were noises downstairs and he knew that the time was almost here. He had sent the invitation himself to the person Quatre had discovered was in charge. It was time for them to meet.

There were footsteps on the stairs and he wondered if they knew just how close to death they actually were, that the breaths they were drawing were very nearly their last. He could feel it, surrounding him, closer than even the rage had got. Death was everywhere, in every ounce of his flesh. It felt, he thought idly, like coming home.

They were outside the door and his heart was beginning to beat fast with anticipation of what was to come. Just trying to get in as many beats as possible before the inevitable.

This was where it ended.

For Wufei. He remembered the small round hole in his friend’s temple as they unzipped the body bag.

The door handle turned.

For Heero. He remembered the blinding flash of the explosion and the roar of the fire and the knowledge in that second that it was all over.

It was pushed slowly open. They were wary of booby traps, but not of him. He wanted to laugh at their stupidity.

For Trowa. He remembered the broken and bloody body left for them to find and watching Quatre break all over again, and the kinship they had felt in that minute.

The men on the other side stared at him in apprehension as he grinned into their faces, his eyes as blank as his posture was calm.

For Quatre. He remembered the newscast video of the plane dropping into the sea and Quatre’s voice coldly triumphant in the last words he had ever spoken to him.

Then, between the nervous faces, he saw eyes he recognised, and his grin grew, because they had fallen for it, and they had not seen it coming.

He held the controller up like a gundam self-destruct and deliberately waited a second for the situation to sink in before he slammed the button home.

Five Gundam Pilots sitting in a row
Knock them over, down they go
Five Gundam Pilots, down they go.



-

Date: 2008-04-08 06:03 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] theoriginal-ist.livejournal.com
O.O

I really liked this. Even though it was so sad. But it was well written and I liked the layout of it. Great job with it. ::sniffs:: Poor pilots though. And I kind of like how the ones after them are kept a mystery [unless I missed something] it adds to the atmosphere of the story.

Date: 2008-04-09 06:43 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mariana-oconnor.livejournal.com
You didn't miss anything, even I'm not sure who's behind it...

Glad you liked it.

Date: 2008-04-08 08:42 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] salamandere.livejournal.com
wow! i liked it a lot, though it's so sad! O~O your rhymes were great, chilling and really cool.

Date: 2008-04-09 06:44 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mariana-oconnor.livejournal.com
Thanks! I don't know why I went so dark with this, for some reason Nursery Rhymes have become creepy in my head. I blame too many horror shows with creepy little girls. I'm happy you enjoyed it.

Date: 2008-04-08 09:29 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] eg06.livejournal.com
creepy as hell is the only way i can describe this and I LOVED it. the song/poem thing was an awesome touch and just made the whole thing eery. very well done

Date: 2008-04-09 06:46 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mariana-oconnor.livejournal.com
Yay, creepy was exactly what i was aiming for. Sort of the effect you get in horror films from having children chanting, or singing nursery rhymes. *shudders*

Thanks for commenting!

Date: 2008-04-09 02:13 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/_sapphiredreams/
Wow. That was sad, but still, wonderfully writtten. The nursery rhyme style to the verses just added so much depth to the story.

Date: 2008-04-09 06:49 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mariana-oconnor.livejournal.com
Thank you, I was a little worried about writing something with verse, because I'm not a big poetry writer, or reader, so I'm glad it worked. In my head it's almost like part of Duo is thinking the prose and another part of him's thinking the nursery rhyme... if that makes sense.

Thanks again.

Date: 2008-04-09 09:46 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] omnicat.livejournal.com
Whoo. *knocks over* That was... wow. Yay on Duo for doing them in.

I especially liked the part between "There were five and now there's none." and "This was where it ended." Very intense.

Date: 2008-04-12 01:35 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] diabolo-girl.livejournal.com
Oh shit. This was good. I lack words to describe how creepy/sad/intresting etc it was.

Date: 2009-10-24 11:46 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] strifechaos.livejournal.com
Oh wow, chilling. This gave me shivers as I read it. There's a coldness and sadness to this but it's very beautiful. :)

I really enjoyed the flow of the story telling and how the boys were there for one another. Now I'm gonna need some happy fluff to balance this angst out. ^_^

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