This is my new fanfic! Woot! I'm really happy to start this. I guess I should do some disclaimers and what-not first, tho...
Disclaimers: I do not own GW or it's chars.
That was exciting... wow... ::rolls eyes::
Warnings: There's some language in this chapter... and I suppose I should warn you that I have no idea what I'm talking about when I describe the mental institution, so bear with me. I've never been to one and I don't know how they work or how they're set up, etc. But I'm kinda going off of the movie "28 Days" and I guess "Gothika" a little bit. I don't own them either, if it matters... And besides, someone I know who's prolly gonna read this has been there once and they can tell me if I get too outrageous. And there's some pretty gory stuff in here, so be prepared. YAOI! 1x2x1, indicated 3x4x3
Anywho - I want to tell you right off that I do not want flames. If you feel you absolutely have to send stupid reviews about how bad the story is, then I'm warning you now - my reply will not be a kind one. I've tolerated them in the past, but I'm way too excited about this to take flames without caring. Reviews are meant to help authors and encourage them. I'm fairly sure it says something along those lines on the review box thingy. So no flames!!!
Lifting Curses & Mending Broken Wings
Chapter 1: The Mental Institution
"Oh, FUCK NO!" a boy in the back seat of a silver Volvo cried out once he finally saw where his parents were taking him.
"Duo!" they both yelled in unison. Duo's mother glared at him out of the corner of her eye, just daring him to curse again.
He cowered against the right door behind his mother's seat. "A mental institution?! Aw, shit - Don't send me there!!" His mother commented on his language but went unnoticed by him. "I swear I'll never mention what I see again!" He shifted around like there were spiders in his pants.
"It's for your own good. We want you to get better, not just hide the fact that you..." she hesitated.
"Are cursed?" Duo finished for her.
She sighed. "You are not cursed!"
"You two quit bickering!" Duo's father was just a tad irritated. So for the rest of the trip, they were all silent.
.......................................
Duo glanced quickly around as they came up to a kind of check-in desk. Behind the desk was a wide flight of stairs and there were closed doors on either side of this hallway. Duo's father spoke to the woman behind the desk. He stepped up beside his mother, fingering the end of his braid nervously. His large, amethyst eyes flicked around the hall as he shifted from foot to foot.
"...we spoke on the phone. My son hallucinates." Duo's dad seemed eager to get him in there and treated. The woman at the desk said something in return. "Yes, age 16, has been hallucinating for about two years..." The man continued to list things off about Duo until she nodded and told him something about his planning to be there for a month at first.
Duo dropped his braid and felt it slide along his back. He couldn't believe that his own parents were sending him here for a whole month! Maybe more if he didn't get better by then. As he stared incredulously at the woman speaking to his parents, her eyes turned red with blood and it started running down her cheeks in slow, crimson streams. He watched with a gruesome fascination as the blood fell onto her hands as they ruffled through some papers on the desk and typed on her keyboard. As she spoke, Duo noticed that blood was starting to trickle out the corner of her mouth. But as she continued talking, her tongue pushed out seemingly endless blood coming from nowhere.
However, she continued to do her job.
Thick, sticky blood poured over her white shirt and into her lap and a thin, red line began at the bottom of her ear and continued slowly down her neck along the jugular like an invisible knife was delicately and carefully cutting it. Duo's stomach lurched as blood gushed openly from the new wound and with the woman's movements, began to open further, revealing the red meat of her neck.
Duo nearly cried out but he didn't. He just shut his eyes and turned his head towards the floor. He heard the voices of his parents and the woman and he opened his eyes again, staring at his shoes. He slowly looked up and was relieved to see that the woman was no longer bleeding from the eyes, mouth and neck. She looked just as she had when he came in.
"Duo!" his mother called into his ear. He jumped.
"What?!" he cried, turning his eyes to her face.
She stopped suddenly and a solemn, knowing expression crossed her face. "I've called you three times now. You're so pale - Did you see something?" Duo said nothing, but kept his eyes on hers. "What did you see?" she asked quietly. By this time, both the woman behind the desk and Duo's father were looking at him.
Duo gulped and his mother saw the muscles in his cheeks tighten as he clenched his teeth. He shook his head, refusing to tell her anything. She sighed.
His hallucinations are what got him here. If he mentioned them, especially while he was here, they would just think him even crazier.
.......................................
Later, as Duo was being led to his room, he discovered that his parents had packed a suitcase full of clothes for him before they even left the house. He was now lugging it down a long, gray hallway with the man who was taking him to his new room.
He hadn't said goodbye to his parents. He didn't regret it now. He hated them with a burning passion for this. But at the same time, he felt like these people may possibly be able to help him.
But then again, this was his curse. He genuinely thought that this was a curse. Not some hint that he's absolutely crazy.
He came to a door along the hall (past many others which he assumed were rooms of other "inmates") and the man opened it for him, letting him inside. "Your roommate's name is Wufei Chang," he said gruffly and left.
Duo shook his head and entered the room slowly and cautiously. He was fully aware that if he was in a mental institution, there was going to be some pretty nutty people around. He tried to imagine what this boy Wufei Chang was here for, but decided not to try to guess.
As he was setting his suitcase on the bed that looked neat and unused, Duo jumped at the sound of the door opening. He spun around and saw a boy about his age with onyx black eyes, black hair pulled back into a small ponytail, and a grim expression on his face. His hands were shoved deep into the pockets of his loose, white jeans as he came in.
Duo smiled a little nervously and said, "Um... You must be Wufei... I'm Duo Maxwell."
Wufei's eyes flicked to the suitcase on the bed. "How long are you staying?" he asked, strolling across the room to sit on a window seat.
"A month... At first," Duo muttered unhappily. "How long have you been here?"
"Three months. And I'm here for another two unless they're satisfied with their, quote-unquote, results." Wufei reached over and rummaged around in his bedside table drawer and drew out a piece of candy. He stuck the sucker in his mouth and looked out the narrow, tall, BARRED window.
"If you don't mind my asking..." Duo began. Wufei's eyes drifted back over to meet Duo's. "What are you here for?"
Wufei closed his eyes and chuckled. Duo heard the sucker in his mouth clicking against his teeth as his tongue pushed it into his right cheek. "I did drugs," he replied vaguely. He pointed to his bedside table. "That's why they give me things to put in my mouth. I guess it's some kind of therapy or something." He put his hands behind his head and leaned back on the wall.
Duo nodded and sat down slowly on the bed, letting his eyes drift over the dark blue carpet of their room.
Wufei opened his eyes and looked at Duo as he stared sadly at the floor, swimming in his own thoughts. "What about you? What're you here for?"
Duo looked up and quirked an eyebrow. "I have this curse kind of thing where I hallucinate and it gets really bad. Almost every time I look at someone or something, I'll see it do something that isn't really happening. Make sense?"
Wufei nodded. "But gimme an example."
Duo shrugged. "Sure. If you don't mind, I'll see if it'll work on you."
Wufei nodded again, giving him permission.
So Duo watched him closely, focusing on the normal things you see when you look at someone. The color of his tank top shirt was black. He had no shoes on... And then Duo saw something that wasn't normal - He could suddenly see the veins and arteries in his arms and feet. They turned black, as though tar were running through them instead of blood.
Wufei watched Duo's face grow pale and his amethyst eyes widened in shock. Wufei let his arms fall back down to his lap from behind his head and got chills just watching Duo. "What? What's happening?" he asked, wondering if he should be concerned.
Duo didn't respond, he just watched with growing terror as those black lines running along Wufei's arms and feet bulged in little, red, blister-type things and burst, causing blood to gush out of his veins and arteries and cover every bare inch of skin on his arms and feet. The same thing seemed to be happening under his clothes. Dark, damp patches of blood bloomed on his clothes and Duo had to look away and close his eyes. He didn't want to see any more.
He was panting and perspiring as he closed his eyes tightly, willing the image away. He heard Wufei call his name uncertainly and a tight band loosened around his chest. He finally looked up and saw that Wufei had sat up and was looking at him uneasily. He smiled a little and rolled his shoulders. He drew a shaky breath. "I'm not sure if you want to know what I just saw..." he warned.
Wufei sat back and sighed. "No, go ahead and tell me." So he did. Wufei just shook his head in wonder when he was done. "You're either really crazy, or you really are cursed," he said.
"Yea, it's been going on for two years now... It's always been really bloody and gory. Except some things just seem worse. Like maybe a hole in your shirt might be about three millimeters long, but I might see a six inch rip or something." Duo shrugged and looked at the tip of his braid held between his fingers.
They were both silent for a few minutes, Duo studying his braid and Wufei watching him with interest. Then Wufei stood up. "C'mon, I'll take you to meet the other guys," he said, chewing on the plastic stick of his sucker.
So they left the room and Wufei led him down to a sort of living room. There were tables and chairs around and people there gathered and talked or played card games. They stopped in the wide doorway and Wufei started to point people out. "See that blonde guy and the one next to him?" he asked, pointing to far corner where two boys sat, talking and playing a fast moving card game. Duo nodded. "The blonde one is Quatre and the other is Trowa. Trowa's like me, he did drugs. Quatre is schitzophrenic. Talks to himself. He doesn't do it very much around Trowa, though."
Duo smiled and nodded. He looked around the room at the groups scattered around and saw that there was only one person who was alone. He shuffled a deck of playing cards absentmindedly while he stared out one of the tall, narrow, barred windows. His chocolate brown hair was messy in a strangely fashionable way. His eyes were sapphire blue and had a far-off look in them. Duo watched his hands shuffle, then bridge, shuffle, bridge, shuffle-
"That's Heero," Wufei said on seeing who he was looking at. "He's really suicidal. I don't think you can see it from here, but he's got these awful cut scars all up his inner forearms." Wufei shuddered. "I don't know how he does it."
Duo looked at Heero with pity. An annoying schoolteacher voice suddenly popped into his head saying, 'Suicide is not the answer' in a sickeningly cheery voice. He watched Heero for a few minutes and felt like there was something missing. The picture was too plain. He quickly realized that he wasn't seeing anything gory or disgusting happening to him. He suddenly expected the cards to turn into paper-thin shards of glass and he would start spouting blood from cuts that they made in his fingers as he shuffled and bridged.
But they didn't. Nothing happened. Duo wondered if this was just an odd skip in the curse's usual pattern or something else beyond his knowledge. Whatever it was, he was enjoying it. Looking at someone without having their heart explode out of their chest or their throat being slit was a great relief to his eyes.
But suddenly, Heero's cold, sapphire eyes turned to stare directly into Duo's amethyst ones. He blinked and quickly looked down guiltily. He heard Wufei snort. "He's kinda moody. Doesn't like people very much."
Duo nodded and looked up at him, in hopes of him suggesting they either go join Trowa and Quatre or go someplace else altogether. Wufei seemed to get the message and started across the room towards the far corner where his friends sat. Duo shuffled after him, keeping close to him and looking at the floor.
Heero watched with a slight scowl as the weird boy with the braid hurried after Wufei, a boy he vaguely knew. He rolled his eyes as the boy refused to make eye contact with anyone for more than a split second and his face was crimson with an embarrassed blush. He then continued staring out the window, wishing desperately that he had something sharp...
XXXXXXXXXXXXX
Woot! There's the first chapter of my newest story! I'm so happy! I feel very passionately about this story already. Probably because it's fresh meat to knaw on. I really hope this whole curse with Duo makes sense... It took me a little while to grasp the idea that was subconsciously forming in my head. I think I finally got it while I was kinda putting my actions into a story in my head (I do that a lot...). I was looking at my Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron poster and I was writing the scene in my head like I was seeing something that wasn't really happening. I thought of how much I hate it when horses scream and I imagined something random, but horrible happening to them that I would never WANT to happen to them! I'm rambling, and I don't think it makes sense, but I'm excited!!! So then I was like "Hey, that would be a pretty weird fanfic idea... Somebody has this curse where they see things..." blah blah blah, etc etc, you get the point.
Anyway, please review and tell me what you think - But if you don't like it, just say "Hey, nice try - Maybe you'll do better next time." Not something like "You suck! You couldn't write a story to save your life!" Or whatever... Just... Go easy on me, kay?
Disclaimers: I do not own GW or it's chars.
That was exciting... wow... ::rolls eyes::
Warnings: There's some language in this chapter... and I suppose I should warn you that I have no idea what I'm talking about when I describe the mental institution, so bear with me. I've never been to one and I don't know how they work or how they're set up, etc. But I'm kinda going off of the movie "28 Days" and I guess "Gothika" a little bit. I don't own them either, if it matters... And besides, someone I know who's prolly gonna read this has been there once and they can tell me if I get too outrageous. And there's some pretty gory stuff in here, so be prepared. YAOI! 1x2x1, indicated 3x4x3
Anywho - I want to tell you right off that I do not want flames. If you feel you absolutely have to send stupid reviews about how bad the story is, then I'm warning you now - my reply will not be a kind one. I've tolerated them in the past, but I'm way too excited about this to take flames without caring. Reviews are meant to help authors and encourage them. I'm fairly sure it says something along those lines on the review box thingy. So no flames!!!
Lifting Curses & Mending Broken Wings
Chapter 1: The Mental Institution
"Oh, FUCK NO!" a boy in the back seat of a silver Volvo cried out once he finally saw where his parents were taking him.
"Duo!" they both yelled in unison. Duo's mother glared at him out of the corner of her eye, just daring him to curse again.
He cowered against the right door behind his mother's seat. "A mental institution?! Aw, shit - Don't send me there!!" His mother commented on his language but went unnoticed by him. "I swear I'll never mention what I see again!" He shifted around like there were spiders in his pants.
"It's for your own good. We want you to get better, not just hide the fact that you..." she hesitated.
"Are cursed?" Duo finished for her.
She sighed. "You are not cursed!"
"You two quit bickering!" Duo's father was just a tad irritated. So for the rest of the trip, they were all silent.
.......................................
Duo glanced quickly around as they came up to a kind of check-in desk. Behind the desk was a wide flight of stairs and there were closed doors on either side of this hallway. Duo's father spoke to the woman behind the desk. He stepped up beside his mother, fingering the end of his braid nervously. His large, amethyst eyes flicked around the hall as he shifted from foot to foot.
"...we spoke on the phone. My son hallucinates." Duo's dad seemed eager to get him in there and treated. The woman at the desk said something in return. "Yes, age 16, has been hallucinating for about two years..." The man continued to list things off about Duo until she nodded and told him something about his planning to be there for a month at first.
Duo dropped his braid and felt it slide along his back. He couldn't believe that his own parents were sending him here for a whole month! Maybe more if he didn't get better by then. As he stared incredulously at the woman speaking to his parents, her eyes turned red with blood and it started running down her cheeks in slow, crimson streams. He watched with a gruesome fascination as the blood fell onto her hands as they ruffled through some papers on the desk and typed on her keyboard. As she spoke, Duo noticed that blood was starting to trickle out the corner of her mouth. But as she continued talking, her tongue pushed out seemingly endless blood coming from nowhere.
However, she continued to do her job.
Thick, sticky blood poured over her white shirt and into her lap and a thin, red line began at the bottom of her ear and continued slowly down her neck along the jugular like an invisible knife was delicately and carefully cutting it. Duo's stomach lurched as blood gushed openly from the new wound and with the woman's movements, began to open further, revealing the red meat of her neck.
Duo nearly cried out but he didn't. He just shut his eyes and turned his head towards the floor. He heard the voices of his parents and the woman and he opened his eyes again, staring at his shoes. He slowly looked up and was relieved to see that the woman was no longer bleeding from the eyes, mouth and neck. She looked just as she had when he came in.
"Duo!" his mother called into his ear. He jumped.
"What?!" he cried, turning his eyes to her face.
She stopped suddenly and a solemn, knowing expression crossed her face. "I've called you three times now. You're so pale - Did you see something?" Duo said nothing, but kept his eyes on hers. "What did you see?" she asked quietly. By this time, both the woman behind the desk and Duo's father were looking at him.
Duo gulped and his mother saw the muscles in his cheeks tighten as he clenched his teeth. He shook his head, refusing to tell her anything. She sighed.
His hallucinations are what got him here. If he mentioned them, especially while he was here, they would just think him even crazier.
.......................................
Later, as Duo was being led to his room, he discovered that his parents had packed a suitcase full of clothes for him before they even left the house. He was now lugging it down a long, gray hallway with the man who was taking him to his new room.
He hadn't said goodbye to his parents. He didn't regret it now. He hated them with a burning passion for this. But at the same time, he felt like these people may possibly be able to help him.
But then again, this was his curse. He genuinely thought that this was a curse. Not some hint that he's absolutely crazy.
He came to a door along the hall (past many others which he assumed were rooms of other "inmates") and the man opened it for him, letting him inside. "Your roommate's name is Wufei Chang," he said gruffly and left.
Duo shook his head and entered the room slowly and cautiously. He was fully aware that if he was in a mental institution, there was going to be some pretty nutty people around. He tried to imagine what this boy Wufei Chang was here for, but decided not to try to guess.
As he was setting his suitcase on the bed that looked neat and unused, Duo jumped at the sound of the door opening. He spun around and saw a boy about his age with onyx black eyes, black hair pulled back into a small ponytail, and a grim expression on his face. His hands were shoved deep into the pockets of his loose, white jeans as he came in.
Duo smiled a little nervously and said, "Um... You must be Wufei... I'm Duo Maxwell."
Wufei's eyes flicked to the suitcase on the bed. "How long are you staying?" he asked, strolling across the room to sit on a window seat.
"A month... At first," Duo muttered unhappily. "How long have you been here?"
"Three months. And I'm here for another two unless they're satisfied with their, quote-unquote, results." Wufei reached over and rummaged around in his bedside table drawer and drew out a piece of candy. He stuck the sucker in his mouth and looked out the narrow, tall, BARRED window.
"If you don't mind my asking..." Duo began. Wufei's eyes drifted back over to meet Duo's. "What are you here for?"
Wufei closed his eyes and chuckled. Duo heard the sucker in his mouth clicking against his teeth as his tongue pushed it into his right cheek. "I did drugs," he replied vaguely. He pointed to his bedside table. "That's why they give me things to put in my mouth. I guess it's some kind of therapy or something." He put his hands behind his head and leaned back on the wall.
Duo nodded and sat down slowly on the bed, letting his eyes drift over the dark blue carpet of their room.
Wufei opened his eyes and looked at Duo as he stared sadly at the floor, swimming in his own thoughts. "What about you? What're you here for?"
Duo looked up and quirked an eyebrow. "I have this curse kind of thing where I hallucinate and it gets really bad. Almost every time I look at someone or something, I'll see it do something that isn't really happening. Make sense?"
Wufei nodded. "But gimme an example."
Duo shrugged. "Sure. If you don't mind, I'll see if it'll work on you."
Wufei nodded again, giving him permission.
So Duo watched him closely, focusing on the normal things you see when you look at someone. The color of his tank top shirt was black. He had no shoes on... And then Duo saw something that wasn't normal - He could suddenly see the veins and arteries in his arms and feet. They turned black, as though tar were running through them instead of blood.
Wufei watched Duo's face grow pale and his amethyst eyes widened in shock. Wufei let his arms fall back down to his lap from behind his head and got chills just watching Duo. "What? What's happening?" he asked, wondering if he should be concerned.
Duo didn't respond, he just watched with growing terror as those black lines running along Wufei's arms and feet bulged in little, red, blister-type things and burst, causing blood to gush out of his veins and arteries and cover every bare inch of skin on his arms and feet. The same thing seemed to be happening under his clothes. Dark, damp patches of blood bloomed on his clothes and Duo had to look away and close his eyes. He didn't want to see any more.
He was panting and perspiring as he closed his eyes tightly, willing the image away. He heard Wufei call his name uncertainly and a tight band loosened around his chest. He finally looked up and saw that Wufei had sat up and was looking at him uneasily. He smiled a little and rolled his shoulders. He drew a shaky breath. "I'm not sure if you want to know what I just saw..." he warned.
Wufei sat back and sighed. "No, go ahead and tell me." So he did. Wufei just shook his head in wonder when he was done. "You're either really crazy, or you really are cursed," he said.
"Yea, it's been going on for two years now... It's always been really bloody and gory. Except some things just seem worse. Like maybe a hole in your shirt might be about three millimeters long, but I might see a six inch rip or something." Duo shrugged and looked at the tip of his braid held between his fingers.
They were both silent for a few minutes, Duo studying his braid and Wufei watching him with interest. Then Wufei stood up. "C'mon, I'll take you to meet the other guys," he said, chewing on the plastic stick of his sucker.
So they left the room and Wufei led him down to a sort of living room. There were tables and chairs around and people there gathered and talked or played card games. They stopped in the wide doorway and Wufei started to point people out. "See that blonde guy and the one next to him?" he asked, pointing to far corner where two boys sat, talking and playing a fast moving card game. Duo nodded. "The blonde one is Quatre and the other is Trowa. Trowa's like me, he did drugs. Quatre is schitzophrenic. Talks to himself. He doesn't do it very much around Trowa, though."
Duo smiled and nodded. He looked around the room at the groups scattered around and saw that there was only one person who was alone. He shuffled a deck of playing cards absentmindedly while he stared out one of the tall, narrow, barred windows. His chocolate brown hair was messy in a strangely fashionable way. His eyes were sapphire blue and had a far-off look in them. Duo watched his hands shuffle, then bridge, shuffle, bridge, shuffle-
"That's Heero," Wufei said on seeing who he was looking at. "He's really suicidal. I don't think you can see it from here, but he's got these awful cut scars all up his inner forearms." Wufei shuddered. "I don't know how he does it."
Duo looked at Heero with pity. An annoying schoolteacher voice suddenly popped into his head saying, 'Suicide is not the answer' in a sickeningly cheery voice. He watched Heero for a few minutes and felt like there was something missing. The picture was too plain. He quickly realized that he wasn't seeing anything gory or disgusting happening to him. He suddenly expected the cards to turn into paper-thin shards of glass and he would start spouting blood from cuts that they made in his fingers as he shuffled and bridged.
But they didn't. Nothing happened. Duo wondered if this was just an odd skip in the curse's usual pattern or something else beyond his knowledge. Whatever it was, he was enjoying it. Looking at someone without having their heart explode out of their chest or their throat being slit was a great relief to his eyes.
But suddenly, Heero's cold, sapphire eyes turned to stare directly into Duo's amethyst ones. He blinked and quickly looked down guiltily. He heard Wufei snort. "He's kinda moody. Doesn't like people very much."
Duo nodded and looked up at him, in hopes of him suggesting they either go join Trowa and Quatre or go someplace else altogether. Wufei seemed to get the message and started across the room towards the far corner where his friends sat. Duo shuffled after him, keeping close to him and looking at the floor.
Heero watched with a slight scowl as the weird boy with the braid hurried after Wufei, a boy he vaguely knew. He rolled his eyes as the boy refused to make eye contact with anyone for more than a split second and his face was crimson with an embarrassed blush. He then continued staring out the window, wishing desperately that he had something sharp...
XXXXXXXXXXXXX
Woot! There's the first chapter of my newest story! I'm so happy! I feel very passionately about this story already. Probably because it's fresh meat to knaw on. I really hope this whole curse with Duo makes sense... It took me a little while to grasp the idea that was subconsciously forming in my head. I think I finally got it while I was kinda putting my actions into a story in my head (I do that a lot...). I was looking at my Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron poster and I was writing the scene in my head like I was seeing something that wasn't really happening. I thought of how much I hate it when horses scream and I imagined something random, but horrible happening to them that I would never WANT to happen to them! I'm rambling, and I don't think it makes sense, but I'm excited!!! So then I was like "Hey, that would be a pretty weird fanfic idea... Somebody has this curse where they see things..." blah blah blah, etc etc, you get the point.
Anyway, please review and tell me what you think - But if you don't like it, just say "Hey, nice try - Maybe you'll do better next time." Not something like "You suck! You couldn't write a story to save your life!" Or whatever... Just... Go easy on me, kay?