Instrument of Death - by the Black Rose

born of domination or defeat, but as gentle as the sigh that escaped her lips the day I left her behind – off to fight again: “I love you.”

I despised her then. I hate her even now as I feel the wanton urge to touch her gold-streaked hair settle in my fingertips, and the image of her soft blue eyes taunts my heart. It is that same vision which stays my hand, making me impotent once again to drain the war-like essence from my veins. It is she who binds me in this alternate reality.

Her chains of love chafe my flesh.

Her locks of hope keep them securely anchored to this human form.

True to their nature, perpetual combatants quickly sought to replace the old and outlawed technology with something more sophisticated and highly secretive. Psychological warfare is what they called it. Breaking the human spirit with floods of mental images until the soldier is completely controlled by inner voices that somehow speak the deathly language of their superior.

And I became again the obedient subject of their experiments.

It took them three years, seven months and fifteen days to break me. And it's been a year since she last left me in this godforsaken place to ‘rest’. I still remember the look of pity carved into the irises of her aquamarine eyes when they told her I was suffering from ‘post traumatic stress disorder’.

God, how I hated her then.

Pity for a soldier such as myself was never something I wanted to see glowing in those eyes.

And yet she still haunts me. The ghost of her last touch sweeps across my pallid cheeks; her warm breath lingers as she murmurs her last farewell.

I despise her face on the television screen, and in my collection of photographs that lie scattered on the shapeless table resting beneath my forearms scarred with battle and failure. I see her smile and wish to scream. But the voices want to hear me break.

I will not give them that satisfaction again.

"Relena…" Her name splits my lips as I narrow my eyes at the picture I clipped from the newspaper this morning. She's smiling again, that sad smile that only she can bring to life in a way that punctures my heart with the tip of an infected needle, poisoning the blood that pumps through its chambers.

Damn you, Relena, for making me feel. Damn you for mending my ragged soul with fervent threads - sewing in a desperate craving to be more than a soldier that steals life, precious life. You told me even my life was precious. Damn you for giving me a reason to live when life is nothing but searing agony playing its haunting tune on taut strings fashioned of muscle and flesh.

I can't go on this way, but I cannot take my own life and give your eyes another reason to pity me. Instead, I will once again rip you from my heart and empty the hole that cries out to be filled by the shrieks of death uttered by its helpless victims.

I will kill you, Relena.

"But you couldn't kill her before," the voices mock me. I grab my head in blazing anguish. Why must it be her voice I hear in my head? The soft, sweet sound of innocence I never had echoes in my mind and picks at the tender, tainted tears it finds connected to my soul.

I won't fail this time, I assure them. Blood drips from the tip of my open blade. The steaming droplets flow freely down its sharpened edge, and rain down on a film-like mass. I can feel the harsh sting of the new processor crunched into the pulpy mass of my brain take command and issue instructions for this body to close off the self-inflicted wound.

But it comes too late.

The crimson life that stains her picture is my pact.

I'm in her room, now; these blackouts I experience are unsettling at times. I wait in darkened shadows ready to sever my last ties with this world. I will be rid of you, Relena, and then I'll be able to do what they ask. I'll kill again, Relena; I’ll break my forever promise to you, and then I won't have to sit in that insipid hospital and whither away into nothing. I'll be able to fulfill my purpose – for I am nothing but what my maker molded me to be.

Or so the voices tell me.

They're getting louder now. She must be near. I have to kill her, destroy her.

It is my duty.

To kill her is what I was born to do.

And yet this happens in my dreams. I'm always here, waiting in a dark mist through which I can never fully see. She is here, I can sense her like a lover might be so finely tuned to the presence of his arduous companion. I kill her again and again. I raise my weapon to her head and fire, splattering pristine carpet and white-washed walls with lifeless blood. Her blood.

But she doesn't die. She never dies. Just like I can never be released when I take my own life after ending hers.

I don't want to live without her….

And then I hear her voice again. This time she whispers in my ear that she wants me to kill her. I need to kill her to end her pain.

Well, I need to kill her to end my own pain.

"Relena…"

She looks at me with glassy, hollow eyes that are never the same as the day I can’t forget – the day of that last torrid battle I fought for her sake. To protect her and her gentle peace. That smile I hate appears again on lips that know my name.

"Heero," she calls out to me.

I raise my instrument of death and step into the light – deepened shadows whining in protest at letting me go. They blocked the shining brilliance from where I stood, and yet now, it's so bright, she even glows beneath it. Sparkling hair and pink-tinged lips glint in the fluorescent sun. I sneer at the hopeful look in those eyes.

She visibly stiffens for a moment, the bare, graceful curve of her neck contracting with something akin to fear. Do I frighten her? She was never afraid of me before.

It doesn’t last long as acceptance of her trivial death quickly calms her physical form. She gazes into my soul like only she can do, and knows at once that I will not fail this mission.

"At least I get to say goodbye to you, Heero. I'm sorry that it has to be this way, but I hope that I will be allowed to wait for you."

Her whispered goodness bites sharpened teeth into the sensitive flesh of wounds that will never fully heal. I clench my jaw against the pain. The hand holding the burning weapon is resolute. I feel the trigger beneath my finger as she bows her head towards me. Granting me permission to kill.

"You promised to destroy her. To take her faith before you end her life." The voices never relent, pounding on sore and swollen suffering until my mind goes numb.

I cannot block them out.

And I cannot control them any more than I can stop what I know my body is about to do.

I slam the flat of my hand down over her mouth, muffling the scarlet scream of soiled innocence that tries to escape her lips, and thrust inside her once again. I never set aside the gun as I pin her down with my body weight and abuse the last of the trust she gave to me. To destroy her, I must leave her with nothing.

A last thrust, and I shudder violently, my liquid darkness filling and emptying her within the same stark moment in time. It seeps inside the life-giving part of the earthly form she possesses, fouling her purity even as I withdraw. I see the vacant expression on her face and know that I have succeeded.

At last, my mission will be complete.

Purpose once again lights my soul, crushing the throats of wicked demons constantly hissing in my ears. They are silent in my victory. I raise my weapon to her head once more, and feel triumph coursing like a raging river through my veins.

I pull the trigger.

The gun fires its deadly report, erupting a dormant volcano into a burning shower of lava and ash. My body jerks and stumbles forward; I can’t tear my eyes from the sight of her as visions of blissful battles fought in the wake of her death dance to the tune of chanting voices echoing strangely in my mind.

And then the world awash in a sea of churning, molten red changes back to silent black.

* * * * * *

"He's not fighting us as much as he was before," a feminine voice drifts faintly through the stagnant, heated air from a few feet away. I glance out of barely opened eyes and see a dark-haired woman talking to a familiar, half robotic man wearing a most maniacal grin. He claims to be my ‘doctor’. It’s not a new lie. He made that claim when I was a child just before he strapped me down to a fear-laden table and pumped this body full of experimental, genetic fluids designed to make me ‘super human’. Now, they just observe while I lie weakly chained to this hospital bed.

"No, he's always been obedient. I'd say he'll be ready for our plan in just a few more days," Dr. J responded with his usual leer. They turn and casually slip out of my room.

When I know they’re gone, I sit up, and slowly shake my head from side to pain-filled side. "Relena, I'll beat this. I won't let them hurt you." I vow as I try to dispel the ghastly images of the latest treatment from my mind.

Three years, seven months and sixteen days…