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Learning to Trust One foot in front of the other. That’s all it would take, to climb out of this hell he was in. All he would have to do is walk out of there without looking back. He clutched his shoulder where warm red liquid trickled out of a gash in the skin. He looked down, concentrating only on the movement of his feet and the ground he hoped was passing below him. Left. Right. Left. Right. It took more concentration than he’d anticipated, with the shredded mess his right leg had become. His limping gait left footprints in the mud, smudged with drops of blood. The tunnel he walked through turned at a sharp angle and he almost hit his head on the ceiling which lowered abruptly at the turn. From this point on, he was walking uphill, at a steep incline, so that his breath started to come in labored gasps; coughing every so often because the dirt and dust disturbed by his movements would tickle the back of his throat. Several times he paused for a few seconds, to rest, but an urgency pressed at his back, not allowing him to stop for long. And besides, he couldn’t stop to rest because he wounds were still bleeding. If he didn’t emerge into daylight – and safety – soon, he’d pass out from the blood loss and, no doubt, other complications. And his effort would be all for nothing. He couldn’t allow that. He paused once again, just long enough to take a deep breath filled with the dirt and dust of years long past, and to wipe the fine sheen of sweat off of his flushed face, in the process streaking mud through sweat-darkened hair. A flash of urgency washed over him, giving new life to strained and failing muscles. Wordlessly, he took another breath and began to walk again. Focusing only on the ground below his feet, which he still could not see in the pitch blackness of the cave, he forced them to move forward. One after the other. Again and again. The routine became almost hypnotizing in its redundancy and, despite the urgency pushing him forward, it was quite a while before he realized that he could now see the outline of his shoes as they moved below him. He looked up and was almost blinded by the few slivers of light streaming from so far ahead. Obviously, despite the shadows he could make out, his eyes had not yet adjusted to the light that filtered in. He estimated that he still had at least an hour before he reached what he hoped would be the opening, so he couldn’t figure out how the light still managed to reach him, but it was also beyond his ability at the moment, to concentrate on something so irrelevant to the task at hand. He had to get to that exit. Odd lights or no, he had to get to the opening. He looked down once again and the pain behind his eyes eased a bit. He focused on the shoes he could now see. The once light-brown hiking boots were now a dark brown color, but he could not tell if it was because of the mud he’d been trekking through, or the blood he’d shed. Or both. It was most likely both. His mind wandered a bit, and when his footsteps began to slow, he felt that same push of urgency as he’d felt before. His steps picked up a little bit, as much as he could manage with his limping right leg. He could feel a chill settling into his bones; one that had nothing to do with the depth of the cave. Slowly, he noticed that the walls of the cave began to close in, get more narrow. Before, the cave had been wider than his arm-span, but now he could barely extend an arm before an elbow came into contact with the cave wall. The ceiling of the tunnel dipped now, not so low that he had to crawl, but low enough so that he hunched over a bit as he walked and had to focus less on his feet, in order to be aware of any outcroppings of rock that might make another gash in his head if he wasn’t careful. He tried to slow down in order to be more careful, but this time the urgency wouldn’t let him. Uncaring or unaware of his situation, the urgency pushed him forward at a speed that was quickly becoming dangerous. His feet could not keep up and began to trip over the rocks in their path, sliding over the mud that now seemed to suck at the boots on his feet. He stumbled a few more times, but now the urgency would not even let him help himself up. It seemed to pick him up and hurl him forward. He could feel the pressure on his back, pushing him forward without mercy, even as he scraped his hands along the ragged sides of the cave walls in a desperate attempt to slow down his headlong rush. He could feel his nails scrape along the walls and crack, peel back, and break, and the slippery liquid that further prevented him from getting any sort of grip on the wall. He began to drag his feet, trying still to slow down. But the urgency was strong in its panicked reaction, trying to escape, that it no longer had enough awareness to control its formidable strength. It could only see the goal up ahead, those pinpricks of light which became brighter with every yard they covered. Pushing, pushing, striving, only for its freedom… He could feel his boots catch on the rocks below, bending his feet and twisting his ankles in unnatural directions. He could feel things snap and break, and yet, by this point, he didn’t care what was happening. He only wanted to stop. Just for a moment, to stop. With head tilted back, face cut and shredded by the ceiling above, yet still with open eyes, he strained to look behind him. To see what urgency was pushing him forward against his will. Briefly, he remembered that it had been his will in the beginning, not so long ago. He had wanted more than anything to reach the light, the promise of outside, of freedom. But it was not his will now, that was pushing him forward at unnatural speed, hurtling headlong for the goal. And still, he strained to get a glimpse of what it could be, that wanted, needed this escape so badly it was destroying the very thing that had come to rescue it. And finally, finally, with his head bent back as far as he could reach, with a chest that had been scraped raw on the ceiling above, with blood running down over his eyes, he finally caught a glimpse of something bright blue. And then it vanished. And his body fell, making almost no sound as it settled abruptly into the dirt ten feet away from the opening into the cave, with light streaming through, but unable to be seen by the red-drenched eyes of the still-breathing body. And slowly, so slowly it was like the hand of fate playing a video tape frame by agonizingly slow frame, it all faded to black. The blood, the flesh, the rocks and dirt that had been disturbed by those who had tried to escape… they all sank into the mud of the cave, turning brown and disappearing like an illusion. *********** Light brown hiking boots, not yet stained a dark red-brown, once again stepped up onto the cliff. A few drops of blood spattered the ground from a still-shallow shoulder wound. It had been a false handhold on the face of the cliff and he’d slid down a bit before catching himself and choosing a different path to the top. On the plateau he looked around and spotted the cave opening immediately, but did not yet approach it. He took off his climbing gear and lay it down a few feet away from the edge of the cliff. He pulled out a folded piece of paper from his back pocket and examined it quickly, but carefully. It was a hand drawn map, consisting of the path he’d just taken to get to the cave opening, and three short sentences. A week ago, Heero had gone missing with no word of him since. Two days ago, Duo had received an email – from his own email account – with only a .jpg file attached. When he opened it, he’d been stunned to find this map and the sentences on the screen – written in his own handwriting. Although reason said it was unwise, he couldn’t leave the lead unexplored with Heero still missing. Duo read the short sentences again. "Get him. Get out. Don’t look back." Then he tucked the note back in his pocket, swung his braid over his shoulder, and descended into Hell. Again. +OWARI+ ======================== BGM: "Rakuen (Inori)" by Buck-Tick
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