[alone again]

Title: Alone Again
Author: Natea
Pairings: Heero/Duo. Heero centric.
Warnings: kind of supernatural, minor language.
Rating: PG13.

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The alley way was dark and damp and Heero pushed himself out of the mound of boxes to brush himself off before looking up to the top of the building high above. It had been daylight when he'd fallen, lost his grip on slippery metalwork and plunged down to the floor below while chasing a suspect.

It wasn't daylight now.

His balance was off a little and his left ankle ached. He stumbled when he took a step and braced himself against the mildewed wall for a second. All in all it seemed he'd been lucky, something that the suspect he'd been chasing most likely also thought about himself, he mused wryly.

The hollow tapping of his footsteps followed him along the alley until he slipped out onto the street.

And paused; glanced up at the sky, then to his watch. Frowned.

It was twilight. Not late. His watch read 7:28 but as he looked on he noticed the second hand was stationary. An icy lump formed deep down in his belly. A quick shake of his wrist and he held the device up to his ear.

Silence.

The streets were empty. Not just an absence of people... empty. There were no cars, no bikes, no litter on the ground, no lights from shop windows or traffic signals. There was no sound. His heart gave an extra thud against his chest and he heard the echo of it pound in his ears before the tinnitus buzz of listening too hard when there is nothing to hear overwhelmed him.

Where the hell was everybody?

---

He walked.

It was all he could do in the circumstances. Despite the fact that he was alone he still cast wary glances behind him every so often. He'd considered hotwiring a car but he couldn't find one to break into. Even the multi storey parking lot was just an empty cake tier of concrete and oil puddles.

His phone had been broken in the fall and so he walked his way to a payphone to call Duo. When he'd picked up the receiver there'd been no dial tone. He'd tried three more before finally giving up and settling on walking home.

It took twenty minutes to drive from his apartment to the downtown region of the city. He found it took a lot longer to actually walk that distance back, especially with an aching ankle. Along the way he'd convinced himself he'd see someone soon. There would be a man out walking a dog perhaps, or a lady taking her children home from some after school pursuit. He'd see them and immediately the icy rock in his gullet would melt and he'd feel foolish when he told the story to Duo.

There was no one.

He ran the last block home.

His security card didn't bleep as he passed it through the scanner and so he was forced to break in. The elevator didn't work so he used the stairs, arriving breathless and panicked at the fifth floor.

"Calm down," he whispered, then winced. The sound was too loud. He grasped his keys and winced again at the jingle, then shook them viciously, chasing away the quiet - but not the fear. His hand shook as he tried to insert the doorkey into the lock but he took a deep breath and released it on a curse and it eventually slid in.

He wouldn't knock.

In all the B movies he and Duo had watched together, the door to the scary room had always opened with areeeeeeeeek. This door however, slid open silently, as it would, he thought, for it was the door to his home... nothing frightening there.

Duo wasn't there and the lights were off. Heero flicked on the hall lamp, more as a reflex, and sighed when the light did actually come on. Duo was really going to laugh at him later, he thought as he grabbed a drink from the fridge, he'd been jumping at his own shadow.

He did wonder where Duo actually was though, as his shift at Preventers HQ had been an early one. He should have been home by now easily. Although, Heero did need to take into account the strange absence outside. Duo was probably having difficulties getting home too, he may even have left a message on the phone.

He glanced at his watch.

7:28.

Of course. It was broken. He'd forgotten. Kicking off his shoes, Heero walked into the living room and flicked on the light to see the wall clock.

7:28

He clicked off the light again, feeling cold. The semi darkness outside muted the room, turning everything a shade of gray.

He'd taken an hour to get home.

It should have been dark.

It wasn't.

Heero ran.

---

He tried to get out of the city. He walked the line of the train tracks in the direction of the faintly orange horizon, but he never seemed to get anywhere. The darkness of the track behind him as it was swallowed by the night was too ominous to trek although he stood there, staring at the point where the tracks slid into blackness for a long time. He walked towards the sunset until his ankle was a burning mass of nerves and his body ached.

Then he slept, hunkered down by the side of the embankment like a hobo even though he had a home not too far away and money enough in his pocket to pay for a hotel room. He pretended it was because he was too tired.

It wasn't because he was waiting for a train to pass.

When he woke it was still twilight and he was still alone.

---

For a while he did nothing but walk and sleep. Hours passed, his watch still read 7:28 and the sun never set, never rose. He never left the city, no trains came through. He never saw a soul.

He wondered if he was one.

---

Going back to his apartment was surreal. He refused to see it as a gesture of defeat but more of a tactical retreat. He'd go back, eat, rest up a little, then figure out what the hell was going on. He'd left the door open on his flight, the hall light was still casting a warm triangular patch of light onto the welcome mat that Duo had insisted they buy.

The one that read Loam Again.

He added an A to the beginning and shuddered. The first place he headed for once inside his home was the living room. He turned on the radio as soon as he could and twisted the knob to full volume.

The sound ripped through the floor, the chair, his body. He felt it cracking the ice around his throat and he threw his head back and screamed until he had to stop for breath, then screamed again, and again until the ringing in his ears was caused by something, not the lack of it.

He slept that night on the sofa, with Duo's leather jacket over his shoulders and the boom of heavy metal in his ears.

---

It was always strange to wake up in the dusk. He found himself longing for sunlight almost as much as he did companionship. He missed the colours outside, everything had been bled grey and he found he preferred to stay indoors now, holed up in their tiny apartment with every single light they had turned on all the time and the music still playing on a loop.

People would think he was mad.

But there were no people anymore so he couldn't be. He was the tree now, he thought one day... one dusk... as he sat at the kitchen table, reading through the newspaper once more. He had fallen in the forest but there was no one around to hear.

Taking an eraser he rubbed out the answers to the crossword puzzle before smoothing out the page.

23 across. Wind and sun before April's out, six letters.

He wished for both.

---

He left the door wide open now regardless of whether he was home or not. There was no one around to break in and his attempts at locating any others in his solitary city had proven fruitless. Indeed, if he did walk in one day and find someone sitting in his living room or stealing his food, he'd welcome them.

He'd beg them not to leave.

He didn't eat. The food in his kitchen stayed fresh but somehow he found he had no appetite any longer. In his fridge was the remnants of a Chinese takeaway, the sink still held the dirty plates. They should have been stinking, covered in mould, but they were not.

He wondered who the other plate had been for.

His crossword was faded and smudged but he sat down and picked up his pencil anyway.

15 across. Prevent someone who's late from going off! six letters.

He scribbled in an 'er' to the first word then sat there quietly for a while. It should have meant something, but it didn't.

He threw the paper away.

---

He was never sure how he'd managed to get to the train tracks that day but then he wasn't sure of a lot of things now. Actions and words lost meaning when there was no one to talk to, to express ideas with and expand on them. He was tired of being talked to by a hunk of metal in his home.

He shivered although he'd never been cold before. The temperature hadn't changed since he'd been there, yet another thing caught on the cusp of time.

This was something different though. He knew that once he'd had a reason for not walking the dark sleepers, but it had faded now, along with most of his memories. His horizon was, unlike the one that now lit his back with a deep blue glow, shrinking every day. His tactical retreat had become a bolthole as he tried to cling on to something.

But whatever that something was, he could no longer remember.

So he walked, and then he heard it.

"Heero."

He froze. The voice. Another voice. After so long it was almost strange to hear words without music to back them up. And a voice he knew, although the name of its owner was gone.

It spoke again and Heero felt the warmth of its tone settle around him. "Heero." He closed his eyes, tried to breathe it in, absorb it.

Duo.

"You can go... if you want to," it whispered. "I can't keep you."

Did he want to? Go yes, but not away from Duo. Away from the city, away from being alone, aloam again.

He wanted to go home.

He glanced down the track at the path he had so nearly followed, pulled his jacket - Duo's jacket - tighter around himself, and turned to face the sunset.

Hell no, he thought, taking a step towards the horizon. When the clock struck 7:29 he was running.

"Hell no!" For the first time he could remember he found himself grinning.

Without you the world would just stop turning.

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End

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