Written by Talon Harvilicz
Chapter Seven: Flashback
Quatre stared up at the ceiling while he laid on the bed of his newly owned apartment, accompanied by Duo. They were lucky to actually get the apartment in the morning. If the landlord has problems, he could always have his boss take care of it, just like in South City. It was small, perfect really for Quatre. Duo had no complaints either.
The tenseness wasn't about the apartment itself, but what happened last night.
"This is pretty messed up," Quatre said as he continued to stare up.
Duo listened nearby. "I gotta agree. Thirds trying to be human and actually pulling it off, that is messed up." He looked at him. "Watch it, man. This stuff sounds real serious. Kinda creepy if you think about it."
Quatre sighed and sat up. "Trowa's an idiot. If he was a Third, why didn't he say so? Thirds aren't supposed to fear each other. In this crazy world, the only ones we can trust is each other. Why would he be so afraid of me? He must have been granted lots of freedom. Every Third dreams of that."
"Maybe he wasn't granted freedom," Duo said. "Maybe it was something else. He musta been so desperate to avoid all this crap, he abused himself to look human. He's barely a Third anymore."
"Fooled me," Quatre said. "Seriously, I thought he was human. I thought he wanted something from me. I thought he wanted to own me by the way he was following me around. I even thought he meant me harm before I left South City."
"Man, I wonder what drove him to wanting to be human. Human is what we don't want to be like. They're greedy, lazy, sadistic bastards."
"But there is an advantage to impersonating a human. You get freedom, no one will ever look at you as inferior, and you don't have a reminder of why you were created." He covered his hand over his black collar.
"I don't want to be human," Duo said. "They made us, they made us live because there were things they didn't want to do anymore. Humans are pathetic. They want to rule over everything and be the superior being, so they made Thirds. They made us to do dity work. We were never meant to be free and independent. That's why Thirds that are free, like that detective are messed up."
"Maybe you're right," Quatre said. "I remember quite a few in the Third housing shelter." He shook his head. "Humans did all that to them. Their minds were wiped. They were---traumatized. I remember Thirds that were abused by their owners, left with a frame, no skin, one had half a face. Others, they would just stare, stare out like they were listening to something...but they weren't. They're minds were dead in a way. And people still expected them to perform. They should have put them out of their misery. I even tried to talk to them, find out what happened...nothing. I...I think they were trying to talk back, but nothing would come out." His emotions were playing with him, dancing in his eyes, threatening to make him cry at his memories. "If you could have seen their faces. I even wanted to help them die. That's what Thirds like them wanted to do. They wanted to die! They...their eyes were just begging me to destroy them. One couldn't even communicate through his visor, b!
ecause they had been destroyed. Quite a few had their visors destroyed. Sometimes Thirds aren't completely Thirds without their visors. Somehow, they're lost. They've lost their communication, that encouragement that we tell each other. They were dead," he said slowly. "They should have been put out of their misery instead of taken to the Third shelter. No one would ever want them. It was cruel. Humans don't understand that we're suffering. They don't understand because they're not listening. We're just tools to them. They don't see that they built us with pain and emotions. They don't understand that we can die and still be alive. They should know the difference between a sane Third and a insane one, and a working Third between a wasted one. I was lucky that I didn't end up like that."
"You would have," Duo said. "You really could have."
"Yeah," Quatre said. "I owe you and Heero a lot of my sanity. You taught me how to fight back and believe in myself, and believe in freedom one day. We are independent. We are independent even if humans wanted us to obey them. Heero's watching over Relena, you can survive without a human, and I...changed so much. I was just a pet Third before I met you guys, but you changed me into something different. You showed me not to stand around and watch our kind be abused and destroyed." I learned how to hate because of you, he thought. He hated his creator for bringing him to his hateful world and hated humans for wanting his kind to be slaves. "I learned the truth because of you guys," he said instead. "With Mr. Winner to protect me, I would have never known how my kind was being treated." He lowered his head. "We ought to find out how to help them. One day, Une's going to become president, and Thirds are going to die. It's going to be ugly. I just know it. Thirds are going to su!
ffer, just like Rashid. There has to be something we can do so Thirds don't have to. You know, more Thirds are even being created, sent to this hateful world, only to be abused and destroyed." A tear leaked out from his eye. "I wish there was a way to prevent it."
"There might be a way," Duo said without looking at him. "How much moral do you have?"
Quatre lifted his head and looked at him. "What?"
"Would you help them by preventing them from coming on-line?"
Quatre came to attention. "I would. Thirds don't feel pain until they are taken from the chamber and put on-line."
"Then," Duo said. "We'll help them out. I know a factory. I can get a few guns."
Quatre nodded.
"You know, I think I know someone who can find out who owns Kyle," Duo said. "I should have said something earlier. Just give me a computer, and I can tell him."
"Wufei?"
"Right-o." Duo grinned.
"I think helping those Thirds are turning into a more important adgenda. I'll tell Heero, and let him contact him."
"Right on. Hey, let's go."
Trowa walked softly to a small chiffonier, and pulled the first drawer open, revealing a pair of sunglasses and a hidden picture. He gently picked up the sunglasses, his old visor he neglected to use in years. He neglected them because they brought back too many bad memories. The memories of being a Third.
He lifted them to his face, then paused before they made contact with his skin. He could remember now. He could remember the prejudice that came with being a Third. And the pain.
He dared not to look at the picture, the picture of him and his sister Third, Catherine. With the reminder of being a Third in his hands, he began to remember, he began to remember the night that drove him to insanity, then on to forgetting what he truly was.
It all started at the strip bar, where Catherine was made to work. He was a house Third, and she was a entertainment Third. She was his only cause for happiness and way of communication. Other Thirds were just indifferent to him, but not hateful like the humans. They had their own problems to worry about. He had always went to the strip bar to pick her up and take her home, but this one night was clearly more dangerous than others. Catherine had run into some trouble humans, a gang of males at the strip bar. At the end of her shift, they followed them when Trowa left with her. They meant harm, they both knew that.
Once they were out, the gang gave chase. Trowa and Catherine ran, they ran fast enough to loose them, but somehow they met up with them, in an alleyway. They were so close to being in the clear, where there was the public to avoid them.
The gang stood in their way, all five of them, wanting a fight. Trowa tried to tell them to go away, telling them they didn't want any trouble, but that's what exactly what happened. And more. One boy punched him, nearly breaking his knuckles in the process. Then two others attacked him, hitting him with blunt objects, and hitting him over the head. Trowa fought back, throwing one. They continued to attack him, bending his frame, breaking him down, all the while the two three gang members went for Catherine. They attacked her, threw her to the ground. He could hear her screaming while the three others beat him, kicked him, cussed at him, until he lost consciousness. His system did it to save his important systems in his head. His last sight that he saw was of Catherine.
He woke up, alone and wounded. He saw nearby him his broken visor. But that wasn't the only disaster of the incident. Catherine was laying on the ground, unmoving. He slowly got up, sore and all, and crept over to her. Approaching her, he saw that he was laying on her back, naked, with at least three bullet holes in her head. They had raped her---a Third, then killed her. There was nothing he could have done to help her. By then, he collapsed to his knees, covered her body up with his jacket, and held her. With her damage, it was too late to repair her. She had been gone. Usually, a Third with damage like that could never be repaired. The mind was everything.
He had picked her up, covered up with her jacket, and carried her off. While walking, the Thirds walking the streets, gave him their silent pity for the murdered Third.
Trowa hadn't been the same ever since her death. It wasn't soon, that he left his owners, leaving when they sent him out for an errand, never returning. It was then when it might count as insanity sank in. There was no possible way to be normal, to go on without hate and glares of bigot humans. He hated himself. He hated living. He hated being a Third. One day, driven so badly into this developing insanity, he pulled at his collar, trying to remove it. He pulled it so hard, the ring snapped, taking a few strips of the leather that was embedded into his neck with it. He was lucky. He could have destroyed his voicebox, or done worse damage to himself. All the damage that he did do was reveal the shinny mechanical neck frame, with a few wires peaking out.
That didn't satisfy him much. The insanity drove him so mad, he even decided to try to kill himself. He tried to think of the best way, the easiest, the fastest way. So, the fastest thing he could think of was to jump. Jump from a several story high building.
He did, but it didn't kill him. It only damaged him very badly. He had to limp his body away, the humans around not caring about him. He remembered a couple that came upon him when he collapsed from his damage. "Just a unwanted Third," they called him. Unwanted, unneeded, and a lonely Third.
His plans to destroy himself failed. He did eventually get repaired, but after that, he made a new decision, a decision that led him to his place today. He covered up his broken collar with a turtleneck, he hid his visor, never to use it again, and began his plan to impersonate a human.
It worked. He gave himself the name Trowa Barton, and became a detective soon after. He was treated human, lived like a human, and was given that human freedom that Thirds dreamt of.
He was free, given human liberty and rights, but he had forgotten who he was. Until now. Until Quatre stepped into his life, and kicked up the reality that he was truly a Third. It scared him, and he scared Quatre. He was such a convincing human, Quatre thought he meant him harm, or more. He had to convince Quatre that wasn't it. Quatre fascinated him because of his strong behavior and his freedom that he had, or so it seemed. There couldn't have been a way a Third could have been an Criminal Justice agent without being free. There had to be something to it. And he wanted to know. He wanted to be free and strong like Quatre.
He had to right things. He had to learn it from Quatre how he survived in such a hellish world without fear. He had to go, he had to find him, and correct the confusion that Quatre had.
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