20-Aug-2000
Legal stuff: None of these characters are mine. Gundam Wing belongs to Bandai, Sunrise, and Sotsu Agency, among others--Xenogears belongs to Squaresoft. For time-wasting purposes only and not for profit, so don't sue, 'kay?
Warnings: slight AU, X-over, shonen-ai, language, violence. All the good stuff! *grin*
A sudden cacophony of sound startled him into wakefulness.
After an eternity in cold, frozen silence, even the slow, uneven thump of his heart pounded loud as a drum in achingly-perceptive ears. It was a beat he hadn't heard in... forever. Scent was the next sense to return--the sharp bite of cold, chemical-laden air. The acrid smell of medication wafted past his senses, unpleasant and sour. His mind involuntarily set to work, dissecting the scent into it's component elements: the lingering odor of anesthetic, the dissolving vapor of liquid coolant, the acrid chlorated mix of chemicals... all familiar without being comforting.
Heero took a deeper breath, the rasping sound echoing against the walls of his enclosure. His lungs burned in protest as he gasped--it felt as if their delicate membranes were raw, scoured dry and bloody. Faint, diffused voices filtered through the cocoon that held him, pounding against oversensitive hearing even through multiple layers of plastic and fibersteel.
"... waki... nied syme... "
"... dn'thafe... ah sied...?"
"...nint... deengerieos... "
Instinct trained into every bone pulled in two directions--one whispering for stillness, to play dead in order to assess his surroundings. The other screamed for freedom... an end to the captivity, anything to maneuver out of this horribly vulnerable position. He tried to twitch in distress--to no effect. There was no feeling in his hands, his feet--only a dead numbness where limbs should be sending signals of their readiness.
Panic rose--was pushed down by disciplined mental controls. He tried to think, to analyze the situation.
{{I'm not paralyzed. My heart is beating--it wasn't a few minutes ago. My lungs are working--they wouldn't if my autonomic nervous system had been damaged. The extremities are simply taking longer...}} Methodically, he tried each finger and each toe. {{Move--twitch, damn you!}}
His little finger moved.
He let out an involuntary gasp of relief, then instinctively froze again as he felt/heard movement above him. It moved away--and he relaxed infinitesimally.
{{Where am I... is this the colony? Why is it so dark--hospitals aren't kept this dark. Where am I... where are the others?}} He stiffened again at the thought. {{Where's Duo?}}
An intense, sensory memory floated past closed eyelids.
**Duo's familiar, black-clad form lying tensely in the cryo-unit next to his own. Those wide violet-blue eyes seeking his for a silent reassurance as the clear, reinforced chambers were sealed shut around them--a hand lifting, pressing against the glass. A silent question.
Stay with me?
He pressed his hand against his own transparent window, lips shaping an equally silent reply.
Always. I won't leave you alone.
Duo's tensed mouth crooking upwards in a last, bittersweet smile--even as the blue eyes drooped closed, succumbing to the anesthetic. A wavering mist settling over his own gaze, the acrid smell of the sedative gas a gentle, implacable enemy that steals his own consciousness away... **
His enclosure shook, jerking him from the dream/memory. Instinctively his eyes flew open, squinting painfully even in the dim filtered light. His vision was blurred--eyes dilated painfully open, turning his surroundings into blurry smears of light and dark, movement and stillness. Dark forms moved back and forth--their actions jerky. {{Are those... the doctors? }} There seemed to be only a few--certainly not the full medical staff Une had assured them was on the colony. {{Their movements are--panicked.}} Adrenaline kicked in at the realization, his heart thumping louder in his ears. {{There's something wrong!}}
His enclosure shook again, violently--deadened nerves came back to life with screaming raw agony as he was battered against the sides of the unit. He welcomed the pain, used it to bend his knees, clench his fists even through the protests screaming from every fiber of frozen muscles.
{{Something's wrong!}} The top of the container unsealed with a sibilant hiss that pierced his ears; then cracked and shattered under the impact of debris as a world-shattering explosion shook the room around them. Involuntarily, he clutched his ringing ears and levered himself shakily up on an elbow. The dimness around them seemed to extend away forever--his blurry, tearing gaze still refused to settle, recognizing only dimly lit shapes and refusing to reveal any details. The dark, moving forms--the doctors--were picking themselves up from the floor nearby in the aftermath of the blast. One held an appendage stiffly at his side--probably an arm.
"Aki y'chiya, sigurd?"
"...teth! Thre maki b'tenkuruandar ak rhinae. Matsui ghren... " Their voices rang through his oversensitive, abused hearing. He gritted his teeth against the whimper of pain that tried to escape. The room shook again, small rocks and dust falling from above.
{{Rocks?? On an incomplete colony?}} He had to stop and shoulder back the rising panic once again. {{What's going on?}} His heart stuttered, shaky under the sudden resuscitation and onslaught of adrenaline--but his vision began to clear. Faces and details started to resolve themselves without providing any answers. He recognized the ship's central chamber--but the computers were silent, dead, and the ship was lit only by emergency lamps, debris hanging broken and silent over the walls. A sudden, indrawn breath to one side turned his reforming vision to the movement he had sensed--two blurry faces floated in and out of focus. One was dark-haired and lean-featured, with the glint of light off of glasses and clad in a blurry smear of green--the other face a startling golden, with the glint of silver hair and a single eerie blue eye almost seeming to float at him out of the gloom. The golden face spoke, the tone reassuring.
"heveya... "
Another explosion rocked the ship--throwing him painfully half-over one side of the cryo-unit. The two strangers were thrown to the ground again with muffled cries of pain. Heero braced himself feebly, trying to regain his breath from where the edge of the unit had impacted his diaphragm. His vision wavered as dizziness threatened to turn the world upside down--then settled. Relieved eyes caught sight of the other four units, still safely sealed. The ship shuddered again, rocked by aftershocks and punctuated with a desperate shout from one of the strangers.
"Ital! Thorvis da... " The stranger in green darted past him towards the others' cryo-units, even as hanging debris tore away from its moorings with a tortured screech of metal. Heero watched in disbelieving horror as the massive beams began to fall, plummeting directly down upon the other unprotected units and their still-unconscious contents.
Stay with me?
Always.
His heart clenched. "No!" His body betrayed him again, falling feebly half-over the side of his unit as he tried to lunge towards his companions. Fighting the spasming muscles that shook his body, he reached out towards them in a desperate, despairing plea. "No!!!"
The roar of falling rock and the screaming of metal was his answer--shaking the room with their own explosion and deafening him with the crash of its fall. A cut above his eye blurred his vision with red as Heero pulled himself upright yet again.
Dread turned to disbelief. Heero stared, stunned, at the massive shadow that that fallen over them all, protecting them from the debris. Familiar glints of white and red beneath the grime announced its identity--Wing had somehow fallen forward, supporting itself with on one knee and two arms. The fallen beams and metal scaffolding were piled against its back and wing extensions, while the main torso unit arched over them all, almost as if it was... protecting them?
{{How did--did it fall free?}} Adrenaline, shock and relief made his thoughts incoherently grateful as he stared upward at the familiar dark form. The two strangers, also protected under its sheltering bulk, stared at both him and Wing with identical wide-eyed looks of shock. Heero began to shake as belated fear, fatigue, and tension began to take their toll on an already-weakened frame. He cursed under his breath softly at his weakness.
"Chikusho! Too weak... " He gasped frantically for air as black spots threatened his recovered vision. Warm, strong hands supported him from behind, helping him to stay upright and wrapping a blanket around chilled flesh. The lean-planed face of the stranger in green swam into his field of vision, a look of combined concern and curiosity creasing the brow.
Between gasps, he managed a question. "Who... ?" The stranger gave him a quizzically relieved smile that flashed white in the dimness.
"My name art Citan. Do not worry--thee are with friends."
Both ingrained cynicism and training alike refused to let him accept those words at face value. Unfortunately, his battered body was not inclined to allow him anything else. Fighting every inch of the way, Heero lapsed slowly into semi-consciousness.
Citan cradled the unnamed young teen carefully as the boy slumped, wrapping the thermal blanket more firmly around the lightly clad form. "Amazing... simply amazing."
Sigurd kneeled to one side, wincing as he held his broken arm to his side. "I think that qualifies as the understatement of the year, Hyuga. What the hell just happened?" He glanced upward again at the huge Gear protecting them.
The black-haired doctor laid his burden down carefully on the metal floor, keeping two long fingers carefully on the limp boy's wrist as he monitored the thready pulse. "I'm afraid I have no idea, Sigurd--I've greatly exceeded my capacity for the number of impossibilities I can comprehend in one day." His downturned face didn't quite conceal the small ironic smile that quirked his lips. "If I were to draw conclusions from conventional Solarian wisdom, I would have to state that this ship should not exist, that this life-support machinery should have long ceased to function, and that these boys should not be here. There should most certainly not be any Gears of unknown capabilities, and last but not least, that these young men should most certainly not be alive. Given that sheer number of impossible events that we're dealing with, Sigurd, I am going to ignore the latest coincidence that a Gear should fall forward *just* in time to save us and these young men from falling debris. I have other things to worry about. Let's just try to keep them alive and worry about this highly improbable chain of events later, hmmm?"
Sigurd rolled his eyes. "All right, all right... I get the point." He carefully settled his arm on his lap, and winced as Citan left his unconscious charge's side to efficiently splint the break. He hissed as fingers probed the muscle roughly. "Carefully, please--I'm not as young as I used to be."
"Who is?" his friend shot back, even as he gentled his touch. The ruined ship around them creaked and shook as the reverberations of another, more distant explosion, pummeled it. "What is Fei thinking? If he isn't careful, he'll bring the entire cave system down around our heads!"
"No offense, Hyuga, but something tells me Fei isn't thinking much at all right now. And whatever he's doing, Bart's probably backing him up and egging him on at the same time," Sigurd admitted ruefully.
"They are a couple of young hotheads, aren't they?" Citan tied off the last bandage. "Seems like an eternity since we were that eager and impetuous."
"Things change, old friend." The silver-haired ex-pirate pushed himself one-handed to his feet. "How's the boy?"
Citan accepted the deliberate change in subject without comment. "Like I said--amazingly well, considering how long he's been in stasis. It's a wonder he even woke up... his metabolism must be unusually strong. But strong or not, his system is starting to go into shock, and the cold ship's floor is *not* a good place for him to be."
"We don't have much of an alternative available, though." The *hiss* of releasing pneumatic seals broke through their quiet debate as yet another console finished its reanimation sequence. Sigurd walked over hurriedly with another thermal blanket--now that they were no longer being thrown about like rag dolls, all his attention could be directed towards these ancient youngsters. Carefully, he shoved the heavy, clear lid to one side, and draped a blanket around the barely-breathing boy. The young stranger stirred, grimacing involuntarily--then intense blue-teal eyes opened, blinking vaguely upward. Breathing harshly in obvious pain, those unfocused eyes were full of an confused distress as thin hands clutched awkwardly at his supporting arm. Interspersed with gasping breaths of air, the tousled blond stranger spoke a soft questioning phrase in the same melodious tongue as his darker-haired companion. Sigurd looked over quizzically.
"Hyuga? What's he saying?"
Brows drawn together in puzzlement, Citan leaned forward without answering and carefully helped him lift the blonde boy out of his mechanical womb. The boy tensed, shivering with the beginnings of shock--then unexpectedly relaxed as they settled him next to his semi-conscious companion. A thin, fine-boned hand reached shakily out of the thermal blanket, settling gently on the more muscular boy's arm, and the blonde teenager visibly relaxed, his face settling into a strange expression of relief. The green-clad doctor busied himself with giving them mild anti-shock medications and antibiotics, then settled back on his heels with a sigh.
"He said... something about people fighting. People in pain." He rubbed his forehead in combined weariness and stress. "I'm unsure whether or not he meant down here or up there--or if he's just hallucinating. Either way, though, he seems to be resting easier now; and I'm starting to get an idea of the problems we're going to be dealing with. Respiratory distress, irregular heartbeat, lingering traces of hypothermia, possible delirium and sensory problems seem to be the obvious ones."
"Hm. Not good." Sigurd, alerted by the hiss of another releasing seal, waited alertly for the cycling to finish so he could bundle up the next survivor. As he watched his old friend and ally, Citan was struck by the unlikely resemblance of the eye-patched, battle-scarred Sigurd to a watchful, hovering mama bird, waiting anxiously for her eggs to hatch. He grinned in amusement, then sobered as the radio at Sigurd's waist *bleeped* softly. Sigurd swore under his breath, then tossed the radio one-handed at a startled Citan before going back to wrapping up the limp form of the brown-braided teen. A black-clad arm feebly plucked at his shoulders, flopping awkwardly as the boy's strength failed him. "Here, Hyuga--I've got my hands full."
Citan snagged the radio neatly in mid-flight and flipped it open. "Yes?"
"Hey, Doc." Fei's voice sounded weary and drained, even over the tinny crackling of the radio. "We managed to beat 'em back."
"You're sure? We took quite a beating down here, you know--we nearly died because of the havoc you were creating upstairs." Citan hardened his voice, letting his disapproval with such tactics show in his tones.
"Sorry, Doc. It's like you said--we were running out of options. We had to convince those bastards that whatever was in the ruins wasn't worth losing all of their Gears over, and they'd brought some pretty heavy firepower. Me and Bart had to pull out a few of the big guns to prove it wasn't worth it," Fei answered apologetically. "Is everyone... okay?"
"Sigurd's got a broken arm, but he'll be all right. However, we have five young men down here in varying degrees of shock and metabolic distress, and we need to get them to a medical facility as soon as it's possible. Can Bart bring a team down here so we can start moving them to the Yggdrasil sickbay?"
Fei gave a weary chuckle. "Can he? Doc, Bart's already on his way. Said something about not wanting to miss out on the 'cool stuff'. He should be there with his boys in a few minutes--I'm just mopping up a bit here topside before I follow him."
"Ah. I should have known. All right then--contact the Yggdrasil, tell them to prep for five more in the sickbay, alright?"
"Sure, Doc--it'll be a little tight, what with the wounded from the fight, but I'll make sure they know the score." His voice turned fierce. "They are going to live, right?"
Citan's response was equally fierce. "They are if I have anything to say about it."
"Good. Then we did the right thing," Fei answered. "I'll be seeing you--*all* of you--in a little bit." Citan smiled at the protective tone in the young man's voice.
"We'll be here. All of us."
End Part Five
(:./hope/dream5)
