19-Aug-2000
Hi hi! Anyone remember this fic? (TB looks around... looks around some more... gives up and runs away under her rock to get some happy-making pills...)
Duo: o_0; Uh, TB--the readers won't get the fic if you stay under there forever!
TB: ...oh.
And so, for your viewing enjoyment, the next installment of the NEVER ENDING STORY!!!! or, as you all (hopefully) know it, Nothing in Common.
Title: Nothing In Common (title courtesy of my beloved Tyr!!! ^_^ Hi babe!) 6/?
Author: TB
Archive: yes please GW Addiction
Catagory: yaoi
Pairing: various
Rating: um, PG-13
Spoilers: not really
Warnings: language, angst, soap-opera-esque
Notes: Tyr graciously titled this for me. (beams)
Isn't it a really majorly wonderfully totally wicked cool title? I even have the perfect way to--
Duo: That's a spoiler for a later part, TB.
TB: (pouts)
Feedback: always appreciated, thanks bunches!
Disclaimers: (sob) I don't own any rights to Gundam Wing whatsoever! (sob)
He hurt.
All over. The pain had penetrated every possible nerve cell, permeated his cloudy thoughts, stinging like the sharp, metallic blood-smell that flooded his lungs whenever he managed a slow, aching breath.
He lay on his stomach, fevered cheek pressed against the cool dusty surface of someone's shoulder, awash in pain and barely able to think past the lone imperative that he must not cry out, and give his enemy the satisfaction of knowing his agony.
Earlier, when adrenaline had kept some of the enervating soreness away, he'd had too much time on his hands, time to think, time to regret. He'd been stupid, he saw that clearly. He'd let them capture him. Shouldn't have done that. The Doc would be disappointed in him. He hated disappointing the Doc.
The man had been too good to him.
He didn't know how long it had been before he hadn't been able to hold himself up; the blood that rose in his throat with the gorge left a coppery taste in his mouth as he lay on the floor and fought with the urge to simply fade away and die. Only that taste seemed real, not losing any of its keen edge, cutting deep into him and providing a focus for a mind that was increasingly far away. When he thought at all, he thought about the taste, the taste and the smell of all that blood, and he was paying so much of his wandering attention to that that he didn't even notice, right away, when the door opened.
He heard a thump from behind him, and was tempted to try and sit up to see why there was suddenly light in his dim cell and why no one had told him to rise yet--surely they'd asked him every possible question already? But he couldn't move. Probably he was just imagining it anyway--it was too surreal, the silence. Probably he was just imagining the cool hand that felt for a pulse in his neck, or the chill press of a gun barrel against the indenture of his skull.
Swollen, tearing eyes gave him a brief glimpse of--yellow sneakers. Who else wore those awful shoes but his Heero Yuy, his mecha-thief?
Oh, now he knew he was dreaming. Heero, his hero, had come here to him.
Come here to him--to kill him? Hell, why not. He wanted to laugh, but it became a cough, and he quickly smothered the urge. "It's my destiny to be killed by you," he whispered, enjoying the vague sense of deja vu that saying that evoked. A small smile reopened the cuts in his chapped lips. The frozen muzzle of the gun pushed hard, insistently, against his skull, rocking his head slightly. What a way to go! A few more hours and Heero wouldn't have needed to waste a bullet.
Movement reawakened him a minute, a century later when Heero lifted him, holding him tightly around his bruised and broken ribs and taking one of his arms over those slender, strong shoulders. They were walking--no, running--and every jounce was another knifing of agony along his screaming nerves.
That familiar blood-laced vomit rose in his throat, and Heero lowered him to the ground and held him tightly, holding a hand over his mouth to muffle his coughing and whispering in his ear not to make a sound, that soon they would be out and the ordeal would be over.
"Shh," Heero whispered. "Just a little farther. Just a little farther, lad." Duo didn't fight the blackness as it overwhelmed him.
Quatre squirmed onto his stomach and punched in a new command to his laptop. He frowned.
Trowa, examining a coolant tube that he'd earlier disconnected from the bowels of Heavyarms, sensed the sudden uneasiness on the other side of the room and looked up. "Is something wrong?" he asked.
"Come look."
The young pilot obeyed, settling on the creaky cot beside the golden-haired Arabian and leaning over his shoulder to look at the screen. His eyes widened slightly.
"What do you make of that?" Quatre asked, troubled.
"'Seventeen orphans riding train in England fall victim to surprise attack by rebels,'" Trowa read. "England--rebels--" Quatre shook his head.
"Duo," he completed softly.
A few shifts on the bed later, Trowa's nimble fingers were inputing codes at a furious rate while Quatre watched, frowning. Heero entered the room, and was drawn to their worried presence. He looked over Quatre's shoulder as Trowa called up several news reports on the subject, and one official Romafeller statement.
Heero read silently. Then his eyes became icy.
Wufei appeared in the door a minute after Heero, his mouth open as if he were going to say something; then he saw the other pilots gathered on the bed. "What's wrong?" he demanded.
Trowa said, "It's Duo."
Sudden guilt assailed him. Wufei glanced away from the others. Treize had tried to warn him, and in his rush to prove to Yuy that Duo loved the baka, he'd forgotten entirely.
"I'll go," he said, and turned back to grab some things from his room. His chest was tight. He should have found out from Treize.
"No." The quiet command came from Yuy. "It isn't your place. It's mine."
Wufei looked at him, wondering if he should hope.
"If Duo is still alive, then it must be determined if anyone saw him and gained any information from his presence or Gundam. And if that has happened, then he must be terminated. And I don't think you could do that, Chang."
Quatre was suddenly tense; Trowa's eyes narrowed as he considered the two Asian pilots.
Wufei finally managed to force air past the choking grip of fury on his throat.
"You would dare?" he gasped.
"If Duo is a liability to the mission," Heero began.
"You tried that once before," the other boy interrupted cannily. "You couldn't! And you won't now."
"He had revealed nothing that time." Heero was taking a jacket down from the wall and making sure it concealed his gun holster.
"And it's possible, yes, that he's managed to keep quiet this time too, and maybe no one saw the gundam." He finished his preparation, and met Wufei's eyes. "But this is the third time he's been captured. Obviously, he is too reckless. If he is still alive, I may have to terminate him anyway. He's too dangerous to our resistance."
"We don't know anything about this situation," Trowa posed quietly. "I'll go with you, Heero. Heavyarms and I will watch your back."
Heero nodded. He turned and left the cottage, heading out to the nearby gorge that hid their gundams. Trowa paused for the slightest moment to lay his hand on Quatre's shoulder; then he looked over to the silent Wufei, who glared dimly at the table, powerless.
"I'll be there," he said, the vaguest reassurance from anyone else. Wufei slowly unclenched his fists, and nodded.
End Part 6
(:./erin/nothing6)
