05-Jun-2002
My lungs were burning by the time I got back to Wagner's apartment, but I felt alive in a way I never had before.
I don't think I've ever slept more than three hours at a time in my whole life.
This time, there was no waiting. There was no hiding. I was halfway up the stairs before I had made the conscious effort to do so. Because this was the end of the line. And I had decided that I needed to do this on my terms.
Heero was the one for waiting and planning and finding weaknesses. My strength was sheer will, stubbornness, and no fear.
No fear. Pressed my shaking hands to my knees. Check.
I flattened myself against the wall next to Wagner's apartment door and strained to hear any sounds inside.
"Agent Maxwell, so good of you to drop by."
I forced myself not to jerk back at the sound of his voice through the door, because no matter what I had to have the upper hand. So what that he knew I was there. He didn't know me.
"Are you not even going to knock? I'm not like all the other boys, you know." His voice dropped to a purr and I shuddered. "You have to treat me right."
I'll treat you right, you asshole.
"I'm armed, Wagner. Are we going to do this the easy way or the hard way?"
Silence, and I even though I whipped my head around when I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, it was too late.
Stupid.
His fist connected with my jaw and I felt something crack, my mouth filling with blood.
"Me, easy?" He stood over me, in the same blue windbreaker I had seen him in the first time we met. "I'm insulted."
Stubborn. Check. No fear. Check.
I launched myself at him with a snarl, hands grabbing for his neck, trying to find the pressure points Wufei had attempted to teach me when I first joined the Preventers. First line of strategy.
He struggled, yanking the cap off my head and tangling a fist in my hair, hooking one leg around the back of my knee.
Right. Second and best line of defense. Old fashioned dog-fighting.
The first punch caught him in the temple and his hand automatically let go. I stuffed my braid down my shirt and fisted his jacket, pulling him up to hit him again. His head cracked against the ground and when he looked up there was a stream of blood coming from one ear.
He bared his teeth at me and lunged forward, wrapping his arms around my waist. We went down hard, him on top of me, when fire burst in my shoulder.
I jerked back but he pinned me down, twisting the blade as it sunk into the cap muscle of my shoulder.
He smiled, slow, almost sultry. "How does it feel, Duo? Can you tell me? I would love to hear you say the words."
It felt like he was ripping my arm off, and I could feel the edge of the knife all the way into my belly. What I actually said was, "Fuck. You." And I bucked and backhanded him.
He reared back; the knife skittered away from him and I scrambled towards it.
When I looked back, he was gone.
A door opened down the hall as I dragged myself to my feet. An old man poked his head tentatively out the door, a chain lock pulled taut.
I put my hand in my back pocket to get my ID and he froze, like I was going for my gun. My hands fumbled for a moment, finding nothing. I had forgotten Une took away my badge.
"It's okay," I called, putting my hands up. "Preventers. Go back inside."
He slammed the door.
I pressed my ear against Wagner's door, wiping the blood off my chin and smearing it on the thigh of my jeans.
He was laughing, breathless, I could hear him.
I used my good shoulder to smash my way into his apartment. The blinds were drawn but some of the slats were missing, painting odd orange and black stripes across the room, making everything look suddenly sort of nightmareish.
Suddenly. I stifled a laugh.
"I know how you do it, Wagner." I kept my voice low, calm. "I know you're a killer over there and you thought you could keep getting away with it. But you made one mistake."
The buzz of someone breathing in the bedroom. I crept along the wall as silently as I could, drawing Heero's pistol.
"You hurt my partner. And I know you now, Wagner. Let's make a deal for us all to get out of this. You help Heero get back there and I'll stop hunting you."
"I don't want you to stop, sweetheart."
The voice came from behind me and I spun, bringing the gun to bear, but he was gone.
"You think this was an accident? That I met you here?"
Turned again, but I wasn't fast enough.
"I don't know how your worthless boyfriend crossed over, but it must have been fate. I've been following you for years, ever since the war, and I knew I would get rewarded sooner or later."
"Rewarded?" I backed into the bathroom, pressing myself against the wall directly next to the door. I tried not to shudder at the thought of the other me and the other Heero as lovers. I knew it now, pieced together Heero's odd reaction at seeing me when he woke up.
Oh. God.
"For my patience. I thought if I could show you how much I cared you would love me back, but you gave yourself to him." His voice broke. "But you, here," he laughed slightly, "I can start over with you. Because he doesn't love you here. And you're all alone."
I closed my eyes and lashed out as he passed, going by sound and the difference in the air, and I felt the butt of the gun connect with his nose, a spray of warm blood over my knuckles. He dropped silently.
"Maybe. But that's okay." It really was.
I knelt to check his pulse and his hand shot out and grabbed my wrist, pulling me down on top of him and rolling us so he was straddling my belly.
"I loved you," he said thickly, blood staining his teeth red. His arm snaked around my neck and the flat of the knife pressed into my throat. "I would have done anything for you."
"Even kill me."
He pressed harder and the blade burned a line into my flesh. "I was going crazy without you."
I know the feeling, I thought. "Don't make me shoot you," I ground out, a wet, sticky mess pooling in my collarbones and dribbling into my armpits as I shifted, barrel of the gun pressed against his heart.
"You won't. How would you get your Heero back?"
I could taste copper in my mouth, in my throat, smell it all around me, matting my hair to my shoulders under my shirt. My insides were very still and I waited for him to strike.
His arm moved fast, but I was faster.
My first clear-headed decision.
The sound of the pistol going off wasn't as loud as I thought it would be.
Everything was very clearly defined, and I gently rolled Wagner off of me.
I had weighed everything, and I knew what I had to do. Maybe I was crazy, maybe I had only killed a very delusional man and I was about to make the biggest mistake of my life.
But I had made my decision, and I had to see it through.
Heero watched me as I closed the blinds on the window to his room, tracking my hands with his still-sharp eyes.
"I know it looks bad. You should see the other guy." I stopped by his bed and brushed a hand through his hair.
His eyes were wide.
"He's dead. I killed him."
Thin eyebrows furrowed painfully.
"It's okay, though. I mean, I'm actually okay." I crossed to the other side of his bed and entered a code on the monitor that would let me turn it off, so the nurses wouldn't be alerted when his vitals started failing.
"I think this is the only way, Heero," I said quietly, with my back to him.
There was a pause, and then a grunt. He was trying to get my attention. I steeled myself and turned.
He was staring at me, unblinking.
I smiled and dragged my usual chair to the side of his bed. "Heero of many words, huh? Not even a little blink to help me out?"
He continued staring at me.
"Okay, okay." My voice caught in my throat. My hand hovered over his, and I watched his face carefully.
He blinked hard, twice. I thought he almost looked a little grumpy.
I let my fingers trail over his knuckles and wrist, never breaking eye contact.
His breath rushed out of him and he seemed to relax back into the bed, the lines of tension that had always been a part of his face easing slightly.
"Heero, there-- god, this is... there're just things that I wanted--"
He blinked once.
"No, I know you're not him. I mean, I'm not Duo. To you. I mean, that's what I think, but..."
I was clutching his hand, but his eyes were wide, watching. No answer.
I worked silently, not even the backdrop of the heart monitor to stop me. I took out his respirator tube first, and even though he gagged slightly, he didn't blink once.
He looked like my Heero. God.
When I took out his IV my hands were trembling almost violently, and I had to stop every few seconds to shake them out.
Finally, his morphine drip. I hesitated over this one, but didn't look at Heero. I knew the answer would be in me, somewhere, in my memory of the blue eyes of the Heero that I carried with me. He wouldn't want to go like that. He would want to be sharp and clean.
It was the last thing to go. And then I stepped back and his lips curved up in a beautiful, sort of secret smile.
He blinked twice, slower than before.
I sat beside him again, laying my head on his chest.
I wanted to scream, run and get the doctors to put everything back in him and make him keep living. But I had made the decision, and now I had to live with it.
We stayed like that through the night, my head on his chest, one hand on his throat so he could feel me, the other stroking the outline of his thigh through the covers, his breath ruffling my hair.
Hours later, his breathing labored and his heartbeat growing fainter under my cheek, the sun started to come up, pink and gold streaming in through the slats in the blinds.
"Heero," I whispered.
His breath caught in his chest, and he wheezed it out and forced it back in.
I felt the pattern of his breathing change against the back of my head, like he was speaking.
I turned my head to face him, laying my head down again and listening to his heart stutter, watching his lips move slightly.
"Heero." Now my breath hitched and I had to squeeze my eyes shut quickly before I could continue. "It's okay." I opened my eyes and looked into his impossibly blue ones, glassy but still alert. "It's okay. You know he loved you."
He blinked twice. And then three times. Once. His ribs shook with the force of his breathing, and the air whistled in his throat.
He was going.
"I love you," I said hoarsely, and I slid one hand under his head to tangle in that thick hair, so he would know I was with him.
He drew in another rattling breath, his lids fluttered.
His heart stopped.
I pressed my cheek closer against his chest, tears leaking out of the corners of my eyes and wetting the fabric of his hospital gown. The dam inside me broke and I let out a gulping sob and, finally, I wept.
End Part 10
(:./sparcck/tracing10)
