29-Jul-2000
Title: Wings 4/?
Author: AKI
Archive: Tyr, GWA
Notes: This is for Hyperia!! ^_^
Warnings: Spoilers. Pairings: Finally, a hint of the yaoi to come...
C&C: You know the routine!! Must I beg?? But thank you all for your support, really. cawei@sas.upenn.edu or the ML, please.
Oh, and I get all strange here...I'm starting to ignore the rules of good writing and just having fun with this series, so read at your own risk. I make no pretense of stylistic consistency, quality control, etc.
Disclaimers: Ahh, GWing. What I would do to own it...What I would do if I did. *grin*
<There is nothing that cannot be changed.>
"OZ has stated that they will eliminate all rebel elements..."
He turned and looked at the screen. There were three figures, but the familiar one seemed to leap at his eyes <black clothes and a braid--hurt? he's hurt>. In the next he shrugged it off. They had all found their way into space and it was inevitable that someone would fail. He had put too much store in his Gundam, had made himself a sitting duck by bringing it into space with him. It would have been more expedient to leave it on Earth.
/The fool will get himself killed./
"--scheduled for execution--"
He hung between their arms. They had him gripped by two OZ soldiers, both hefty and a head taller. It was prudent of them not to underestimate him, even now. OZ, it seemed, was taking precautions.
/Again he was struck by how small it was, how frail./
He narrowed his eyes. We're at a disadvantage, he thought. I must get rid of all negative factors.
/"Heh. Maybe that's why everything gets in your way, because you're not a part of it."/
It was a cunning move to try and use the pilot as propaganda. He expected it of OZ. Their slip was in allowing him to know where the prisoner was being held. Doctor J had perfect information on all the large military compounds within 2,000 miles of the colonies and it was only a matter of simple triangulation to figure out which one they'd taken him to.
/"Don't blame yourself. We do what we do, you know?"/
Within minutes the plans rolled across the screen. He leaned back and studied them. Diversion, he decided. Multiple small explosions to distract them. If they were able to orient on him the security would be too heavy even for him to get through, and the loss of two pilots was unacceptable. He set the craft on auto-pilot, and went to the back to begin making the bombs.
Infiltration had been easy. His age made it difficult to impersonate staff, but he could also hide in places where a larger person could not. As the handler came back to tally the inventory he wriggled out of his niche between two crates and sent a piece of the cargo floating by[1]. The man's instincts were stronger than his training, as he'd expected. He moved when the hands and attention had closed on the object.
From then on it was a simple matter to slip into the compound. No one searched supply trucks bound for the barracks too carefully. The official dug a perfunctory arm into a bin of onions and waved him on. He left the truck parked by the mess hall and located a maintenance worker welding rusty pipes.
"Where's the service elevator?" "Back of the second hall," the worker indicated with a gloved hand. Then he looked around. "Hey, what's it to y--"
Heero caught him as he slumped and stripped him with detached efficiency. Then he dragged him into the closest broom closet, using the torch to melt the doorknob and lock.
He rode the elevator in silence, the lights flashing over his face as he passed between floor spaces. The bombs had been set without inconvenience, thanks to the maintenance worker's card and outfit, both of which he had modified to suit his appearance. The cells were on the fourteenth floor.
He was lightly armed, the only condition under which this class of infiltration was possible. The gun dug into his hip, and he pulled it out, hefting it in his hand. The metal seemed cold, and he realized his hands were slightly damp. He returned the gun to his waist. The mission was a simple one: break into the cell and kill the prisoner. He already had a plan for getting in and out, and as for the prisoner... He would only need one shot. There was no need to visualize the situation at length. Therefore as the elevator rose relentlessly, he had nothing on his mind, nothing at all.
The security was as weak as he'd thought, it was a simple passkey device. From the nearly closed doors of the service elevator he watched the patrol guard walk by and enter the access code. Then he slipped out and delivered a small blow to the base of the skull, covering the mouth as the startled *whuff* of air escaped. The keycard was in the lower right pocket. It was only a short sprint and a few well-placed blows to the soldier stationed in front of the door. Disarmed, and with a gun to his head, the guard barely hesitated before entering the combination. As the door slid open he knocked the gun against the base of the man's skull, then slung the body over his shoulder and flipped it into the cell where it would not attract immediate attention.
Light slanted into the narrow room. The object of his mission was sitting against the wall. He looked at it, but it was too dark to confirm anything. Of course there was nothing to confirm; the objective was termination.
"I'm surprised, Heero... You always manage to show up unexpectedly."
/"Don't think I know anyone quite like you."/
Termination, he thought. He raised the gun.
Duo inched himself upright, using the wall as support. They had beaten him badly. It should not have surprised him.
"I guess it's okay...they would have just used the Gundam and me anyway."
/"It's worth more to me than my life."/
This was the risk they all accepted. Duo would be the first but not the last. It could have been him facing the gun and he too would have understood and waited for the shot.
"It's probably my fate to be killed by you." Why did he have to talk?
/"I had this weird feeling when I saw you."/
Any second now the intrusion would be discovered and the alarm would be screaming. The moments were few, getting fewer and he did not pull the trigger.
/"Sometimes...I get tired of being Death."/
The eyes opened and reflected back a little of the light from the open door. "You are really going to kill me, right?" In the shadows of the cell two spots of uncertainty flickered.
/"Yeah, I'm pretty sure you're human."/
He wasn't.
"Only if you want me to." He tossed the guard's gun over to the boy, who caught it and watched him wordlessly. "You can use your right hand, can't you?"
It had been an impulse, he decided, it changed nothing. He set the shuttle coordinates and said to Duo, "OZ has captured the scientists. I'll kill them." He left unsaid the words atonement and reassurance.
Duo stared at him. "Heero..."
He wouldn't look, this time.
<Why does he change me?>
<Trust no one.>
He paused before entering the doors of the infirmary bay. They had assured him that there was no permanent damage, but that it would take time for him to heal from the treatment he'd received in captivity. Quickly they gave him a list of lacerations and fractures, but he raised a hand and walked away. It had nothing to do with him. Deathscythe was still in OZ hands and Duo would not be of any service for a while, that was all that was necessary to know.
The boy struggled to a sitting position as he came in. "Omae?" His voice rose in astonishment. He ignored the look of surprise on Duo's face and outlined his intention of going to the moon base. "I'll come too," the pilot offered. His tenure in prison had not visibly affected his spirits.
"You'll only get in the way."
Duo winced. "I know it's my fault that I'm weak, but couldn't you find a nicer way to say it?"
Inwardly he was appalled at the internal response to that plea. He resumed his instructions. "You'll take my place at school. I enrolled under your name."
The outrage which with Duo demanded, "Why did you do that? My name's no better than yours!" was not entirely unwarranted. It was true that it was more discreet than using the name of an assassinated president, but there was always a chance that someone would recognize it and blow their cover. It would have been simpler and safer to fashion an alias, thus reducing the possibility that the disappearances would be linked. And he had already drawn attention with his speech. He did not respond to Duo's question.
He didn't know the answer.
At the door, he stopped. "You're dangerous," he said, voice flat. Duo laughed. "Not like this I'm not...and I'd just about finished healing from our last mission too. What a damn shame--"
"To us. You're a danger to all of us." No, he realized confusedly, that wasn't true. The situation had been salvaged through a gamble on his part. The execution had not occurred and would never be broadcast. Duo had revealed nothing, had done nothing but lose his Gundam, which would have been of little use to him in space anyway.
"Oi!" The retort carried anger. "I didn't go and get myself captured on purpose! Look, I'm grateful--" he choked a little over the word "-- to you for saving my life. Sorry you had to go out of your way and all. That's twice I owe you now." He sounded half angry, half rueful.
"Chigau." He didn't know where the objection had come from, but it was out on his lips before he could think better of it.
"What?" The boy posed the question more calmly. "What did I say that was wrong?"
What had he said? Why did it matter? There were places he had to get to, plans he needed to form, and he couldn't think. He could feel those eyes on his back, working against his brain.
"Answer my questions, dammit." The words were rude but the voice was soft. "It's the least you could do."
Words were stuck, not in his throat, but in his mind where he struggled to express his sudden concern. There was something dangerous here. But one did not associate danger with hospital gowns. The danger was more pervasive; it lay in the intangible, he realized with a start. The wings.
The wings were beautiful and he feared them, longed for them, knew that they would carry him up, out, away into madness.
Doubt, fear, affection lay in the feathery touches on his mind.
"You're leaving?" The question was abrupt.
"Aa."
He closed his eyes. It was a mistake to have allowed it to happen, he knew. He had given in, had crumbled for a moment. But in the future there would be no more failures, he would make sure of it.
"Heero--"
He turned, as if he were a set of gears and the sound had somehow wound the crank. Separately he heard Duo saying, "Heero? Daijyoubu ka?" and wondered if it was the bruises on his throat that made his voice sound so raw. They had said that he showed signs of strangulation. Suddenly he had no idea what he was supposed to say or do next. The wings had swept it from his mind.
Through the unfamiliar, frightening sensation of bemusement came one clear objective, product of the training mantra, "If you hesitate it will be the last thing you do." With this thought pulsing he thrust his body through the doorframe and sprinted down the hall.
It did not take long for him to recover. Once away from the hospital he was enraged at his lapse in control. Nothing had happened, but again he could feel that distinct disintegration, like a crack in a dam, and it disturbed him. However there was no time to be lost and the need for self-analysis did not seem pressing. With driven speed he charted a shuttle and in an unbelievably short time was headed for the moon.
The shuttle took hours. He didn't have enough information to plan and he was in no need of sleep. Shifting in his seat he looked out of the window. For some reason that he had never elaborated to himself, lest it demand elimination, he found a certain peace in looking at the stars. The shuttle, however, was too brightly lit and all he saw was his own reflection, faintly grim. He looked at the eyes, dark and flat as stones, looked closer as he found a slight flaw in their flatness, saw something glint back at him.
<In the darkness two spots of uncertainty flickered.>
Self-analysis was coming, it seemed, independently of him. He read it in his own usually unreadable face, the undeniable truth.
He had failed to kill Duo.
Yet this was not entirely a mistake. The decision had been arbitrary to begin with; their resources were few enough and he had no desire to waste them. He had chosen to terminate Duo only because it was the most efficient way to ensure that OZ would not exploit him. Rescuing him was a less feasible, but potentially superior alternative. So the fact that he hadn't killed Duo did not bother him in the least.
It was that he couldn't kill Duo. It had not been a judgment, but a realization. There had been no option. Perhaps there never had been. As the shuttle moved on towards the gray and gleaming moon, the corridor lights shut off, blanketing him in semi- darkness. He stared out at the darker sea of space, but did not see it. In the suspension of his body and mind rose the events of the past few days. They broke the surface of his rest, full and significant, drawing in his view.[2]
Half-way back to the safehouse, Deathscythe stopped. At first he ignored it and went on, but after a hundred meters the mecha still showed no signs of motion and he pushed the com-link.
"Nani o shiteru?"
"You...just go on ahead for a minute. I'm...kinda tired, Heero. Think I might just rest a bit first."
"Did you find a safehouse?" He waited. Nothing. He sat back and thought for a second. Then he opened the hatch and jumped out, surveying the surroundings. They were still at least twenty minutes from the edge of the forest where the safehouse was located, and the tree cover was heavy. He removed the camouflage net from Wing and draped it over both Gundams. Then he climbed up and located the manual release lever for 02's hatch. It was both convenient and a weakness that all the Gundams were, superficially at least, designed so similarly. He wondered exactly how much the Professors were leaving out of their story.
Inside the hatch the long-haired boy slumped over his harness, clearly unconscious. He unbuckled the limp torso and examined it. He hadn't expected so much blood; there were traces of it all over the console and cockpit. Duo had most likely been hit by shrapnel when the missile exploded. The smears had taken on different hues of red, which probably meant that the wounds were small but somewhat deep and the bleeding had occurred over a long period of time. The thin line that dribbled from the corner of his mouth was already an oxygenated black. He forced his eyes away and ran his hands lightly over the black fabric, looking for the broken ribs. He found them.
After a moment's deliberation he tugged the body out of its seat and shifted his arms under the knees and back. Careful not to twist the spine or compress the ribcage, he made his way down the Gundam one hop at a time. Then, using two limbs and the cables he found in Deathscythe's hatch, he fashioned a crude stretcher.
The sky had begun to pale at the edges, blue-blackness retreating when he arrived at the shelter he'd prepared days earlier. It was nothing more than a tent stocked with supplies stolen from the school, but there was a first-aid kit, running water nearby, and food for two days. He left the stretcher outside the tend, squatted down and looked at the limp frame dangling off the sides. In the darkness it was only another unmoving shape in the waning night. He had never, he reflected, seen Duo this still before. Again he was struck by how small it was, how frail. It had been so easy to knock it away with the missile. Remembering, he felt that pang of inevitability strike him again. His hands throbbed a bit where they had struck the glass. And yet it was still here, and when he listened he could hear labored breathing.
They were not kind to their bodies, he knew. He had no reason to be, but Duo was so different that it seemed strange for them to be similar in this respect. He despised his body for its weakness. It could be destroyed in so many ways, and mended in so few. Still that face had a cheek round and smooth...
He wrenched upright. The paradox fluttered briefly in his mind; the invincible Gundam pilots, the boy ("I'm not the same as you, I have to be myself"). Then he ran his knuckles over his forehead roughly and gave Duo a quick examination. In the light of the flashlight he lifted one eyelid with a callused thumb. The pupils contracted, which meant that it was sleep and not coma. The ribs and cuts...he frowned, and looked at the sky. There were at most two more hours before dawn to hack into the school's mainframe and modify their records. The situation seemed stable for the moment. He walked away from the camp, towards the location where they'd left the bike.
The supplies were neatly stockpiled against the side of the tent. He sat down. The sun climbed higher in the sky, casting a sanguine glow. Approximately one hour after he returned, it was well above them, and Duo regained consciousness. He was alerted by the fluttering eyelids, and the intake of breath, followed by a "Aack--" Duo struggled to sit up, and apparently deciding that the effort was not worthwhile, lay back down. Fingers brushed over his ribs, stopped when he reached the gauze. He turned his head and saw Heero. His face convulsed first with surprise, then with pain as the nvoluntarily movement spasmed through his upper half. Holding himself still, his breathing tightly controlled, Duo asked quietly, "Where are we?"
"Safehouse."
He lay still a moment, digesting that. His eyes widened, and he rolled over, wincing. "Deathscythe!" he wheezed.
"Under a net."
"Thanks." He went limp. "Anything happen while I was gone?"
"I erased our record from the school."
Uncharacteristically, Duo made no response. He waited another ten seconds, then unrolled the sleeping mat and lay down, making sure that his laptop was running next to him. He shut his eyes, then opened them again. "Broken ribs require that you keep your lungs expanded whenever you can."
"I know that, I didn't sleep through ALL my training." He heard scraping noises as Duo shifted himself out of the stretcher. From the corner of his eye he watched the boy flexing his fingers, neck, checking for damage. "Taking a nap?"
"It's been twenty-four hours and there's nothing to do at the moment."
"All too true," his partner grumbled. "How long are we stuck here?"
"The next mission's in Western Europe. We have twelve days."
Duo stopped rummaging through the medkit. "Twelve days? Out here? With YOU? I'm going to die!"
"You should live," he said automatically. "None of your injuries are life-threatening."
"Ninmu...ryoukai," Duo grinned weakly. "Lucky for us I heal fast; I doubt we're going to make it to another district hospital. Well, if that's all, I'm going to catch some more shuteye."
"The supplies will only last three days. Keep your lungs and your eyes open or you'll be useless by then."
One eye cracked open. "Hai, hai! Geez, who put you in charge of my physical condition? Anyway, my safehouse is a mile from here. It's got more."
"Enough for five days?"
"No problem."
"The school is rebuilding its heating system. A shipment of new pipes and equipment is supposed to arrive then. We can take out a carrier."
"Already got a plan, eh? That's good..." He seemed to be drifting off.
"Wake up," he said sharply. There was no response. He narrowed his eyes. Then he reached for the roll of gauze that had dropped from the boy's nerveless fingers. Using one arm to prop the pilot to a sitting position, he quickly pulled off the black, collared shirt.
In the morning light the flesh that was free of blood looked both flushed and translucent. He blinked at the flash of metal lying on the narrow chest. Instinctively he drew back just as the arm came up to wave him off. Duo struggled to his elbows, and there was a look on his face that he had never seen. It was pain and not, and seemed alien to his features. Quickly Duo pulled down his shirt.
"I'm awake now."
Wordlessly he returned to his mat and lay down. It was no business of his, he told himself unnecessarily. He shut his eyes, stilled his breathing. But despite his discipline, despite his training, he was still awake when Duo began speaking an hour later.
"You asleep, then?" It came between deliberately deep, painful inhalations.
He ignored the question. It had no purpose.
"Twenty-four hours," the voice mused from behind closed eyes and a turned back. "Even you must be tired."
He was. He should have been sleeping.
"You know something? I'm tired too."
But broken ribs had to be kept from collapsing into the lungs, had to kept expanded--
"Sometimes...I get tired of being Death."
Now he wanted to say something, and found, abruptly, that he couldn't.
"Did you see it?"
He had. But not by design, it had been an accident, it had no significance, rather, he didn't want to know the significance.
"On my home colony, everything is gray. It isn't really, but I can only remember it that way. Gray and dying."
More than ever before, he wished that Duo would shut up. His quiet words rustled in the tent like wings.
"It all comes down to the dying, because it all comes down to the war. War and Death, Heero, the eternal ills of mankind. That's us, isn't it?"
Duo's voice was light and heavy, light and heavy. His brain began to cast about for the pattern and he was caught on it, riding up and down with him.
"I wear this because they died. You'd probably say that sentiment was pointless, wouldn't you."
He didn't think he would say that. In fact the words started a gnawing pain in his chest.
"You know, I don't know anyone like you. Not even close. I knew that. I had the weirdest feeling when I saw you...you were different, special. And I really wanted to understand how. So that's why you got away with my Gundam parts." He gave a small chuckle. "Man was I steamed."
Oddly he found himself feeling apologetic, which made no sense at all.
"Heh. Maybe that's why everything gets in your way, because you're not a part of it. Special, like I said."
He wondered if not trusting anyone made him special.
"And you know, I think I almost figured out why."
He thought probably by this point Duo would have noticed the increase in his heart rate and guessed his agitation, but he only went on,
"I used to think that you were one cold bastard. I thought you just didn't care about anyone. But I had that wrong...it's just the opposite, actually."
Denial.
"You care too much. That's why you are the way you are. You care so much it's amazing you can even breathe. My job, my Gundam, what I can do... It's worth more to me than my life. I don't want anyone to feel what I did when they died. But you... I can't even begin to guess where you started hurting, or when you stopped feeling. At least on the outside."
That part couldn't have been right because just now he was feeling more pain than he had in years. In fact it felt like that pain was piling together on top of his chest.
"Don't blame yourself. We do what we do, you know? There's no perfect way to fix this mess... We do what we can. So don't go thinking that you have to be this perfect soldier. Because you're not... Yeah, I'm pretty sure that you're human."
We do what we can... sure you're human... the words turned themselves over and over. He was lying there, mind spinning against the assault. He wanted to repulse them, to reject them, to protect himself from the awful, the unthinkable. But everything that had been said could not be unsaid, so he did the next best thing and shoved them down. Finally, it seemed, Duo was done talking. But just as he was about to truly fall into sleep, he heard the murmur,
"You know, I almost wish you were awake."
tbc
Thank you everyone who wrote to me!!! The next part will probably be the last.
AKI-babble:
[1] That scene where the bok-choy comes glowing out of the
darkness always kills me. There's a certain incongruity to it, just
like when Hee-chan hijacks the ambulance. I don't know, there's
something about him sometimes that makes me laugh. Back
[2] And finally, back to the original story...see, I told you I was going to turn this into an epic 1x2... Back
(:./aki/wings4)
