14-Mar-2001
Title: Hail Mary 1/1
Author: TB
Archive: yes please at GW Addiction
Category: angst
Pairing: 2x3, 1
Rating: pg
Warnings: unhappy Duo, absolutely no plot development
Spoilers: no
Notes: I am blocked. As you read this, you, too, will
understand, and probably pity me.
Feedback: Yes, ... but remember, if you can't say something nice, fake it.
^_^;
Disclaimers: I don't know why anyone would want to scratch the surface of a legal battle with me over this, but hey, let's observe the courtesies... I have never, nor ever shall, own stock or have rights to Gundam Wing. Therefore, though I use them, I do so with the full understanding that they are not mine, and I won't profit off them.
Heero was gone.
Duo lay on the bed, his breathing still coming in short, painful little gasps. His cheeks were still streaked with cooling salty wetness. His body still ached, his head pounded, his limbs trembled weakly.
And Heero had just walked out.
His eyes were open, glazed, mindless. His fists clenched in the soiled sheeting. He felt like he was dying. It was worse every time. As the number of dead grew higher, as the tally came in after each battle, this... madness... afterwards became exponentially worse. What had once been a fit of mild nausea was now this.
Heero.
Heero was gone.
Do I inspire that much contempt? he wondered. Sapped of all strength his body was fading away, and his head was floating, his mind disconnected and his thought thready and whispered and vague. Lashes heavy with dampness blinked. Does he despise me? Or does he pity me?
He remembered Trowa, the lovely, so lovely angel, who had first discovered him in this position, this shuddering wreck that could only lay on the bed on its back and shake like a tattered leaf in a headwind. The horrified expression, the pitying silence, had said it all. Trowa was careful, now, never to come to his room when it was happening. Oh, but hadn't the end of that been so ironic? Trowa had loved him for the very weakness that brought the urge to gag to the back of his throat. Had gazed at him with depth-less sympathetic eyes and loved him, brought him kisses and gentle touches and sometimes, a fiery embrace that would last a precious stolen hour or so, ending in exhaustion and bitter aftertastes and strain.
Heero had seen now, too. Would Heero long to heal the limp and weeping child? Would Heero feel something tender wrenching at his heart? No. Because Heero was the Perfect Soldier. The Perfect Man. There was no room in his universe for Duo's helplessness. The second he failed in battle, the second he showed the slightest sign of jeopardising their mission, Heero would kill him--a merciful bullet to the head, and maybe in the empty hole where a normal boy would keep his heart, would understand that the mercy blow really *was* a mercy blow--an end to the pain that had slowly taken over the love of living.
Was Heero even now loading his gun? Treading back down the hall in those kid-leather soft, noiseless sneakers to push open the door and aim silently from the light into the darkness? Duo knew that he could not raise a hand to stop him, could not raise a hand period, his muscles no longer obeyed his commands; if there was a Christ, perhaps in His compassion He would at least allow Duo to choke out, spit out, mumble out a line of prayer before the blood flowed in place of words. Duo hadn't prayed in far too long. There hadn't seemed much point--and he wondered if maybe that wouldn't make his last prayer more powerful, since he'd been saving up.
The door opened. Duo's eyes rolled toward the blinding glare, eyelids fluttering.
Heero Yuy sat beside him on the bed and lifted him by the shoulders until he was propped against the Wing pilot's strong chest. Glass met his lips, water washed past the chapped and bitten surfaces and eased the frozen tightness of his throat, the clenched and painful twist of his stomach.
"Shh," Heero whispered. "Shh." That was all. It was enough. Duo felt his mind return to his body, felt the sudden weight of wasted limbs and motionless flesh, felt himself slipping into sleep, or unconsciousness. Maybe, if there was a Christ, he would never wake up.
"Shh, Duo. Shh."
The End
(:./erin/hailmary)
