18-Jul-2002
Ask and you shall receive...
Dark...
Quiet...
I'm lost...
I woke with a sudden gasp that ripped through my lungs and burst from my throat before I could help it. It hurt. I squeezed my eyes back shut and tried to swallow, but found that doing that was much worse, so I opened my mouth and tried to sip in a bit of air between my clenched teeth. I was rewarded with the feel of someone pressing a cool, damp cloth to my lips.
"Duo? You awake?" I slowly opened my eyes in the dark room and saw Quatre smiling at me. I would have mustered up a grin of my own if the room hadn't tilted slightly and began a slow spin just then. Combined with the pounding of my head that began anew I wound up frowning instead.
"Duo?"
I nodded once to acknowledge him and bit my lip as the spin increased in speed. I hated drugs. They always gave me the spins no matter how hard I fought them. I could usually just force my way through them and keep doing what I was doing, but this time I felt too tired to fight the rotation so I settled on closing my eyes again and riding it out. It's kind-a like riding a carousel from Hell. You'd be having fun if the dizziness didn't make you want to lose your lunch.
I heard movement all around me as I lay on my back. I could feel the slight sting of the IV in my arm and hear the dripping of fluids and whirring of various pieces of equipment. The room I was in was pretty damn dark from what I could tell behind closed eyelids; immediately making me wonder if I had some kind of concussion. My head had been taking a lot of abuse in the past few days.
"I would have thought you smarter than that, Maxwell." Wufei's gruff and irritated voice broke me away from my thoughts and prompted me to open an eye. "You of all people should smell a trap as obvious as that one was."
True. But at the time, I had other things that outweighed my concerns that the fire had been set as a decoy or a trap. I swallowed once and winced which caused Wufei to cross to the table beside the bed and fill a cup with water. He didn't hand it to me, instead unwrapping a straw and setting it in the cup so I could sip from it as he held it for me. The cool water was like heaven as it moistened my mouth and tongue before I swallowed and let it bathe my throat.
When I had a good couple of pulls, he drew the cup away and fixed me with an impatient look, complete with cocked eyebrow. "Well?"
I pushed myself up a bit and squeezed me eyes shut as a wave of vertigo washed over me, but within a few moments it had settled enough for me to reopen my eyes and sit back against the pillows. Hospital beds are not that comfortable, despite how they are designed. I always disliked the feeling of sinking backwards into cushioned softness to the point of being smothered, but I'd rather have that then be laying flat on my back while the world continued to spin as I fought to clear the drug induced cobwebs from my head. I licked my lips and tried to answer him. Tried being the operative word. "Wo ist die katze?"
Wufei looked at me like I had grown an extra evil head, an interesting expression on him to say the least; as I spoke the scratchy, dry words. I frowned and waited for him to say something, but he just turned towards the door and crossed his arms over his chest in annoyance.
"Die katze das mit Heero."
I turned my head to the door, causing a fresh wave of dizziness to follow the direction of Wufei's glaring to where Trowa was standing in the doorway with the oddest look on his face. He and Wufei were communicating back and forth with silent glances as I tried to figure out just what the problem was. I was missing something.
"Sie sprechen von ihnen."[1] I groused as I watched their silent duel.
"What did he say?" Wufei finally asked Trowa heatedly, ignoring me all together.
"He asked about the cat." Trowa took a step forward and slipped his hands into the pockets of his jeans and cocked his head slightly to the left with an intense look of concentration on his face. "And if we were talking about him." He looked as if he was solving reentry equations in his head as he peered at me with his striking green eyes. Both were visible to me under the sweep of chocolate colored hair from the angle I was at and I felt like I was being pinned further into the mattress behind me by making direct sight contact with them. "Wie geht es?"[2]
Wufei threw his hands up in frustration and then walked from the room. I watched him leave and then thought about what Trowa just said. I definitely was missing something. "Nicht schlecht."[3] My throat was still to damn sore to say a hell of a lot. It still felt like some one had scraped it out with razor blades. "Ich mochte ein glas wasser."[4]
Quatre was looking back and forth from Trowa to me like he was watching a tennis match before he finally started picking the lint on the blanket in front of him as he sat perched on the end of the bed. "Duo? Why are you speaking in German?" Quatre not looking up from his lint-picking task finally cut in quietly.
I looked from Trowa to him and shrugged. I honestly hadn't realized I was. It had sounded like English in my head when I spoke it. I frowned fiercely. Another reason I hate drugs. I would have told Quatre that if I hadn't wanted to sound like I lost my mind, and it really did hurt too much to try to say that much again without more water. I was going to wring Heero's neck when I saw him next. I'm sure both the painkillers and the sedatives were at his insistence. He doesn't like them himself, but always seems to be able to bully the rest of us into using them.
I think Trowa realized I needed more water, because he walked to the table, picked up the cup where Wufei had left it, and handed it to Quatre who was sitting with me. "Heero has the cat." Trowa said with a small smile as he left the room leaving me alone with Quatre. I assumed he left to go in search of the Asian wrecking crew.
Quatre helped me hold the cup as I sipped some more water as I concentrated on getting my thoughts together. I'm alive. Heero's all right. Heero has the cat. The cat's alive. I'd been speaking in German?
I don't know why that little bit of news shook me up more than waking up in a hospital bed, hooked up to IV's and a heart monitor in nothing but a thin, paper gown, but it did. I'm sure if I allowed myself to think about the details leading up to these facts I would have been even more upset, but I wasn't ready to think about that just yet. The relief I had knowing that something I loved survived that fire was enough to keep the dark thoughts at bay for now.
Where is Heero? I carefully mouthed to Quatre as he placed the cup on the table and turned back to me. Scary thing was that it had sounded like I was speaking in German in my head.
"With the doctors. You had us pretty scared for a minute there." I leaned back in the pillows and watched the expressions flit across his face as he continued picking away at the powder blue blanket spread across my lap. He was upset.
Quatre really never had the gift the rest of us seemed to have with hiding our emotions underneath layers of carefully constructed walls. He really didn't need to though. It's part of his charm. I took one of his hands in mine, stilling the lint picking and gave him a warm smile which seemed to make him relax enough to smile back. We didn't talk after that, but I knew what he had been thinking.
I almost died.
Funny, it doesn't matter how many times I 'almost' die; I'm always more shook up after it than during it. You'd think that the idea of actually stopping to exist would be something more frightening than surviving a near death situation, but I've been through serious injuries enough for it not to faze me during it. When I'm faced with death, I simply accept that it's my time. But time after time when I wake up after such harrowing experiences still breathing, I have to wonder why. I have to deal with my mortality, and that is scary. Very scary. During the war I came to think that the five of us were immortal, untouchable. But now as I grow older I realize how very lucky we were. That life is too short and time is fleeting.
I glanced up at Quatre and had to blush. He had apparently been talking to me for a few minutes, because now he was frowning at me and saying my name. I gave him the infamous Scooby-Doo, cock your head to one side, and look confused look and 'humm'd'. It worked.
"I said I'm going to find Heero. Wufei insisted that he try to lay down in some chairs and rest before he fell over. I'll bring you some ice-cream from the cafeteria to help with your throat, okay?"
I nodded enthusiastically, despite how heavy my eyes suddenly felt and how furiously the spins had started again after a brief respite. In fact, my limbs got awfully heavy at that very same moment too. I glanced up the IV drip and noted the side of the bag and almost cursed out loud despite the soreness. Damn thing was timed to release a sedative along with the painkillers. How did they expect me to get out of here and back on the case if they kept me sedated?
My thoughts were getting rapidly more sluggish as Quatre left and closed the door. He dimmed the lights as he left too, making it harder to keep my eyes open. I could feel my pulse quicken at the very idea of being left alone in the dark and tried to swallow. But I just didn't have enough spit to make it work and my dry throat just got all that more tight as I tried to regulate my breathing. Hell, Wufei could do it and had showed me how many times? But between the panic and the drugs, I was losing my battle with consciousness.
The light from the hallway spilled into the room just as I was giving up. I blinked sleepy eyes in that general direction and watched as Heero made his way slowly to the side of the bed with a soft smirk on his lips. "Hey beautiful. You sleepy?" I heard him mumble close to my ear as my eyes slid shut.
If I had enough energy to do it I would have flipped him off, but I settled for puffing a bit of air out of my mouth in his direction and mouthed my plea. Nicht gehen, 'Ro.[5]
"I'm not going anywhere, Duo. Sleep now."
That's all I needed to hear and let myself slip into the dark coffin of sleep knowing he'd be there when I woke up, just like he had been all those times before.
End Part 12
Notes:
[1] - You both are talking about me.
[2] - How are you feeling?
[3] - Not too badly.
[4] - I would really like/enjoy a glass of water.
[5] - Don't leave, 'Ro.
(:./ebony/magic12)
