Author: CleverYoungThief
Rating: R
Warnings: Language, shounen ai, yaoi, angst, sap, fluff
Pairing: 1+/x2
Archive: Gundam Wing Addiction
Disclaimer: Don't own 'em. Don't sue. College kids are like L2 kids; we got nothin'.
Please Don't Let me Fall Part 1
Heero was losing in his battle against unconsciousness. Death was creeping into his body from all sides, that numb, cold, dark feeling. The thought of it drove him on, but he staggered no more than a hundred feet, blood dripping, then pitched headlong to the ground. When he had recovered his breath and control, he laid back and decided to meet his death with dignity worthy of a soldier.
With this new-found stillness came the first glimmerings of drowsiness, coming through the pain. A good idea, he thought, to come to Death in his sleep. It was like taking an anaesthetic. Death was not as frightening as people thought. Lying bloodied and dying, Heero suddenly heard a distant voice.
/ Heero. /
But he didn't want to hear his name again. When people said his name like that, in that commanding tone, something bad always happened, to him and to other people. Always.
/ Heero! Get up, Heero! Get up now! /
No. Mission aborted, mission failed. He would not get up. It hurt to move, it hurt to think. Therefore, he planned to do neither. He would just lie here quietly and die. He uttered a thick, agonized groan. His blood-streaked hands opened and closed slowly in the snow, staining it pink. Let me die now, oh please just let me die. I don't want to fight anymore.
/ Heero, you have to get up! Now! /
It was Doctor J's voice, the one voice he had never been able to refuse or shut out. But he would ignore it now. He would shut it out now.
"Omae o korosu. Go away. Go to hell," Heero croaked, squeezing his eyes tightly shut against the voice. "I hate you. Go away."
Pain blared through his body, shattering through him like cracked glass. Waves of agony, full of ice water and razor blades, tried to drown him.
Oh let me die, Doctor, he thought. Oh let me die. Just... go the hell away.
/ Get up, Heero. Get up now. /
"No," he said. "No more." His hands shuffled on the snow. He made an effort to open his eyes, but a glue of drying blood had stuck them shut. He suddenly found himself thinking of Relena and Duo, how they would react at the news of his death, but it wasn't quite enough to bring him back to his feet. "You're gone. I don't belong to you anymore. You can't threaten me, and you can't make me do things. My missions are over. I'm dead, and so are you."
But he wasn't dead. Somewhere beyond the phantom voices he could hear the whine of mobile suit engines... and another sound. The sound of battle.
/ Heero. Get up. You have to get up. /
He realized it wasn't the voice of Doctor J. That had only been his poor, wounded mind trying to fool itself. This was a voice from... from (above?) some other plane, some high dark place where pain was a myth and missions a dream.
/ Heero, they'll come for you--the others will come for you. That's how important you are to them. You can still live, Heero. You can still get up. You can still complete your Mission. You haven't failed. Not yet. There's still time to make it through the fire... if you're not too chickenshit to do it, that is. /
/ If you're truly a soldier of the colonies, do it. If you're man enough. / Heero flinched as if he had been cuffed, the command in that voice was not to be denied.
"Man enough?" Heero croaked. "Man enough? Whoever you are, you've got to be shitting me." That sensation again of being slapped... so real that Heero felt his head ring with it.
"Okay, okay... just... stop hitting me..."
He tried again to open his eyes. The tacky blood holding them shut gave a little but would not let go. He managed to work one hand up to his face. It brushed the gaping wound on the side of his head and he gave voice to a low, tired scream of pain. He really didn't care about voicing his pain now. There was no one to hear him anyway. He waited until the worst of the pain had subsided, then forced his eyes open.
His vision was eaten up by a vast white corona of light. A steady high keening note rang in his head, the sound of a TV test-pattern turned up to full volume. He winced, putting his hands over his ears to block it out, and that hurt too.
Severe concussion, the Soldier droned a self-diagnosis in the back of his mind, unconcerned. Bleeding in the brain is odds-on.
Slowly, a little at a time, Heero lowered his hands and raised his head.
And saw her.
She stood within a corona of light.
It was the little girl, the one with the puppy, dressed the same as the day she had found him, her eyes just as kind as before.
/ Come on, Heero. Get up. You're not lost anymore. I know it's hard, but you have to get up--you have to. Because they're coming, they're coming to save you... but they'll need your help. They need you to stay alive until they can get here. And you can't live and lie here. OZ will see to that. / She was not standing on the ground, he saw. Her shoes appeared to float an inch or two above it, and the bright light was all around her. She was outlined in spectral radiance.
/ Come, Heero. Get up. If you sleep in snow, you'll sleep forever. If you die here, everything you've worked for, all the lives you've taken will be in vain. Her eyes saddened. Even mine. / He started struggling to his feet. It was very hard. His sense of balance was almost gone, and it was hard to hold his head up. Twice he fell back, but each time he began again, mesmerized and entranced by the glowing girl with her kind eyes, the girl he had murdered.
/ They are going to come, Heero. For you. As much as you hate to admit it, they do love you. They care about you very much. So get up. /
/ They are going to help you. They'll help you find your way. You won't be lost anymore. Not lost. Not like before. /
Heero finally managed to stand upright. The glowing girl now stood over him, her eyes tender but stern. She looked at him with a supernatural sweetness and something else... something he had longed for his whole life. What was it?
It was compassion.
Compassion and understanding. Forgiveness.
He looked at her, his eyes full of tears, tears of pain and determination too. "They'll come... for me? Why? Why would they care about me?"
/ Yes, / she said.
/ But you have to hurry, Heero. You have to hurry before they decide that you really are dead, that the Perfect soldier isn't so powerful after all. /
TBC...
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