Thanks to: The War Room, reviewers like Moffit, Natsumi, Merith, Triv, Reb, Abhorsen, Mikke, Jeane, Nicole, Nikki, Cy, and anyone else I forgot to mention that has given me valuable feedback (nothing personal if I left you off, I'm just a ditz ^_^;; )
"... and there he was, this young boy
a stranger to my eyes..."
--- Roberta Flack, Killing Me Softly
"Can we ever hold words too close to us?
To silently let go of all we once were,
As you try to close your eyes, and remember what it used to be like."
--- SkyCameFalling, Healing Yesteryear
Fall From Innocence Part 5
Blood of the Lamb
"Jesus! Kid! Kid, we got a situation out here!!"
Duo felt a rush of the old battle-haze tackle him like a hard push from behind, and he shot straight up on his bunk, the tattered copy of The Catcher In The Rye he had been reading sat aside in an instant. He knew the tone of that scream. It was a scream that promised whatever had happened, it wasn't going to improve the day.
He was almost to the door to their room before Harper threw it open, almost catching him in the face with it. The first thing Duo noticed was that the older tech's shirt was off, and there was a bloodied bundle in his arms. So much blood. Harper's eyes met his, wide and grim and shocked.
Duo felt dizzy a moment when he saw what the bundle was.
It brought back memories of a time many years ago, before he was Duo, when he had laid bleeding in the rain and no one but a ragged band of street kids would help him.
~~ Shut up, kid, for Christ's sake shut up! Shut up!! You're gonna bring the whole damned army down on us!!~~
He felt himself sway, and bit the inside of his cheek hard, until he tasted blood and the world cleared a little bit.
"Kid!" Duo shook himself and saw that Harper was kneeling on the hard cement floor, laying the boy wrapped in his shirt down, his hand pressed firmly to the boy's side. Duo thought at first that the kid was dead-"Shot, likely. Lookit the blood. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph."-but then he saw the shallow, sporadic rise and fall of the boy's chest. The boy was still alive.
Barely.
"Kid, do something!"
Duo looked back at Harper, astounded. "Jesus fucking Christ, Harp, why'd you bring him to me!? Do I look like a med-tech to you? What makes you think I can help?!"
But the look in Harper's eyes was the only answer he needed. Harper may not have known he was anything more than a drifter-kid from the streets, but he sensed differently, somehow. He knew that if anyone could do anything, it was Duo.
Amazingly, the boy was still conscious. Dark sienna eyes, depthless, fluttered and opened in a pale face. They were vacant, and quickly slid closed again, although one small hand gripped at the blood-soaked tee-shirt he was lying on.
God, there was so much blood. A puddle of it was spreading from where Harper had his large, callused hands pressed against the kid's side, oozing slowly between his fingers.
Suddenly, Yofer was in the doorway of their loft. His brown eyes were frightened, sparkling brown stones. His round, flabby face was livid.
"Isaac! Get it outta here!! Take it out, just-" The salvage manager stopped abruptly, catching himself, but not before Duo's shocked indigo eyes met his in disbelief. Duo froze, as if he had been drenched in ice water.
/...It?/
Harper's back was to the manager, and he ignored the man's exclamations. "We need to use your jeep, Yofer, we don't have a car between us. He needs a hospital."
"Harper, you-"
"Gimme your fucking keys!" Harper roared, coming to his feet. Duo recoiled as if Harper had backhanded him, and Yofer was immediately fumbling in his pocket. He had barely pulled the keys out before Harper grabbed them roughly from the manager's hand, pushing him aside to get through the door.
/Hell hath no fury like a kid from Bottomside,/ Duo thought briefly, his mind whirling, but he was brought out of it by the sound of Harper's shout.
"Grab the kid, Kid!"
Duo didn't even hesitate for a second. He had heard the tone of command many times in his short, war-torn life, and he never missed it when he did. He wrapped the tee-shirt more tightly around the boy's body, lifting him from the floor. The child was as limp as a rag doll, head lolling bonelessly on narrow, delicate shoulders, a mop of matted dark hair plastered to the sides of his face.
He carried the boy through the hallway separating the two sets of lofts, grimacing slightly as he avoided stepping in the trail of blood that tracked through the corridor and up the stairs. He followed Harper quickly out the back of the hangar, heading to where Yofer had his jeep parked. Harper was already in the front seat, throwing the passenger door open. Duo slid in next to him, being careful to keep his hand pressed firmly against the boy's side. The boy was shuddering in his arms.
"How is he?"
"... Cold."
Harper tramped the pedal furiously, the electric car roaring to a loud buzz as they pulled around the hangar and out onto the road.
"Where are we going, Harp?"
"Mercy H."
"The subsidized? But Harp, we don't have any-"
"Don't worry about it, they won't leave a kid out in the street to die."
/Obviously, you've never been there,/ Duo thought, but he kept his mouth shut.
He cradled the boy closer to his chest as Harper cursed and wove through traffic, trying to find the quickest route to the hospital. His eyes were tearless, even though he was almost sure the boy wasn't going to make it as far as the hospital; there was too much blood. The boy was either shivering hard or convulsing mildly in his lap, as if a hard wind was coursing through his nervous system.
Although Harper seemed to know every twist and turn in the roads, moving through traffic with a deftness that showed both aggressive piloting prowess and a preternatural ability to sense the other drivers, the ride seemed to take forever.
Harper didn't even bother going to the front of the hospital. He pulled directly into the ambulance bay, laying on the horn as he went. Duo threw the door of the jeep open, his feet hitting the asphalt almost before the car stopped.
A paramedic who was standing out on the edge of the ambulance bay, smoking a cigarette, came up as Duo started half-walking, half-running towards the entrance.
"Sir! Sir, you can't park here!! This bay is for ambulances!"
Duo thrust the limp boy at the paramedic, causing the man to flinch and draw back. "This is an ambulance, numbfuck, we just don't have a siren. Get out of the way!"
Harper ran ahead, yelling for a nurse, and Duo moved as quickly as he could, trying not to jostle the kid in his arms. The boy was so light and seemingly boneless, drenched in blood, Duo felt as if any rough movement could just shuffle the kid off the mortal coil.
"You can't come this way!"
Duo looked up from the kid to see Harper shove a doctor so hard, the man almost went sprawling into a wall. Fuck us sideways, Duo thought absently. A soft, almost inaudible moan issued from the boy in his arms. Blood was hitting the tile floor in dime-sized drops.
Doctors and nurses and paramedics were running over to them. Duo could hear Harper yelling at one of them, but the sound felt far away, full of echoes. His eyes took in the emergency lobby, the bloodstained floor that no one had time to clean up...or couldn't be bothered with it.
A middle-aged Mexican woman on the edge of the row-one of the colony immigrants, Duo guessed-was sobbing softly, and another woman with an ice pack against her swollen nose stared back at him defiantly from two blackened eyes, daring him to ask who had done it, even though he knew without saying a word.
/Walk into a door, lady?/ Duo thought feverishly. /Or you walk into a fist? Didn't get supper on the table quite quick enough?/
The desperation of the place was stifling, twisting around him like rusty barbed wire, cutting into a place where no one could see him bleed. The hard slap of disinfectant, blood, and rubbing alcohol suffocated him.
Harper was up at the register's desk, arguing with the receptionist.
"Look, we don't even know the kid, alright, we just-"
The young girl, pale and frightened, but obviously resolved, stared back at him. "Sir, I'm very sorry, but you're going to have to take a seat and wait like everyone else. We're understaffed at the moment; you'll have to speak with triage. Sir...sir "
Harper spun away from her furiously, pushing his way through the ER doors.
"Sir!"
Duo jerked when he felt someone grab his arm firmly.
"Son, let me see him. Go calm your friend down before he gets himself into more trouble."
An elderly nurse was gently prying the boy from his arms. Duo met her gaze, jerked out of his dazed state by the steadfastness of her light green eyes. They weren't the hard glittering stones that an old person's eyes sometimes become; they were soft, like a young woman's.
"Who are-"
"Marge Callahan. Triage. If you want your boy taken care of, you'll have to give him to me."
The shock of it all was catching up with him. He felt sick and dizzy. But he didn't lower his eyes. He took a deep breath, then nodded, letting the woman take the boy from him.
The woman cradled the boy in her arms, carrying him through the same doors that Harper had stormed through. Duo followed her.
"Motherfucker! You motherfucker! Let me go!"
Harper had been thrown up against the corridor wall, a billy club shoved up against the back of his neck. A security guard had one of Harper's arms pulled up behind his back at an unnatural angle, and Harper's cheek was pressed against the crumbling plaster.
Duo was about to protest, but the nurse beat him to it.
"That's not necessary, Charles. The boy is just upset," she said curtly, walking down the hall without missing a beat. The security guard let up on Harper cautiously, his glare at the two bloodied techs wary.
Harper pulled away as soon as the man let him up, rolling his pulled shoulder, his returning glare at the guard cold enough to freeze. The wall was smeared with blood where he'd been pressed against the wall, as if a child had sponge-painted it red and did a piss-poor job. The nurse walked past him distractedly, as if she didn't even see him. Duo followed her, catching up to Harper.
"Where're they taking him?" Harper asked softly, his voice almost a growl.
"Just chill out," Duo replied, his voice low. He cut his eyes at the older tech. "You're going to get us thrown out of here. We're lucky he's getting taken anywhere at all, not bleeding to death in the emergency lobby. Just... cool it."
The two of them followed the nurse into one of the examination rooms, where she laid him out on a table covered with thin white paper that crinkled when the boy's weight was shifted onto it. She pulled away the blood-soaked tee-shirt, taking a stethoscope and pressing it to the boy's pale chest.
"Frio..." the boy whispered, the word almost inaudible.
"Si, lo siento," the nurse replied immediately softly, one wrinkled hand coming out to touch the boy's head gently. She removed the stethoscope and marked something on a small clipboard that had been hung from her pocket.
"Are you two his brothers? Fellow gang members? Parents?"
Duo and Harper exchanged a glance, and a furious blush burned across Duo's cheeks. "No, we're not, ah, we-"
"I found him lying behind a dumpster," Harper interrupted, his voice quiet and furious. "So we bring him here, and you people treat him like a damned mutt that got ran down in the road-"
"Excuse me," the nurse replied curtly, turning away from them to get a blood pressure cuff out of a rusty metal cabinet. "But we don't have control over the situation, young man, so I'll thank you not to lay blame."
She glanced up, giving Harper a cool, assessive glance. "We have too many patients and not enough doctors. We have no money and no resources. It sounds cruel when it's your child, I understand, but I've seen others just like him die the same way. We do the best we can. Here, put hold this to the wound. Make yourself useful," she added, handing Harper a large pad of gauze.
Harper started to open his mouth with a rebuttal, then shut it, doing as he was told. The old nurse's tone left no room for argument. She concentrated on taking the boy's blood pressure.
"What's his name?" she asked Duo, bent over her task.
"We don't know."
"What's your name, for starters?" she asked, squeezing the small rubber bulb at the end of the blood pressure cuff.
"Du-" He started to answer automatically, then caught himself. "Kid. Kid Demon." /May run and hide, but I never tell a lie,/ he thought, and resisted the urge to break into hysterical giggles. He ran a hand through his bangs, exhausted. Everything had happened so fast, he was just now catching up.
"Sure, John Doe," she answered cynically, but her tone was not unkind. She copied the blood pressure measurement down on her clipboard. "And the boy is a no-name as well."
/ ...Nanashi./
"... Do any of you have a real name?"
/Call me Trowa. Trowa Barton,/ Duo thought. /Because "Bond, James Bond" is already taken./ This time he did laugh, the sound low and slightly chilling. The nurse looked at him strangely, but he recovered quickly, choking the reaction back.
/Where are you now, buddy? Where are you while I'm dragging dying kids into dying hospitals?/
"My name is Isaac Harper," Harper answered, his voice gruff. He was still angry from being leaned on by hospital security, and he moved like a wolf in a cage, tense through the shoulders, eyes constantly moving to the door, as if he expected people to burst into the room at any moment and arrest him.
"Do you have insurance, young man?"
Harper laughed. It was the only answer the nurse needed.
"Can you do anything for the kid?" Duo asked softly, his eyes moving back to the still form on the table. The boy seemed to have slipped back into unconsciousness, and his breathing was shallow.
"That depends," the nurse replied, putting an oxygen mask over the boy's face, then shining a penlight into his eye. "There isn't a point to saving his life just to put him back out on the streets. Do you understand?"
"Don't worry about it," Duo said, his voice almost a whisper. "We'll take care of it, ma'am. But we can't pay you. We don't have any money." Harper moved next to the boy on the table, looking down into his face. He took the boy's hand gently, squeezing it.
The nurse looked up at them, studying their grim faces, then nodded. "You don't worry about that. I'll see what I can do. If nothing else, we'll set something up. A payment plan. But someone has to sign as a guardian if we're going to admit him."
Duo looked into the kid's face, then sighed. "I'll do it. Just...you know...do whatever you can. We'll take care of things on our end. One way or another."
The nurse wrote something else down on her clipboard, then tucked it back on her pocket, looking up at them. "His heartrate is steady, and so is his breathing. He's stabilized for now. We'll do the best we can."
She held her hand out to shake with Duo, and Duo reached out to take hers for a second before snatching it back quickly.
It was covered in blood. /Just like always,/ he thought, and that feverish slipping of time came back on him, making his head spin.
An older boy's rough, sing-song voice in his head...
~~I neeeeed a fuckin' cigarette...~~
~~~~Who is he?
...He has the delirium.
He has black fever.
Hush, he'll be back soon...~~~
/...Solo.../
Duo reached out suddenly to steady himself against the side of the table, the strength draining out of his legs, and Harper grabbed his shoulder.
"Are you all right, young man?" the nurse asked sharply, concerned.
"Yeah... yeah, I'm fine. Just... nothin'." His face burned as he scrubbed his hand roughly on a clean patch of his jumpsuit, then held it back out to the nurse again. She took it, and Duo was surprised at the power of her handshake, even though her hand felt as fragile as the bones of a small bird; her fingers were callused, almost as much as his were.
She looked at both of them. "There isn't anything more you can do here. I suggest you both go home and get yourselves cleaned up, before soldiers or police stop you. You look like you've been at a slaughterhouse. I'll need a number to contact you, in case anything happens."
"You go on ahead and start the jeep, Harp. I'll take care of it."
Harper nodded, brushing the bangs from the boy's damp face one more time before walking out of the examination room.
The elderly nurse handed Duo the clipboard. "Write your phone number at the top. And sign where it says Guardian Signature."
"... We don't have a phone. Will a Telnet ICQ do?"
"That's fine."
Duo signed quickly, a flowing scribble that couldn't be recognized as anyone's name, then started to copy down the address. He spoke softly, so that only the two of them could hear. "No pentobarbital."
The nurse looked up at him, startled. "I beg your pardon?"
"Lethal injection." Duo's voice remained low as he looked up, just above a whisper. "I'm not stupid. I know how general procedures go in cases like this. Nameless, cashless, worthless, right? Better just to... let him go."
The nurse was silent, but Duo saw her cheeks flush.
"I just want your promise."
"For what?"
"For a chance. For him." Duo's gaze never faltered. "... Please."
"I promise you. If he doesn't make it, it won't be because of us. Now you give me a promise, young man."
Duo didn't glance away.
The nurse's expression was open for a moment; vulnerable. She looked much younger and older than her years, both at once. "You promise to come back for him. You don't leave him here. You don't make me put him back out on the streets alone."
"I promise."
The nurse looked back at her clipboard, unwilling to meet his gaze again. Her lips sank into wrinkles, making her look old and weak again. But there was strength in her hands, Duo remembered. He knew she wasn't weak. That she could be trusted.
He nodded, then turned towards the door.
"Mr. Maxwell."
Duo froze as if he had been slapped, then turned slowly back towards the elderly nurse. Her expression was careful and guarded.
"I suggest you tuck back that braid or cut it, Mr. Maxwell. Those who feel they've been wronged have very good memories. And you're not exactly inconspicuous. Other than that, I'll keep in touch. I'll speak with the doctors and get him into surgery. I'll mail the schedule to you. When he's well, you can take him."
Duo smiled a little. The expression was shaky, and made him look fifteen again.
"... Thanks."
~*~
"What'd she have to say?" Harper asked when Duo got back into the jeep. He furrowed his brow when he saw how pale Duo's face was, how vivid the blood was against Duo's face, where he had touched it without thinking, leaving a streak of red there like warpaint. He put his hand on Duo's shoulder. "You okay, Kid? You don't look so good."
Duo stared straight ahead, head lowered, blinking furiously.
/Boys don't cry. They don't cry, dammit. So knock it off./
He blinked the tears back, but it didn't take care of the lump in his throat, or the pulsing ache at his temples.
"Fine," he said softly. "Bad memories. Just drive."
Harper did.
~*~
Once they were back at the salvage docks, Duo left Harper to take care of Yofer. He walked out into the darkening streets, heading for the corner of the block. He kept his head up and his eyes open, watching for anyone who looked like they might just want to take a shot at him. He knew he looked the part of some easy money. He didn't want to act like it, too.
He carried his switchblade.
At the corner, he pushed open the door to the Telnet booth, his nose wrinkling at the stale reek of winos' piss. He discreetly pulled his cred card from his pocket, slipping it into the insert slot. He moved the mini-mouse, opening his inbox. Two new messages. He clicked on the first one.
To: SHINI@L2319292:TELNETFrom: CALLAHM@L2498427:TELNET
**INSECURE LINE**
MR. MAXWELL - SURGERY TOMORROW AT 0600. MOVED TO ICU. HIS NAME IS GABRIEL.
/Gabriel.../
He wrote back, typing quickly.
To: CALLAHM@L249827:TELNETFrom: SHINI@L219292:TELNET
**INSECURE LINE**
MARGE - THANKS. WE WILL BE BACK FOR HIM. I PROMISE.
Finally, he went and clicked on the second message, from someone whose tag seemed vaguely familiar.
To: SHINI@L2319292:TELNETFrom: SANDROCK@L410938:TELNET
**SECURED LINE**
DUO - HEERO IS ALIVE. IN CINQ. THOUGHT YOU SHOULD KNOW.
-QUATRE
Duo just stood there for a moment, stunned. His eyes traveled to the walls surrounding the Telnet booth. There was a bullet hole in the sturdy fiberglass, cracks spiraling out from it like the delicate threads of a spiderweb.
Suddenly, he found himself inexplicably furious. Why now ? Dammit, why now, after all this? And why doesn't he come to me himself? Why doesn't he send me word himself? I'm alone in the dark... but he won't come. He only did once, that one time. And that... that was a long time ago.
/I have-/
(Give me your knife. I'll cut it down the middle.)
/-a new life here./
He closed his eyes, shivering as if he was wet and cold, even though he had already stripped away his blood-soaked clothes, changing into a clean tee-shirt shirt and a ragged pair of jeans.
/Heero... /
He moved the mouse again.
ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DELETE THIS MESSAGE?
Yes.
TBC...
Notes:
frio - cold (Spanish)
lo siento - I'm sorry (Spanish)
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