"Do what you are told
and maybe then we'll let you out
You might be dead and cold
you might be full of doubt...Don't try to escape
'cause you don't have nowhere to go
If nothing is your fate
there's no scenario..."
--- Ra, Do You Call My Name
Requiem for the Sinners Part 18
Grounded Seraphim
"Absolutely not."
"Hn."
The two faced off, dark flashing cobalt meeting immovable pale green. Even pale and bandaged, the former pilot of Wing was a fierce adversary.
Unfortunately, he had never met Marge Callahan, a woman who had raised five sons, lived through two wars, and was currently fighting through a third.
The heavyset nurse squared herself in the doorway of the corridor, arms crossed over a considerable chest. "I don't think so, young Mr. Yuy. This is my ward, and you are going to stay there in that bed until I say you're fit to leave it. Do you understand?"
The young man glared back at the old woman silently, the expression on his face saying that not only did he not understand, he had no intentions of following any directives from someone who was old enough to be his grandmother.
"If you can't be still and let those wounds heal, then we'll sedate you."
Heero's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. "I'd like to see you try."
The elderly nurse put one wrinkled hand on her hip. "Young man, I just spent all night sitting up with a fifteen year-old PCP addict going through withdrawals so he can be fit to fight sober. He was trying to slit his wrists with the tab of a soda can."
She smiled sweetly. "Make my morning."
Heero looked sullen, sitting up in his bed on his elbows. "I have to talk to Duo."
The nurse walked over to the bed, tucking the sheets around the disgruntled Gundam pilot. "You couldn't talk to him right now, even if I did let you up..." She glanced at him sternly. "Which I'm not. He's in a conference call, so you couldn't talk to him anyway."
"With who?"
Marge cupped his cheek so quickly that he didn't know what was happening until her warm, callused palm was cradling his jaw. She stared into his eyes, her face gentle and serious.
"I'm just a nurse. And right now, you're just a patient. Get some rest."
She straightened up, her brow furrowing again into a more indomitable expression. "Now then. You lie there, and Maria will be in here to check on you in-" she checked the watch at her wrist "-an hour and a half, and give you your medicine. I have to finish my rounds. Do not leave this ward, or I will make you wish that dear boy had killed you outright."
Heero checked her face twice, and realized she wasn't joking.
~*~
Heero made a show of being obedient.
He waited until she had been gone for half an hour before he attempted an escape.
The only sound in the small ward was the dove-soft moaning of a young soldier in the bed at the end of the row, his arm splinted in a sling across his chest. Heero glanced over him and saw the boy's forehead gleaming with sweat under the fluorescent lighting.
The young soldier wasn't awake, however. He tossed and turned in his sleep, eyes flickering beneath his eyelids as he struggled through some battle he could not escape.
Moving carefully, Heero moved the blankets back, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, his ears alert for sounds of approaching footsteps. There were none. The corridors were silent.
He winced as he stood, realizing how long it had been since he took his "medicine".
Medicine. He had seen the label on the bottles that he took his injections from. And he knew the reason he wanted his shot wasn't just because he was in pain. Pain he could handle. He had handled it before. But he didn't like taking drugs when he didn't know what they were.
The drugs. He had been on them steadily for the last three days. He knew that much for sure, because the injections were the only way he could tell the time. Three days... was it three days? He wasn't sure anymore.
He straightened, ignoring fiery band of pain across his diaphragm every time he inhaled. He breathed shallowly through his mouth, not risking to breathe through his swollen nose. He walked on the balls of his bare feet, still dressed in the flannels he had been wearing when they dragged him from the hospital in the Cinq Kingdom. He remembered someone washing his face and upper body vaguely, but he didn't know if it was true, or just a fever-dream.
Heero brushed his bangs out of his face, grimacing at the sweat-grimed, oily feel of his hair. He hadn't bathed in three days, either, and it showed. He caught his reflection in a small mirror hung on the wall, and gazed at himself. His face was mottled with dark bruises where one of his guards had kicked him in the face and Noventa had hit him; it was a patchwork of ugly purple marks, fading to green and yellow where they were slowly healing.
I've been through worse than a few days without a shower, he thought flatly, pushing the door to the corridor open gently, checking to make sure it didn't creak.
It was quiet. He moved into the hall, his bare feet padding on the cold tile floor.
One young nurse and a group of soldiers passed him as he made his way through the quiet halls, but neither bothered him; obviously, they considered the bare-chested and bare-footed young man with the fierce dark eyes and the face like a walking trainwreck a little too intense to mess with, and they gave him his room.
He walked down the halls with his head down, brushing his hand through his bangs every few minutes as if the tufts of hair falling into his eyes irritated him. When he recognized the habit- one that had been beaten out of him as a child (Sit still, goddamn you!)-he walked with his arms across his chest, cradling his elbows in his hands.
The halls eventually led him out into an immense hangar. Heero stopped dead, craning his neck upward.
Titans. It was the first word that came to mind as he looked up at the shining fleet of L2 battleships, painted a glossy black. They looked like giant lethal beetles, lined up along the mobile suit docks on each side of the hangar. Techs and pilots worked quickly around and in the huge machines of mass destruction, sparks flying from the guts of the mechanical monsters as they were prepped for battle.
It was a fleet of death.
What in the hell... Heero's mind worked furiously, refusing to acknowledge what he was seeing. The Preventers... how... how could they not know?
"What are you doing out here, you stubborn jackass? You know you're supposed to be lying down recuperating. You Gundam pilots are the biggest thick skulls I've ever had the honor to know, you know that?"
Heero turned towards the vaguely familiar voice. An elderly man rappelled down the side of one of the closer ships in a sturdy tech's harness, turning to look down at Heero. His hair stood up on his skull in haphazard fuzzy white tufts, sticking out from beneath a battered fisherman's cap that looked almost as old as its wearer.
Howard.
Heero cocked his head slightly at the old tech, eyes narrowing. "I see you're in on this, too."
"You don't sound as if you approve, Yuy."
"You're declaring war on my country. How could I approve?"
Howard laughed rustily, the laughter breaking into a coughing jag. "What, that Cinq Kingdom? How long have you lived there, kiddo?"
Heero thought about it briefly.
"... Two years."
"Exactly. And why were you there?"
I... don't know.
"Do you know why you're here?"
...Duo.
Howard saw doubt chase itself across Heero's face and smiled knowingly. "I thought so, Yuy. You don't really belong anywhere, do you? But here you are again. And so is he. I'm senile, boy, but not stupid."
"You talk too much, old man," Heero muttered, walking past the dangling tech.
"Maybe you don't talk enough."
Heero gave the tech a last cold, assessive glance, then stopped and looked straight at him. "Where is he?"
Howard's smile widened, and he nodded his head past the rows of mobile suit docks. "His office is over near the shipping holds."
"Hn. Thanks."
Heero kept walking, heading in the direction that Howard had pointed him. A few of the techs stopped their work to watch him pass, but most took it back up quickly. They were a ragtag bunch-most of them with questionable pasts-and it wasn't customary to take notice of a stranger for more than five seconds on L2, anyway, even if they were half-naked and looked as if they had lost a prizefight.
"Yuy!"
Heero's shoulders stiffened as he heard another voice call him, ringing even over the sound of solders and moving machinery. This one he recognized too, only it carried with it much more lethal memories.
~~~NOW!!~~~
~~~Quatre! Quatre look out behind you!!~~~
Heero closed his eyes briefly, becoming still, then lifted his head, turning slightly, relaxed, as if that voice hadn't conjured images in his head he'd rather never think or speak of again.
The pale man striding down the middle of the hangar towards him in a long, gray trenchcoat was the same man who had sat outside Duo's hotel room, bobbing his head gently to the music in his headphones. There was nothing gentle about him now, no more than there had been gentleness in him the night the world came crashing down around Heero's ears.
He moved like a wolf.
"Heya Yuy. Aren't you supposed to be lying on your bed of pain somewhere down in Paradise?" Harper said, a friendly smile on his face. But if Heero had learned anything from Duo, it was that there wasn't anything friendly about it at all.
The man moved around him. Stalking.
"You really shouldn't be up, Yuy. I mean, you're at a disadvantage if someone were to come at you in hand-to-hand combat in your condition." The icy gray eyes held his steadily, and Heero didn't look away. For some reason, he thought it would be a sign of fear. And if he showed fear, Harper would be on him like a tiger on a lamed deer.
"I mean, what if I were to come at you?" Harper said, still wearing that strange grin. He never looked away, staring through a jagged, white-blond mane.
"I could take you," Heero replied quietly, never letting his gaze drop. His voice was flat and emotionless. His face was blank with the pure, perfect nonchalance of a born killer. "Do it or move out of my way. And pray you never end up on the wrong end of my gun again."
Harper smiled, gray eyes sparkling beneath his hair like the eyes of a wild animal, but it wasn't a reassuring gesture. If anything, it was enough to make Heero's blood run cold. He threw his hands up in a mock gesture of surrender, backing off.
"It's cool, Yuy. Totally cool. If you want to know the truth, I don't think you'll do anything to mess with the General."
The L2 army's second-in-command turned his back on the former Gundam pilot, walking away. After a few paces, he stopped, speaking without turning around, so softly that his voice only carried to Heero's ears. There was no smile in his voice. None at all.
"I don't think you'll fuck with the General's plans. I know it. You go ahead and try."
Heero barely heard the last five words as the older man walked away.
"I'll slit your fucking throat."
TBC...
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