Thanks to: All the reviewers and readers, and the War Room. ^_^
Special Thanks: To Merith, who helped me out with this chapter, and Saro, and to the rest of the War Room, to just basically listening to me when I had to rant. Sol gets credit for the "scimitar smile," ('cause I got it from her LJ handle) and Saro gets credit for the spray paint idea. Mine undoubtably would have not turned out as well.
"Oh, how I love the Earth and everything in it, life and death. And men. One can think of nothing finer, or nicer, than men... their wars, their concentration camps, their justice."
--- Marcel Aymé
"Love and war are the same thing, and stratagems and policy are as allowable in the one as in the other."
--- Miguel de Cervantes
"I don't know what will be used in the next world war, but the fourth will be fought with stones."
--- Albert Einstein
Requiem for the Sinners Part 32
Of the Shadow of Death...
The first thing that assaulted their senses when they arrived in the loading dock were screams and the sickish-sweet fragrance of seared flesh. Harper instinctively put his hand over his mouth and nose, trying to evade that horrible stench, but Duo had become seven years-old again in an instant
They have to burn them, kid. If they don't, they'll just make more kids sick. You see?
Let that jacket go, brat! You can't have that! He had the plague, you wanna die, fuckin' moron?! It's all gotta be burned!
Burned...
"Duo!!"
Duo snapped back to himself. Harper's gray eyes were boring into him as the taller vice-general shook his shoulder. Harper shoved an oil-stained neckerchief into his hand, before tying one over his own face, bandit-style, to cover his mouth and nose. "Let's go!"
Trying to keep a cool, collected expression on his face, Duo tied the kerchief over his face, breathing through his mouth to try and keep the smell of cooking flesh out of his nose. He had to bite back the urge to gag when he realized with his mouth open, he could almost taste it.
He spotted Heero at the same time as Harper did. He was walking down the row of half-destroyed mobile suits, an aerosol can in his palm. He would stop in front of each mobile suit, staring up at the hatch, before either marking the shin of the mobile suit with a large patch of bright red spray paint, or moving on.
There were so many marks. Duo swallowed as he let the implications of what all those marks meant hammer into him. Those were triage marks. The hatches were crushed, ripped. L2 pilots generally didn't pilot in space-suits; it hindered speed and mobility. Which meant absolutely no protection against rapid decompression, should the hatch of the mobile suit's pressurized cockpit be breached.
Jesus, they're going to have to clean those guys out with a mop and bucket.
But the screams weren't coming from the men inside the busted suits. They were coming from the men that had already been pulled from the viable ones.
"Duo! Harp!"
Hilde jogged up to them, a handkerchief over her own face. There was blood smeared on her forehead, but after giving her a quick look-over, Duo could tell that she hadn't been injured in the battle.
"Duo, we ran into-"
"I know, Hilde," he interrupted, still walking towards the wounded. Some of the mobile suit techs had pulled out the fold-up cafeteria tables from the galley, and the men, women, and children who were still living were being laid out on the tables as gently as possible.
He could see Marge bandaging one pilot's shattered, scorched arm while three techs assisted her, two to hold the man down and the other to hold the man's arm out. The other nurses carried empty syringes and morphine bags in the buckets usually used to hold mobile suit bolts, moving down the rows as they tried to lull the screamers into a drug-induced doze.
"What's our count, Hilde? Please tell me we hit them as hard as they hit us."
"189 went out, 92 came back, only 74 are still alive, and that's droppin'. We lost most of the sweepers. But Sally's troops took major damage, too. And Jeremiah covered us with Legion, so we were safe on the way home. The L1 troops took less damage than ours, though. Sweepers got hit the worst."
Sally...
"Yeah, well, they aren't built like tanks, they're built for speed," Harper growled, grabbing a full syringe and a rubber strip from the nurse passing by him, tapping the air out of it before moving to the nearest wounded man, tying off the man's arm. The side of the pilot's face was scorched. "They may be fast, but those sweepers break like Taiwan toys."
Duo moved to the man's other side, putting two fingers to the man's neck for a few seconds. When Harper moved to inject the man, Duo grabbed his wrist, shaking his head.
"No good. He's gone. Save it."
Harper gave him an inscrutable look, then called over to Hilde, who was speaking with one of the nurses, who looked young and overwhelmed. "Hilde, get over here and help me drag this guy off! Make room for somebody on the floor!"
~*~
Slowly, over the course of a few hours, the screams in the makeshift emergency ward died down into moans and sobs. Those that were salvaged were moved into the hospital wards, as quickly as beds could be found for them. The ones that weren't had to be pulled off the tables to make room for those that were, piled off to the side beneath a mobile suit tarp.
Someone who had been working triage began keeping track of the KIA by putting a red cross on the hangar wall for every man who died.
There were a lot of crosses.
~*~
"Harper."
The vice-general didn't look up as Wufei came to sit on the hard, round, plastic seat next to him. His icy gray eyes never moved from the still face of the man whose hand he was holding. Half the man's head was swathed in bandages, seeped through with blood and a sick yellow liquid Wufei thought might be intercranial fluid; the man's head on that side looked lopsided.
The man's uniform arm had been cut away on that side, and the arm was bound up to the shoulder, gauze soaked through with red. On the front of the pilot's blood-splattered black uniform, Wufei could barely make out the man's name. RAMOS.
He didn't see how the pilot could still be alive, but even as he watched, the unconscious man's chest rose as he drew in breath in a shallow, ragged gasp, letting it out with a soft, torn sound.
Harper sat at the man's good side, immovable.
"Harper," Wufei repeated. Harper didn't look over at him, but he finally spoke.
"We graduated from the White Fang piloting program at the same time. He never wore his damned harness. Said it made it hard to breathe. I was always after him to wear that fucking harness, even pulled rank on him, but he never would. Fucking moron."
"I'm sorry," Wufei said softly.
"Fuck your sorry, greencoat," Harper whispered. He moved his callused hand to the young man's face, brushing blood-clotted black hair back from his eyes. The good side of the pilot's profile was curiously unmarked.
Wufei didn't answer. He figured if there was any time for silence, this was probably it.
"Take a good look at what your guys did, your good guys," Harper said, his voice still a snarl, but it was choked. "You take a damned good look."
"... I see, Isaac."
"Don't you fucking call me that, Chang. You don't know me."
"... And you don't know me. You have no right to judge," Wufei answered softly.
Harper closed his eyes and shook his head, as if refusing to believe any of it. "Is this your idea of peace and justice, Chang? Is this what they teach you guys in Preventer academy, huh? This fascist bullshit?"
"I'm a human first and a Preventer second," Wufei said, looking at the dying man's face. His voice trailed off to a whisper. "I don't know what peace or justice is anymore."
Harper looked up, eyes slightly wide, and the two of them gazed at each other with a moment of poignant understanding at the naked vulnerability of the words. With difficulty, Harper tore his eyes away, looking back down at Ramos.
"If I was a good friend, I'd kill him," Harper said suddenly, laughing a little, but there wasn't any humor in it. It was a horrified and horrifying sound.
"No one can blame you for wanting him to live."
"I can."
"You shouldn't."
"He's just... taking up table space. He's not gonna make it. I gotta accept that. He's done fighting. He doesn't have the will to do it anymore," Harper said in a whisper, as if the unconscious man could hear him.
Wufei tentatively reached up to touch the vice-general's shoulder, but Harper moved away from his hand, looking up at him like a wolf that means to bite.
Wufei lowered it, wanting to apologize, but not knowing the words for it. He lowered his eyes, pretending to study his hands for a moment.
"Chang."
Wufei looked back at Harper, but Harper's eyes were on the wounded man. Wufei couldn't judge the expression in them. Wasn't sure he wanted to.
"Can you ask Marge for some pentobarbital? I don't want to leave him."
Wufei started to answer, but then just nodded assent instead, standing up and moving through the rows of wounded and dying men and women, going to find the head nurse and some drugs to help a man who was his enemy kill his friend.
The man was his enemy, wasn't he?
Strange days, he thought, making his way through the rows of death.
~*~
Duo didn't even hear Heero come up behind him, and jumped when the Wing pilot put a hand on his shoulder. He had been rubbing his bloodstained hands along the front of his blue jeans, trying to wipe them, but they were stained with it. His fingernails were dark with it. He had been working with the med-techs for hours; he was so exhausted, even his hair hurt.
He let out a harsh exhalation as Heero touched his shoulder, whirling around to defend himself, only relaxing when he saw who it was. He glanced at the spray paint can in Heero's hand, and it reminded him of the graffiti angel on the ceiling of his office.
Stand up. I didn't hit you that hard.
"Heero..." He looked up at his partner as Heero sat next to him, hand still on his shoulder. Heero didn't speak, but he really didn't have to. Not yet. Dozens of bloodied and charred dog tags hung around his neck, jingling solemnly against one another as the Japanese man sat down. Bells for the dead.
The serious, calm hurt on Heero's face was the worst, and Duo had to turn away from it. The only sound was soft moans and sobs, sounds of pain that echoed through the hangar corridors like doves' wings.
Duo reached out briefly to touch Heero's face, run his fingers over that smooth, strong, golden skin, and Heero didn't back away from him. He winced a little, and that made Duo's heart hurt. The guilt he had felt after pulling the trigger came back in a drowning rush.
"I'm sorry, Heero."
Heero moved his face away, turning his gaze to the hangar of wounded men. Duo could see him swallow hard. He let his fingers fall away as Heero turned away from him. But there wasn't a single tremor in the Wing pilot's voice. It was as immovable and strong as it ever was, and Duo hated that a little.
"... I know."
I'm sorry, but it doesn't matter to you, does it? Because things can never be the way they were before.
"What do you want me to do?" Duo said, softly. "You want me to write 'I'll never try to kill you again' a hundred times on the chalkboard? Do we just never speak to each other again? Or just act like nothing ever happened? What, Heero? 'Cause I can't go on like this."
"Later, Duo. I don't want to talk about that here," Heero replied, his voice so low only the two of them could hear it. "What are you going to do about all this? Who won this battle, do you think?"
Duo laughed, and the bright, hard sound made Heero recoil a little. "Won? Look at all of this, Heero. Didn't you learn anything in the last four years? Nobody wins in any of this. Nobody. You either lose a little, or you lose everything. I've already lost everything before. I'm sure as hell not going to let it happen again."
"... So what are you going to do?"
Duo looked over at him, half-grinning that strange scimitar smile, and laughed again. Heero loved and hated that sound. The low, deep laugh was somehow comforting, familiar as his own shadow, but never failed to make chills run down his spine.
"I'm going to declare war on the Earth."
TBC...
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