Fragments Part 18
I shivered and bit my tongue as the shivering set the bullet wound throbbing even harder than it had been. Lying here on the floor of the empty room that was our cell was damn uncomfortable but I couldn't stay sitting up for long. It made me too dizzy and lightheaded. Didn't exactly take much thought to figure out why; blood loss and shock were never a fun combination. Throw in the fact that they hadn't bothered to give us anything either to eat or drink since I'd been captured and the fact that I was lying on bare metal and I was one thoroughly miserable individual. Not that it was going to matter too much if we couldn't come up with a way to get the hell out of this mess. The fact that they'd tossed me in here with the others, unconscious and bleeding like a stuck pig, given Sally little more than a glorified first aid kit to patch me up with, then never bothered to come back didn't exactly say a whole lot of positive things about how important we were to them.
Movement beside me drew my attention away from my contemplation of the tiny air vent in the ceiling - nothing bigger than a cat was getting out that way - and towards my companions. Sally gave me a concerned look. "Cold?"
"Nah, just a bit chilly," I said dismissively. No point dwelling on it, we didn't have any blankets or anything. Unfortunately, I shivered again and ruined the effect of my flippant response.
Sally touched my face and frowned. "Duo..."
I scowled at her. "Never mind; nothin' you can do anyway." I knew what she was frowning about and we didn't need to be discussing my thoroughly lousy condition. My clothing was wet enough with sweat that even the bloodstained shirt had lost its stiffness. I was alternately burning up and freezing. She'd gotten the bullet out and at least most of the cloth that had gone in with it but the wound was obviously getting infected anyway. After all the stress I'd been under - and I hadn't exactly been sleeping too well since Heero got hurt either - my immune system probably wasn't exactly in the best of shape. With neither antibiotics to fight the infection nor painkillers to help lessen the shock there wasn't precisely a whole hell of a lot that Sally could do.
Wufei growled something that sounded suspiciously like "Baka" and awkwardly slid across the floor to my side. He eased down, careful of his own injuries, to lie along one side of me while Sally took up position on the other.
I appreciated the gesture - their body heat was almost enough to stop the shivering - but the situation felt damn weird. It had been one thing to cuddle up with the guys during the war in order to keep warm in some drafty old safehouse or cave we were hiding out in; it was a different thing entirely to lie here between Wufei and his fiancee like this. I knew better than to object though. "Thanks," I said simply, grateful for the reduced shivering and the resulting reduction in the throbbing of my shoulder.
All three of us were silent for a while. Then Wufei asked a bit hesitantly, "Duo? What was he like? He seemed very - different - in the pictures..."
I choked off a snort of bitter laughter. "Oh yeah, he was different alright. He laughed and smiled. Talked to me. Was honest-to-god happy.
"He thought we were really married. He kissed and cuddled and complimented me and..." I blinked rapidly and bit off the "acted like he loved me" that wanted to slip out. "And then he started to remember." My voice wavered and I had to stop and fight for control before I could continue, "And he stopped doing all those things and started to push me away again. Even before he remembered anything at all about me. Then - well, I guess he must've remembered our first meeting. Guess he decided to even up the score, eh, Fei? Least he only shot me once!" I was proud of the light, half-amused tone I managed to finish with.
Well, I was until Wufei reached over to squeeze my hand gently and said quietly, "I'm sorry, Duo." Then I was back to fighting off the urge to just spill the whole damn sob story in all its pathetic detail to him the way that I had years ago in that Oz prison cell. Back then, we'd barely been friends, held apart as much by my own misconceptions of what he thought of me as anything else.
Heero had almost seemed concerned about me when I was tossed in there with the two of them but he'd gone right back to coldly snubbing me again and it had frankly been a relief when Trowa came and took him away. When he left with a cold remark, never looking back, I hadn't been able to hold off the emotional distress any longer and it hadn't mattered that I didn't want to look weak in front of a fellow pilot. I'd let Heero's previous rescue of my decidedly battered self from Oz custody get my hopes up and this latest cold shoulder - coming on top of a rather nasty beating from Master O, which had aggravated injuries from my previous enjoyment of Oz's hospitality that were still only partially healed - had dashed them once and for all. The tears I'd successfully held at bay during the beating would no longer be denied.
And instead of sneering at me the way I'd thought he would, Wufei had massaged my sore, spasming back muscles and coaxed the whole sorry tale out of me. Then he'd told me about his own hopeless love for a wife he'd only begun to appreciate in time for her to die in his arms. I think his intent was in part to even things out by exposing a painful bit of his own life in exchange for what I'd revealed and in part an attempt to demonstrate that people changed and I shouldn't give up hope. I'd accepted the exchange and rejected the hope; hoping hurt too damn much, something I'd just had proven to me all over again. But at any rate, by the time we finally escaped from there, we were the best of friends.
If Sally hadn't been here with us, I might have gone ahead and let it all out again. Told Wufei every damn painful detail then let him talk me through some meditation exercises to set it all aside and start putting my defences back up again. But she was there and despite the fact that she was a friend as well as being engaged to Wufei, I couldn't do it. Couldn't expose that much of myself to someone else's scrutiny. Knowing that Fei understood how much this all hurt was almost as embarrassing as it was comforting; I really didn't want Sally to know too.
So instead, I just squeezed his hand back in silent thanks for his sympathy and understanding. After a moment, he said gruffly, "Try to get some rest, Maxwell." He left unspoken the promise that I would need it to help in our escape. I knew that I should really be trying to come up with some sort of plan too but I just couldn't manage it. I hurt and was exhausted so I just closed my eyes and let the unconsciousness that I'd been holding off take me away from it all.
TBC...
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