As always, warnings on the whole 'my fic kinks/cliché' things... one of my all time faves in here.
Here We Go Again Part 4
I had closed my eyes and was heading towards total unconsciousness when Heero came back into the room. He sat down in front of the sofa, by my head, and leaned his head back into the cushions.
Reaching forward a bit, I managed to get my fingers on his shoulder. I still wanted to sleep, and I knew I'd feel better knowing that I had a bit of a grip on Heero.
His hand came up to cover mine and I drifted off.
Only to be rudely awakened by the insistent buzzing of our doorbell.
"Tell them they only have to press it once," I muttered as Heero got to his feet. He chuckled and I tried to pull myself into an upright position.
My body rebelled. It had been sleeping and it wanted to stay that way, thank you very much. So all I managed to do was prop my eyelids up a little, enough to watch Sally practically pin Heero to the wall.
She pulled various instruments out of the medical bag that she had dumped into Wufei's arms. Trowa was drafted into taking notes for her, Quatre into keeping an eye on Heero's pulse... and Une stood back and watched it all, concern on her face.
I wasn't really paying attention after Sally exclaimed over Heero's apparent health- I didn't need to know why he was feeling okay, only that he was apparently just fine now. So I drifted in a pleasant haze until Trowa gave me a pleading look and mouthed the word 'coffee'. Poor guy had been up and going nearly as long as I had... and so had the others.
I looked at Une who just shrugged. I guess she has never had to actually make coffee- being the leader has its benefits. So I dragged myself to my feet and headed towards the kitchen.
As I watched the coffee start to perk I wondered if Trowa and Quatre had gotten anything else out of J. Damn, guess I should've paid attention to the conversation out there somehow.
The phone rang.
Knowing that the only other person who answered our phone was currently unable to do so, I reached out and lifted it off of the cradle.
"Maxwell."
"Hello, m'boy. Good to hear your voice." I nearly dropped the phone in my surprise.
"G?" I managed. I had thought he was dead!
"That's me." He chuckled as if it was all just so amusing. "What? You captured J and didn't think I'd be calling?"
Another shock, and one I should've expected. It was disappointing though, I had thought better of G... "You were working there too?"
The voices in the other room rose a little. Heero sounded distressed about something. I just hoped Sally kept him busy.
"No. Just working on similar things. Trading research. I'll bet he hasn't told you what he did to 01, now has he? Just like he didn't tell you about me?"
I didn't know what to say. I really should've listened to the conversation in the other room, since for all I knew, Trowa and Quatre had gotten something out of J.
G took my silence as affirmation.
"Tsk tsk, you were better than this, boy."
"Give me a break," I hissed into the phone. "You were supposed to be dead! I left you on that ship!"
He chuckled again.
"Sorry to disappoint you. So, do you want to know what J did to 01 or not?"
"Of course I do!"
"What are you willing to do to get the information?"
Of course, G had never given anything away, there was always a price attached. Like when he had told me to steal 'Scythe...
Crap.
Still, this was for Heero...
The voices in the other room got louder still. What the hell was going on in there?
"What do you want?"
"I have a job for you. One of my special jobs..." I swallowed hard. Damn it. I was hoping it would be something else. "Come meet me and we'll talk about it." He cleared his throat. "And I don't think I need to add this, but- come alone."
"All right. Where?"
He rattled off some coordinates, typical not to just name the place.
"See you there, dear boy." He said, and hung up.
I leaned against the wall after placing the phone back on the cradle. Damn, damn, damn. I hadn't wanted to do one of G's special jobs again... hadn't thought I'd ever have to...
The voices in the other room were still loud; I couldn't really focus on them though, not now. I'd have to sneak out. The last thing I wanted was to tell the others and confess that I'd agreed to... I shivered. Luckily our place has a fire escape. All I'd have to do is go out the window.
I straightened up and stepped towards it.
There was a sudden small BOOM in the other room. I automatically turned towards it, and a second later the BOOM echoed behind me.
I whirled around to find Heero glaring at me.
How had he.....?
"Where do you think you're going?" He demanded.
I just gaped at him for a moment, my brain racing to keep up.
A moment later, the kitchen was full of people, all talking at the tops of their lungs.
"He just..."
"vanished! Boom!"
"Air displacement!"
"How he got out of the hospital!"
"Teleported!"
And so on...
All I could do was stand there in shock. Heero wasn't paying attention to any of them; he was still glaring at me.
"Heero? What did you do?" I asked him finally.
That seemed to break the glare a bit. "I don't know."
"I'll tell you!" Sally said excitedly. "You teleported!"
"Teleported?" I repeated. I think I wanted to scoff, except that Heero had sort of appeared out of thin air...
"Can you do it again?" Quatre asked and it was Heero's turn to blink.
"I don't know how I did it the first time."
Quatre considered this for a moment.
"Why did you come in here?"
"Because Duo was planning to sneak out!" He turned the force of his glare back onto me. "He was going to meet G!"
All of a sudden, I was the one everyone was looking at.
"G called?" Une asked.
"Yeah," I admitted. "He'd heard about J's arrest, wanted to pass on some information."
"For a price!" Heero snapped. "And you were planning on going to meet him! Without taking backup or telling us!"
"If I did he wouldn't help us! Be grateful! I'm doing this for you!"
"I don't want you to help me this way!"
"Wait a moment," said Quatre. "How do you know all this Heero? I know you started to get impatient with us when Duo was in here, how did you know what was going on? I barely heard the phone ring, let alone Duo's conversation..."
Heero opened his mouth and then closed it again. "I... I don't know. I heard it somehow..."
"Heard it?" Sally repeated and frowned. "I wonder if J did something to your hearing...?"
This was really flipping me out. Heero could teleport? And now he had super hearing or something? Was J trying to turn him into Superman? This was serious; I had to get to G. Somehow... maybe a distraction?
"Don't you dare!" Heero snapped at me.
"What?" I tried to look innocent, wondering what I had done now.
"You're plotting to sneak out anyway!"
Huh? How could he...
Wait a minute....
I saw the realization dawn on Heero's face the same moment I got it.
Which of course, made sense, since...
"He's telepathic now too." I blurted out and conversation burst out around us again.
Sally and Quatre started questioning Heero immediately, questions flying back and forth, with an occasional query from Une.
Damn it, we really needed to talk to G. I had to meet him. I saw Heero glare at me again and knew that I couldn't sneak out, but he had to see that we needed more information...
Before I could open my mouth and try to convince him, I saw Heero suddenly turn on Wufei, snarling.
"I wouldn't do that!"
I think we all blinked, because, again, Fei hadn't said anything.
Wufei looked surprised, then guilty.
"You know damned well I wouldn't hurt anyone! Especially not Duo! I'm not going to be locked up like some kind of experiment!"
Wufei looked, if it were possible, guiltier.
"Yuy," Une asked, her voice level. "What are you accusing Chang of exactly?"
Heero turned to her. "He thinks I need to be locked up, that I'm too dangerous to be kept free, that if I stay here I might hurt Duo..."
I turned and glared at Wufei. It was Quatre who stopped me from saying something really awful.
"How do you propose we lock him up? He could just teleport back out again, after all."
"I was thinking he'd be honorable enough to stay put," Wufei finally found his voice. "J injected him with many things, how do we know that these are the only two," he paused, as if looking for the word, "outcomes? There may be more." He turned to Heero. "You may not want to hurt Duo or anyone else, but you might. Who knows what else you're capable of?"
Heero had turned pale. I, on the other hand, was angry.
"Stop it Chang! If I'm willing to take the risk, then what's the problem? And as for what he's capable of, I need to go see G. I'm sure he'll be able to tell me."
"Just because you are willing, doesn't mean you should! It's for your own good Duo!" Wufei snapped.
"What about Heero's good? Have you thought about that?"
"It's a risk, and you know it! Besides, we need to study what he can do!"
"Lock him up and experiment you mean? He's not a lab rat!"
"That's not what I meant! For once use your head, Maxwell!"
"I am! You're the one being an idiot!"
Wufei growled and raised his hand. Experience told me that he was just using it to gesture- Fei and I tended to have lots of disagreements, but Heero must've seen it as a threat.
Or maybe Wufei was thinking of doing something and Heero caught it. I don't know.
All I do know is that Wufei suddenly seemed to throw himself backwards at the wall.
Really hard.
For a moment, we all stared at him, a crumpled heap against the wall, blood trickling down his forehead.
Sally was the first to move, of course, she was next to him in an instant; Trowa was a step behind her.
Une, Quatre and I turned to Heero.
Heero who was now ghost-white and trembling.
I don't know what the others were thinking. I don't think it matters.
For a moment, only a moment, I swear it, I was scared.
For a mere second I thought that Wufei might be right, that Heero might hurt me, might hurt someone else, had hurt Fei...
Just for an instant, I thought that Heero was dangerous...
That's all it took.
His expression changed as he looked back at me. I saw his fear, his sadness, his hurt...
It made me hurt for him. I forgot my fear and reached for him, but I was too late.
He vanished.
The rest of that day is a blur now. Wufei wasn't badly hurt, but Sally took him to the hospital as the rest of us looked for Heero.
We checked everyplace we could think of; anywhere he might have felt safe. We didn't find him.
I managed to persuade Quatre to let me go meet with G on my own, but G never showed. Quatre eventually came to believe that Heero went to meet with him instead, and I tried to believe it.
I never voiced the fear that I thought he might have teleported himself into space, but I had nightmares for weeks about Heero's body floating somewhere between L1 and Earth.
The thing that stopped those nightmares was the sudden disappearance of Dr. J right out of his cell in the middle of the night. The security cameras in his cellblock had somehow blown themselves up.
It gave me hope, and so I kept looking.
As the weeks passed, I went to check the colonies. I looked everywhere I could think of. I took a leave of absence from the Preventers, turned the apartment over to Quatre and Trowa's care in case Heero came back there, checked in occasionally to make sure no one else had heard from him.
I got low on cash, so I started picking up odd jobs here and there as I searched the Earth Sphere for Heero. I didn't want to go home. I didn't want to live in our apartment. I didn't want to live with those memories- Wufei crashing into the wall, Heero's kiss on the sofa... It was easier to wander around.
The weeks became months, the months turned into a year.
I began to wonder if I'd ever find him.
TBC...
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