Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Crimson Nights and Scarlet Dawns ❯ Chapter 3

As always, comments and suggestions are most welcome. Thank you to those who have already commented-- your words are the food that make my Muses fat and happy. ^.^

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THREE:

"You're a-- a vampire?"

"No," was the swift and firm reply. "And neither are you. We're-- sort of somewhere in between." Sally stood, and cocked her head towards the door in invitation. "Walk with me, and I'll explain. I imagine you're more than ready to get out of here."

The thought of leaving the sterile white room behind was indeed very appealing, and Duo hopped off the edge of the bed without hesitation. As he stepped through the door at the doctor's heels, though, he felt his steps falter a bit, and a slight chill went through him.

Even if it is a mad scientist's laboratory, at least I know it. Right now-- I have absolutely no idea what I'm heading into.

Gritting his teeth, Duo set his shoulders and kept walking.

The hallway outside the door was more like that of a hotel than a hospital. Its walls were still a safe, neutral colour, and the floor was surfaced with something bland and easy to clean. But it lacked the empty, cold feel of a hospital, and was decorated in a rather eclectic mix of tastes: several of the expected generic paintings were present on the walls, right alongside a sprawling glass-chip mosaic and a mirror with elegant sweeping lines etched along its edges. Lifting his eyes, Duo saw that nearly none of the lights overhead matched, and ranged from a simple glass ball to a hanging paper shade.

Sally apparently noticed his scrutiny, because she made a slight sound of amusement and stopped just a few steps down the hall. "This is the infirmary wing of the complex. It's impossible to completely get rid of the impersonal feel, because nobody actually lives here, but most of those that come through end up making some effort to personalize it, within reason." She cast a somewhat fond look around, then shrugged slightly and turned to continue walking.

"Makes sense," Duo found himself saying. "It's gotta be bad enough being here in the first place, without it looking like--" He made a vague gesture at a portion of the wall that was undecorated, and frowned at it. "You'd think somebody would have repainted, at least," he muttered.

"Maybe that can be your contribution."

Duo cast a sharp look at the doctor's back as he began to follow her, but said nothing.

A few minutes passed in silence, as they passed through a set of double doors and into another hall that, to Duo's relief, had indeed been repainted-- several times, from the bands of colour that ran in various directions and the occasional tiny mural tucked away in the corners.

Sally stopped in front of a door. "This will be your room for the time being," she explained, turning the handle and revealing a comfortably if sparsely furnished bedroom. "While you finish your recovery, and until you decide what you'd like to do from here." Stepping inside, the doctor pointed to the small, square box of an intercom on the wall. "If you need anything, either I or one of my assistants will be on call at all times."

Then she crossed the room and opened a cupboard situated right beside the bed, revealing several shelves of the same blank carton that had made an appearance earlier. Duo couldn't hold in a grimace of disgust, though Sally didn't comment on it.

"Generally," the doctor said, reaching out to take a carton from its niche, "after a person comes through the first stage of transformation-- as you just have-- there will be about a week during which the changes settle out and actually manifest themselves. During this time, it's normal to be a lot more thirsty than you would otherwise be, and it's extremely important to keep that thirst satisfied." She held out the carton to him. "It's been long enough that you're probably starting to feel it, again."

Duo hesitated, not wanting to take the little box, knowing what was in it.

"Duo," Sally said quietly. "You've come through the worst of this, but you're still not in the clear. You don't have any energy reserves built up. If you starve yourself now, you will slip into bloodlust and we will have to kill you."

Feeling the intensity of the doctor's gaze boring into his own, Duo slowly reached out and took the carton from her. Eschewing the straw, he tore open one side and took a deep swig, then lowered the box and wiped a nonchalant hand over his lips. "You really do have to do something about the taste of this stuff," he said with forced casualness, even as the liquid started radiating comfortable warmth out from his stomach, relaxing a tension in his muscles that he hadn't even realized was there.

Sally just smiled slightly and turned back to the door. "There's a lounge across the hall; why don't we go there to talk?"

"Whatever floats your chicken, doc-babe," Duo replied breezily, trailing in her wake with the drink box still gripped in one hand. Sally paused in the doorway and looked back at him with one eyebrow arched, but Duo just smiled innocently.

Shaking her head, Sally turned back and kept walking.

The lounge, as it had been named, turned out to be a single massive room that was sitting room, kitchen and gym in one. Against one wall was a television surrounded by sprawling, comfortable chairs, while on the opposite side of the room was a long counter capped at either end by fridge and stove, respectively. Exercise equipment ranging from small free weights to a massive hinged apparatus was strewn in all the space in between.

The television was on when the two entered; a dark-haired head popped up almost immediately from over the top of one of most overstuffed of the chairs. The barely-visible eyes widened when they caught sight of the white-coated figure at the door. "Doc! I've done my exercises today already-- well, okay, not quite. But I just needed a little break, and I was about to get back to them--" The person paused as Duo came into sight. "Oh. Who's that?"

Duo could have sworn that Sally snorted quietly to herself. "Duo, meet Hilde. Hilde, Duo. He's new."

The eyes lit up with understanding-- and a very discernible touch of sympathy. "Oh, you're doing the Tour and Talk, then, Sally? Can I help?"

Sally shrugged and nodded. "Why not? You've probably heard this just as often as I have, being here so often." She picked a chair out of the crowd and sat down. Duo followed her example, sprawling out in the cushy embrace of one particularly deep armchair.

Hilde made a sour face. "Not my fault I don't heal," she said cryptically, lifting her foot a bit-- which Duo finally noticed was encased from toes to knee in a thick cast. There were crutches on the floor next to her chair.

Two of the odd juice-box-milk-carton hybrids sat abandoned on a nearby endtable, not quite one or the other but still far too normal-looking, in Duo's opinion, to contain what they really did. Reminded of his own drink clutched in his hand, he took a sip.

"It was your own choice to join the Hunters, though," Sally said in mild reproach. "You had to know you'd end up here a lot, with that line of work."

Hilde just shrugged. "It's what I need to do," she said simply, clearly dismissing the topic. She turned her attention to Duo, a grin forming on her face. "So, you ready to debunk some myths?"

Duo blinked. "Excuse me?"

Sally opened her mouth to speak, but Hilde beat her to it. "Vampires. What you think you know about them and what's actually true are two completely different things. For example, that garlic and crosses stuff? Complete and utter crap. As is the can't-cross-running-water myth, and the bit about needing native soil--"

"Some of the basic ideas are real, though," Sally interjected, with a mild warning look in Hilde's direction.

The injured woman just grinned in return, and gave a slight shrug. "True enough."

Sally seemed to take that as an invitation to take over the conversation. "There are six vampiric attributes that carry over from the myths," she began. "The first of these is blood thirst, which we've already discussed to some degree."

"Everyone gets that," Hilde piped in. "No matter how quickly you get the antidote. It's the first thing that happens when you're bitten, near as we can tell."

Absently, attention fixed on the conversation, Duo lifted his drink and sipped again.

"Second is increased strength. A full vampire could easily lift a car in each hand, no effort required. We very rarely see the trait to that degree, in ourselves--"

"Pretty rare to see the trait at all," Hilde interjected. "Maybe a third of us get it, and those that do nearly always end up with the Hunters." She grinned, then reached over and took loose hold of the endtable beside her chair. Without warning, she hefted it a foot into the air, and held it there effortlessly for a moment before setting it carefully down again. "Like me."

Duo frowned, but the expression and the questions that caused it were lost as the doctor continued her interrupted explanation.

"Third is intolerance of sunlight. The idea that vampires sleep through the day is false, but they do have to stay indoors until the sun is completely set. Most of us are the same way, though rarely we do get someone who can go out during the day."

Hilde opened her mouth to comment, but Sally pushed ahead before she could actually speak. "Fourth trait is healing. True vampires can shrug off anything but a fatal blow-- "

"Stab to the heart, beheading, things like that." Hilde gave a wicked grin. "The old wooden stake, y'know?"

"Yes, thank you, Hilde. When it comes to us, we aren't quite as resilient, though those with this trait do heal very rapidly, and age slowly. Healing usually accompanies strength, but--" She cast a pointed glance at Hilde's leg, immobilized in plaster. "That isn't always the case."

Hilde grumbled under her breath, and levered a dark glare at the offending limb.

Sally took a deep breath, and released it slowly. "So those are the main four, the most common changes. The last two are very rare, and are a little harder to believe--"

"Harder than the whole rest of this mess?" Duo asked sarcastically.

Sally gave him a small smile and an apologetic wave of the hand. "I suppose not. Fine, then. The fifth trait is shapechanging. You've probably heard of vampires changing to bats? That's not done very often, since it's apparently very difficult to scale down body mass that much. Those I know with this trait prefer to use a wolf shape, or something else that's reasonably large.

"Sixth and final on the list is a form of psychic ability-- not quite telepathy, not quite hypnotism, but something along those lines. Full vampires use it to enthrall their victims, and make people forget they've seen them."

"Those last two," Hilde said, when it seemed Sally was finished. "They usually only show up in people who show a lot of the other traits, too. The Hunters have got a few shapechangers, and they've all got healing and strength as well. It's like they're just-- more fully vampire than the rest of us."

"I'm not sure I'd put it quite like that," Sally quickly responded. "There's no telling what traits will show up in a person; it has nothing to do with how long a person goes between infection and treatment."

Hilde waved a hand in dismissal. "Just a figure of speech, Doc. I--"

A loud beep interrupted the sentence, making Duo jump. Sally, though, just reached into a pocket of her coat and pulled out a pager, pressing a button on it just as a second beep started to sound. She frowned slightly, a tense line forming between her eyes.

"I'm afraid I have to go," she said, standing.

Hilde leaned forward in her seat, looking worried. "Who is it?"

"It could be nothing," the doctor replied soothingly, moving towards the door. "You know that someone will come see you, if anything's happened. So just be patient, okay? Oh, and Hilde--" Sally turned at the door and cast a sharp look back at her patient. "Do your exercises."

The dark-haired girl had the grace to look guilty as the doctor vanished from sight, though the expression faded again into a slight frown of worry before the door had even closed. Duo let the silence stretch for a minute before venturing to break it. "What's going on?"

"Hm?" Hilde's head snapped around as her attention was recaptured. "Oh. My unit was supposed to be out tonight on a mission. I just-- if someone's calling Sally, I kinda worry that something's gone wrong." She shrugged with an obviously forced nonchalance. "Like she said, someone would come and let me know if that were the case. Otherwise, they'll just sleep it off and come see me tomorrow instead, to tell me about all the fun I've missed." She scowled down at her leg again. "At least, they'd better. Bastards know I'm here, it's the least they can do."

Even more curious now, Duo finally saw a chance to get answers on the subject. "What exactly is a Hunter?"

Hilde looked up and met his eyes. "We kill vampires," she said flatly. "They're cruel bastards, they hate us for just existing-- that feeling is mostly mutual, by the way-- and the world would be a better place without them." For a moment her eyes shone with anger, then she sighed and the light died out a bit. "Sorry. I've got a few grudges of my own, but for the most part everyone here feels the same." She shrugged. "This is just my opinion, but it kinda seems like it's a part of coming through the transformation intact. Like, to get to this point you have to be willing to fight for it, and that just sort of carries through.

"Not everyone joins the Hunters, though; not everyone's suited for it. We've got a lot of people on intelligence, planning--" She waved a hand towards the door. "Medical staff, like Sally. People to just keep this place running."

She cast a sharp, considering look at Duo, tilting her head to the side. "I can see you ending up a Hunter, though. Just a feeling I get. Hey!" She sat forward in her seat, smiling eagerly. "Why don't I take you down and introduce you to my crew later? I've been meaning to go down and kick their asses over not visiting me enough, anyway. This way, you can see what it's all about, and get a bit of a look around the compound while you're at it. What do you say?"

Driven by his curiosity, Duo was nodding agreement before he fully realized it.

Hilde's grin grew. "Great! Assuming all is well--" A dark look passed quickly across her face. "They'll probably crash until five, if past trends hold true, so--" She flipped up a wrist and frowned at her watch for a moment. "We could meet back in here around three, grab a snack, and then head over. That gives us both time for a nap," she finished with an impish smile. "Because I, for one, am going to need it after I finish that slavedriver's set of exercises. Sound good to you?"

Automatically, Duo turned his gaze and sought out the clock display on the VCR that was perched on top of the television. The cheery green numbers told him that it was only shortly after nine, and wondered for a moment if that was a.m. or p.m. before deciding that it probably didn't matter. He nodded a bit distractedly when he realized that Hilde was still waiting for an answer. "Yeah, three sounds fine."

"All right, then." She gave a single, firm nod, then sighed and looked down at her crutches. "Guess I'd better get this over with. Um-- I don't suppose you could hand me those?"

Setting down his drink carton-- which was, he realized quite suddenly, empty-- he reached down and retrieved the items in question, handing them over. Hilde smiled a thanks. "Tore up my shoulder last time I was out, along with the leg," she explained while levering stiffly to her feet. "So now I've got to get it back into working order. God, what I wouldn't give to be able to heal like the others," she mourned.

Duo watched the dark-haired girl hobble over to one of the padded benches and then, as he found himself stifling a wide yawn, decided that perhaps the mentioned nap might not be a bad idea. He shoved himself to his feet and heading towards the door, giving Hilde a absent-minded wave as he did so. "See you later, then."

He was answered by a grin and a wave, as the door shut behind him.