Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Kaifuku ❯ Chapter 1

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Disclaimer: The characters of Gundam Wing and all that relates to the After Colony universe belongs to Bandai, Sunrise, Sotsu Agency & TV Asahi (1995 Â©). The following is a fan fiction story that was written for none profitable purposes.

Title: Kaifuku (Recovery)

Author: Elle.

Beta Reader: Dreaming of Everything.

Warnings: Rated R for language & violence. No pairings, occasional OOC (due to medical reasons - it doesn't last long).

Author's Notes:

1. Yaoi or Het? The answer is - neither. This story has no romance, but I do sympathize with both Relena and Duo (they both appear in the fic), so if you can't stand an author being nice to the character you dislike, it's a shame, but I don't think that this story is for you.

2. The story is 99% complete and I will be posting one chapter at a time. I guess it's because I need the reviews so please leave a comment, onegai shimasu!

3. Why 'Hiiro' and not 'Heero'? I chose to use the Romaji version of his name instead of the official spelling because looks better in my eyes. 'Heero' is a charctrer that they wanted us to see, and 'Hiiro' is who I, as a fan, see.

4. There's some Japanese written in the story. I was trying to get into Hiiro's head that way. My apologies if the grammar isn't perfect, I'm still a studying the language. After each sentence written in Romaji, there's a translation written in parenthesis.

Jaa, minna-san, monogatari wo yonde kudasai. Yoroshiku onegai shimasu! (All right, everyone, please read the story. Thank you in advance!)

Elle. =^.^=

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Kaifuku

Ch. .1.

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"Subject's name - Hiiro Yui. Asian male of Japanese origin. Age - thirty five years old. Probable cause of death... Well, jeez, let me think...," the pathologist muttered sarcastically as he looked down at the body before him.

The pale corpse, formerly known as Hiiro Yui, was lying naked on a metal table inside the L1 Cluster Central Morgue. A hard light above it emphasized a small round wound in the man's chest, filled with clotted blood; the rest had already been cleaned away for the autopsy.

The doctor sighed. "A single bullet to the chest brought on almost immediate death," he spoke into the microphone hanging above the metallic bed, recording the autopsy report for further use.

He picked up a tool to dig the bullet out. Once he retrieved it, he gave it a glance and tossed it away. "The bullet is your standard 7.62x51 millimeter round used by snipers," he muttered carelessly, "Death was most likely due to cardiac arrest caused by the bullet."

He proceeded with the examination of the body. "No other injuries are present... except for a few bumps to the head from the fall."

The doctor circled the dead body, studying it from every direction. "I see no need for in-depth examination of the internal organs."

He stopped to look at the man's face. He shook his head with dismay when he noticed that the man's eyes had been left open. A pair of glassy brown eyes was staring ahead lifelessly. With respect, he reached a hand to close them, but then stopped. Frowning, he bent forward to take a good look into the dead man's gaze.

"It seems he'd been wearing contact lenses," he reported into the mike. "Some idiot forgot to take them out."

He reached two gloved fingers down to gently remove the contact lenses, and his frown deepened. "These are colored contacts—It seems that this man's eyes are actually blue."

Gently, he placed the contact lenses in a bowl next to the bullet. "A Japanese man with blue eyes... this is rare, I think," he thought out loud, allowing the microphone to record his thoughts.

"In any case, that doesn't change the fact that he was shot to death. I think that there's no further investigation needed to determine the cause of death. I consider the autopsy over. Doctor Patrick Hail, April 7, A.C. 175."

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Christmas A.C. 196: An explosion blasted through the skies of Brussels. Struggling to keep the itself in the air, Wing Zero's engines hummed loudly. The deafening sound was overridden by a destructive beam fired at the Presidential Palace.

The explosion was so great that it tore the Gundam apart. Hiiro's fingers continued pressing tightly on the trigger, sustaining the lethal ray for as long as he could. Wreckage flew into the air, crackling and sparkling around the massive machine.

Within the cockpit, the world of the living vanished with the bright, hot explosion. A flood of yellow light filled the young pilot's head, waves upon waves of yellow dots pouring into his mind. The light drilled into the very fibers of his brain, as though building itself a nest. The pain deepened as the light intensified, reaching every corner of his mind. His nerves flared up in anguish and he screamed, tormented. His cries filled the cockpit, as the whole compartment collapsed on top of him. His hand finally let go of the trigger.

Wing Zero crashed to the ground with a last blaze of glory, leaving behind it a trail of wreckage a mile long.

A dreaded silence hung in the air as smoke slowly rose from the motionless metal giant.

Some of Hiiro's awareness had to still remain, because he knew that his body was still strapped in the pilot's seat. The pain was so intense that he no longer felt it. The lights in his head went out in a single flash. His mind began to shut down.

Might as well, he managed one last coherent thought. There wasn't much left for him now that the war had finished. Life, death, none of it mattered to him. As a soldier, he had played his part. Now that nothingness engulfed him, Hiiro Yui surrendered to it with peaceful resignation.

There were some moments of awareness here and there, fragments of reality appearing within the smoke. They were hazed flashes, as if they were a part of a dream: his body moved without him controlling it. Feelings overtook logic and he moved with willpower alone. Powerful feelings forced his broken bones to move. There was one last thing he felt that needed to be done.

He watched himself as though he was watching a stranger. He saw how his body began crawling out of the wreckage, bleeding. Bones cracked as he pushed himself onwards. Tired, part of him begged his body to still. Colors swirled and blurred into the vortex of pain. The gun was too heavy in his trembling hand.

There was a voice, and then another, three of them all in all. He saw the pained face of a little redheaded girl. She was dying, or dead, or neither. She looked at him.

He fired, mumbling a few words his mind managed to salvage from the clutter. The world crumbled, shattering to pieces. He collapsed to the floor. There was a hand, a caress, and then darkness crept in. Blood trickled into his ears. Relena's voice spoke to him, comforting. A blanket of gray, warm nothingness engulfed his broken body. The silence filled him and with relief, he surrendered.

Only stillness remained. Sweet, black silence all around. He slept, curled in its embrace. Bit by bit, his mind crumbled into tiny pieces that were blown away by an invisible wind. No sound, no pain, no thought nor anguish remained. Peace was finally achieved.

In the silence where he lay, time did not exist. Minutes were just days and long nights were mere seconds. Nothing mattered because he knew nothing, was aware of nothing. In his sleep there were no dreams, no thoughts, only silence.

A light flickered somewhere in the distance, as his mind struggled for awareness. Memories began to invade into the black void; they floated around him like clouds. Some clouds were small and passed by quickly. Some were large and heavy, like rainclouds, and forced him to witness a longer, more hurtful, memory.

Gray images of death, pain and destruction played before him. Blurry black and white figures who trained him into a stone soldier. Laboratories, shooting grounds, cold beds and lonely nights. A first beating, a first broken bone, and a first kill. Feelings of regret, guilt, and self loathing, mixed together with pride, ego and the sense of accomplishment. The combination felt wrong and confusing. He saw himself as a child weeping in the corner of a room, hating himself, wishing to be punished.

Good and bad were no longer distinguishable as they had been before. The anguish of his confusion brought him to tears, longing for loving guidance instead of cold, empty words and angry orders. The source of the tears had eventually dried out, chased away by indifference. Slowly, he had learned that there was no room for emotions in his life. And yet-

Pain! Pain, pain, pain! It was all too much! He turned away, trying to escape further into the darkness, to hide from the past that hurt him. How could he feel so much hurt when he had taught himself to feel nothing?

Please, no more, he begged the darkness, Oboetakunai... I don't want to remember...

The clouds chased after him, stubbornly haunting him with images of his life. If he had had a voice, he would have screamed with anguish. More and more memories came, silent images in the fog of his mind.

Some of the images he recognized, and some were too distant to remember. Some cut him to the core, and some left him cold and numb. Most of them were gray, reeking of death and despair. He tried to focus on the colorful ones instead. There weren't many of them but they stood out against the gray.

Colorful memories of green parks and birthday balloons. Blurry images of smiles and kisses, bedtime stories and toys. Faces that were alien to him smiled through the colorful mist. He watched, straining to remember, but before anything came to him the clouds faded away and the faces vanished.

Watching them fade left him cold and terrified inside. Alone and shaken to his core, he was left contemplating in the dark.

He had been a small child when he lost his parents. When and how—he couldn't remember. There were memories of fear and the urgency to escape. More than that, he remembered the grief and horror of loss. But that had come much later. He did not realize he had been orphaned until years after.

Most of what he could remember of his early childhood was the difficulties of adjusting to a new life. Language had been one thing he'd had to master fairly quickly, for the man who'd taken him in hadn't spoken Japanese. He remembered the hurt and frustration of not being understood. No one bothered to teach him the new words, everyone simply expected him to understand.

Wakaranai kara yukkuri hashite! (I don't understand, so speak slower!) a small, childish voice whined from a distance. Ever since then, he hadn't liked speaking much, because of the fear of being misunderstood.

There was no point pondering over such things. They were in the past, back in the days when he had been unfortunate enough to be alive. Now, hopefully dead, he wished to forget. He drifted away from the clouds floating in the black void. He moved further and further away until there was no trace of the person he no longer wished to be. He remained in comfortable black silence, waiting for eternity to pass him by.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

oooooooooooooooooo 'Donguri korokoro donburiko...' oooooooooooooooooo

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Beep.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

oooooooooooooo' O-ike ni hamatte saa taihen...' oooooooooooooooooooooo

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Beep.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

ooooooooooo 'Dojou ga detekite konnichi wa..' oooooooooooooooooooooooo

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Beep.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

ooooooooooooooooooooooooo 'Botchan issho ni asobimashou…'ooooooooo

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Since there was no sense of time where he lay, he couldn't tell when the beeping began. It might even have been there all along. Short, intermittent beeps that echoed in the dark. The darkness became dark by definition because all of a sudden, he was able to compare it to light. A distant, dim sphere hovered in the vast blackness. The dark became darker, lonelier, compared to the light. And in that shapeless universe he still existed, aware of blackness, aware of sound, of loneliness.

The beeping was a constant to him, sometimes distant and sometimes clearly near. A long time might have passed, or even none at all. The only indication of time passing, of any change at all, was the new sound entering his dark cocoon. The noises were faint, as though from afar. Whispers came floating in an imaginary wind. He could not distinguish any words spoken, but there were quite a few voices involved. A female voice was often present. Usually one male voice made her leave. He listened to the incoherent chatter, coming and going like waves upon the sand. He longed for the silence to return, for peace to cover him like a soft blanket.

The light in the distance was becoming brighter. It drew nearer, or perhaps he was nearing it. Whichever the case, he felt a strong reluctance to reach it. The light meant awareness, of that he was sure. The darkness was comfortable. He had no desire to leave.

In the darkness he had no body he could see or feel; it was merely an existence, merely being. In an attempt to escape the gradually approaching light, he imagined himself a body: arms, legs, a head and a torso, floating in the blackness, drifting towards the only star in his space. Now that he had limbs, he tried to steer away from the light. If the light represented life, or death, it didn't matter. He had no wish for either of them. His only wish was to remain as he was, alone, resting, unbothered.

His will to escape the light was strong, so strong that it was making a difference. At first, the voices faded away, swallowed by the light in the distance. The steady beeping also subsided, leaving him in a black silence. Encouraged, he willed the light away, and allowed it fade, to extinguish. The light gradually dimmed, until it was gone. Only black silence remained. He curled into himself, like a fetus in the womb, and continued his (hopefully) eternal sleep.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

ooooooooooooooooooo 'Donguri korokoro yorokonde...' oooooooooooooooo

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Beep.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

oooooooooooooooo'Shibaraku issho ni asonda ga...' oooooooooooooooo=oooo

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Beep.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

ooooooooooooooooooo 'Yappari o-yama ga koishii to...' ooooooooooooooooo

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Beep.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

oooooooooooooooooo 'Naite wa dojou wo komaraseta...' oooooooooooooooo

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

"I promise

I'll make it

worthwhile for you

to wake up,

Hiiro."

Echoing words gusted by like a hot wind. Memories of life slowly returned. He remembered his life, he remembered the loneliness of living it. No one should be by his side, speaking to him so softly.

He searched for the memory-clouds, and noticed some of them drifting across the approaching dawn in the horizon. A colorful cloud stood out against the rest, though it was tainted with gray. Both the colorful spots and the gray spots showed the same picture, a man.

The colorful picture displayed the face of a kind young man, blond and gray-eyed. The gray picture presented the same face, only grim, and cold. Which one was accurate? Who was that man? Was he kind or cruel? He could never tell. One moment there had been a caress and the next moment a slap across the cheek. A shout, an apology, a cold order and a warm request. Nothing ever made sense with that man.

A haze full of memories engulfed him. A long time ago, that man took care of him. It was before the training, before Dr. J took him in, but after he had been torn away from home. It was a transition in his life he rarely thought about. If there ever was a time he could recall having someone by his side, for no other reason other than to simply be with him, it was that man with two faces.

Odin Lowe was an assassin, a harsh man who sometimes spoke soft words. He killed mercilessly, but he also cooked pancakes for breakfast. The man, who had no room for family in his life, could have easily left him for dead after he had lost his parents, but he hadn't. He kept him under the excuse that he needed a child to help him do his job. But in truth, Hiiro knew that there was more to it.

In retrospect, as a soldier, he knew that a small child was nothing but a liability. It had occurred to him a few years back that the only person who truly wanted him around had been Odin. As a child he could not appreciate that, he took the man for granted. When he had been eight years old, he found out that Odin had planned to abandon him on some colony, during a mission. It had turned out to be the man's last mission: he had died at the end of it.

He had been left alone and betrayed, with no one to count on but himself. He had lived that way for over nine years, refusing to count even on his fellow Gundam pilots.

If he was a loner, then how come there was someone out there, speaking to him from beyond the black void? He should be alone, in both life and death. Why would anyone care?

Dawn was approaching, invisible light entered his dark universe. The void surrounding him became brighter, painted in light shades of blue dashed with mixed pink and yellow.

Just like that, he had a body again. It ached, and it breathed, and blood pumped through its veins. That disgusting living, breathing body was still alive.

He waited patiently in the dark, in no hurry to return to that cursed body of his. He felt the air in his nose and lungs. He felt his heart beating in sync with the beeping that echoed around him. He waited patiently for it to stop, for his body to die. If he waited long enough, it surely would.

A hand, warm and coarse, glided over his forehead. Another warm palm was squeezing his hand. He thought he saw someone, a man, but then the image faded, as if it had never been there. Awareness and oblivion came and went, life and death swinging back and forth.

The beeping stopped. He tried to reach with his mind towards his body, attempting to determine if it was dead or alive.

His body was warm and comfortable, lying under heavy blankets. The sensation was such a shock that he quickly redrew back into the void, afraid to feel any further. However, whether he wanted it or not, sensation was slowly returning.

The world was moving, rocking from side to side. The movement was soft and soothing. His body was being rocked gently from side to side, like an infant in a crib. The sensation was alluring, he wanted to experience more and more of it. Crawling out of his safe womb, he sneaked under the sheets and into his body. As he basked in the warmth surrounding him, he let out a small, relaxed sigh, melting back into his physical self.

The aches in his body were dimmer now, merely a distant throb of flesh and bone. His limbs were heavy, numb. His head was nestled in a soft pillow.

There was also sound. It wasn't the beeping like before, it was softer, similar to water flowing, like... waves. It was the sound of waves, not upon a sandy beach, but waves clashing against some surface. A wall, a wooden wall. Was he on a boat?

He lay still, listening to the mellow sound of the waves kissing the craft. His bed rocked slowly from side to side as the waves moved the vessel.

Taking a short, careful breath, he tested the air around him. It was moist and cold. He let out a small cough and then moaned painfully at the sudden jerk that went through his body. He waited for a while before attempting to open his eyes.

At first he opened one eye, just a tiny slit. The image was blurry and dark. The darkness must mean that it was night. Good, he would have hated seeing the sunlight.

Slowly, carefully, he opened his eyes fully. It took some time for the image to adjust, but when he finally blinked the blur away, he was staring at a plain brown wall. After much thought on the matter, he decided to turn his head the other way. It took quite an effort, for his body refused to cooperate. When he was finally facing the other side of the room, he noticed its triangular shape: the bow of the boat, no doubt.

His bed was at one length of the wall, while another bed just like it was across the room. Together the two beds formed a V shape, which fitted the triangular shape of the room. On the other bed were various objects sitting neatly on a large tray. Most of them seemed like medical supplies, along with bathing utilities such as a sponge and a bowl. Next to the tray lay a metallic bedpan. He stared at it for a while, before cringing at the thought.

He looked down at himself. There was an IV line connected to his arm and the IV bag hung above his head. There was some sort of paper pasted to the ceiling above him. The note seemed very out of place up on the ceiling, but his vision was still too blurry to read it. Besides, his bladder suddenly felt as if it was about to explode.

Forcing his limbs to obey, he somehow fumbled out of the blanket and tore the IV out. With great effort he turned to get out of bed, and instead ended up on the floor. His body was so numb that he did not feel the fall. Every muscle prickled with pins and needles, and yet, he pushed onwards, struggling to his feet. The trembling legs soon gave way under him, and he had to catch himself from falling, leaning on the bed for support.

The door was right in front of him, within an arm's reach. His fingers missed their grip on the knob a few times, but in the end he managed to open it. He lowered himself to the floor, dignity set aside, and crawled out of the small cabin.

Crawling on all four limbs, he found himself in a small kitchen. To his left was the stove, and to the right was a door which he hoped led to a bathroom. Using the nearby kitchen top for support, he rose on his shaky feet and turned towards the door. Again his fingers refused to cooperate as he fumbled with the knob. By the time the door opened and he could see the small toilet inside, his legs gave way and he collapsed to the floor.

Unable to move, he remained lying on the floor, and soon began to wet himself. The sensation barely registered with him. He merely stared at the ceiling in confusion, trying to muster a coherent thought from the clutter in his mind.

Koko wa... nani? Boku ga... dare? Dareka... koko ni iru ka? What... is this place? Who... am I? Is someone here?

Exhausted, he fell asleep on the cold floor.

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I decided to post 2 chapters so you'll might give this fic a chance...

Review?