Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Reasons to be Queen ❯ A New Mission ( Chapter 5 )

Reasons to be Queen 5/?

By Nix

Disclaimers: I'm just enjoying writing them, I don't own them.

Notes.. probably gonna be a short chapter.. and Heero says he's not ready for a wedding, at least not to Relena. He says the ending of the last chapter was her day dream not his.

For Heero time moved slower. The first day on the ship, they didn't have nearly adequate medical equipment and he became painfully aware that he was not a doctor. He stood for hours next to Duo, holding his hand, even after he realized he had two broken fingers. Relena became the warrior for both of them and somewhere in the ship she was using words and logic in place of their gundams.

If Duo had died somewhere else, Heero knew he would have just gone into mission mode, just dropped away from what remained of his humanity. If Duo had been dead when he opened the leo, probably the same thing, but Duo had been alive. So fragile and so precious and Heero was not sure he would ever pick up a gun again, ever. The programming laid down into his mind so effectively had cracked under the smiles and laughter, the friendship of Duo Maxwell. That same programming had come to an abrupt ruinous halt when it had agreed that ending Duo Maxwell's life was the most logical choice. Heero's humanity, as paradoxical as it was, had found it's way to reassert itself, to demand an end to being a solider at all, when he'd accepted that if it were right for Duo to die, then he would die with him.

And so he stood there, holding Duo's broken hand, sorting through the shattered remains of his mind, trying to find who he would have been if he had not become the Perfect Solider.

Fever took Duo before the doctors that Relena promised could arrive. Heero stayed with him, on into the night, washing his face, gentle around the bruising, keeping his lips moist. Near morning, the first warm light of the sun slipping through the portal, Relena joined them.

Heero didn't want her there. The strength of his programming faded more with each movement Duo made, each whimper, every time Heero's fingers brushed his skin. Emotions that he knew the textbook name for, but could not remember experiencing returned to him, and he knew what he felt for Relena. Jealousy. Hate. It was logical that she had been with him, lain with Duo. It made the hair stand straight up on Heero's head. She had had the strength to believe in Duo's life when Heero had not, and the feeling with that was guilt. It reminded him that his hand hurt because she'd shot him. She and Duo had too much in common. Duo had shot him to protect her. She'd shot him to protect Duo. It made Heero feel something else that he'd not wanted to feel, something that was more familiar than he liked. Shame.

She hadn't slept, he though, red eyes, wearing salvage crew pants and an oversized shirt. Standing in the door to the medical suite, it was as if she could feel him wishing her away. She sought his eyes and he refused to back down, so they stood there, eyes locked, battling silently. Until she stepped into the room, until she had to reach out to the table to keep herself from falling down, Heero thought he really might kill her. Her hand held to the edge of the operating table Duo lay on, knuckles white, wetting her lips with a quick tongue. "They'll be here, soon. I'm sorry. If I'd understood, I would have…"

"Would have what? Do you really think your words are going to bring peace?"

"Yes." She straightened and walked to the head of the table, her fingers brushing sweaty strands of brown hair from Duo's face. "I will bring peace. Are you okay?"

Heero hated her. She was everything he was not. Duo loved her. "I'm fine."

She arched an eyebrow, disbelieving him. "Heero Yuy," she paused, smiling, for some reason he couldn't understand. "You do love him, really and truly."

He ground his teeth. Humility was an emotion that took practice and Heero's was all bound up in being distant from life in general. To be so involved in a moment, humility just felt like worse shame. "You love him too."

"So much love! Peace has to flourish in a world like that. Yes, Heero, I love him. I didn't realize how much, how deeply until this. It makes me understand peace. Duo loves you. He adores you. He desires you. It's probably not right for me to know that. He's my best friend, you see. I know it's not the time, but give yourself some time. I'm not mad you, for what you were willing to do."

Heero let go of Duo's hand, caressed the fingers, and turned his back to both of them. The programming almost had him again then, the safe numbness of being something both more and less than human. "How can you not be?"

"Because if he'd asked me to end his pain that way, I would have done the same. It was standing back away, being the one left living that I couldn't stand."

Heero shrugged, not feeling any better at all. "You saved his life because you were jealous?"

"I saved both of you. I saved myself at the same time, so really, it was you that saved me, and him. Maybe you saved the whole world. Will killing me make you feel any better?"

Closing his eyes, Heero shook his head. "I am nothing. I just used to be a solider."

"You are everything, Heero. You are everything to me. I love you as much as I love Duo, and don't ask me to explain how I can love you both."

"I'm doing good to deal with loving one. Don't ask me to love two."

"I'm not asking, not for that. What I am asking, is that you think about how much you love him, and you just give peace a chance."

"That I can do." Even his voice sounded odd to him, as if it were someone else's voice. He didn't hear her leave. He did hear the doctors arrive, all proper and medical, like they'd come to save some diplomat or head of state.

They didn't pay him that much attention as he stood as far back as he could and they worked with Duo. He found his next mission. He was done taking lives. He wanted to save them. And he would keep Duo Maxwell safe. And Relena, because, over the next month, as Duo healed, he began to believe that she could maybe make real peace.