Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Sky Arc ❯ Eclipse - 02 ( Chapter 7 )

Eclipse - 02

Pairings : 1x2, OCx5, 1+5
Rating : R overall
Warnings : Yaoi, angst, citrus, romance
Disclaimer : Gundam Wing belongs to Bandai, Sunrise and Sotsu. Not me.

Summary : Heero and Wufei meet once again. Duo is hurt, confused and guilty over Hilde's condition. And would Anders be sidelined once more? Things come to a head this time.

A/N : Shifting POVs and changing scenes to watch out for, because I need to resolve issues between the main characters. ^^ I hope no one is too confused. One thing about delving so deeply into the characters' minds is that the threats of thoughts do get rather tangled. ^^

"Wufei."

Tensed at the doorway, Heero Yuy looked at once rigid and tired. Like most of the officers, he was still clad in the same attire he had been wearing during the function, and like most of them, he had been working continuously since the explosions. But unlike them, he had an emotional responsibility to the purpose of the function, and that purpose was Relena. Relena had lived, but was concussed for a period after being taken away to safety. The toil of waiting for her waking while his mind remained at the destroyed ballroom where most of the officials and Preventers - and Duo - were still trapped showed. His sockets looked near-hollow, and the blankness in his gaze was startling.

Wufei tried to rise, failing, and realised that Anders' arm was still belted across his shoulders.

Wufei froze then, caught suddenly in the absurd reality of it all. Seeing Heero again after all that time of pushing him to the back of his mind...Heero and Anders in the same room, the first time they were near enough to act on each other's responses, the disturbing likeness in their grim expressions, and the even more disturbing differences between them. Twin cobalt gazes warred silently, yet cackled with mosaics of emotions that were entirely each of his own.

"Should you be here?" Anders spoke, his deliberately pronounced tones belying the casualness of his words. "Agent Yuy?"

Across the ward that was feeling increasingly tighter and more suffocating in steady degrees, Heero did not even flinch, but Wufei could see the twitch in his jaw. It almost made Wufei wince on his behalf.

It was a clever and stinging barb, Anders' pointing out concisely the fact that Heero had somewhere else to be rather than here with Wufei.

"Wufei," Heero spoke again. His manner remained unchanged, with perhaps just the slightest hardening of his tone that could be caught only by the most sensitive of ears.

Neither did Anders' arm budge from Wufei. "Oh, I heard, Agent Yuy," the Eurasian man's face eased smoothly into concern. "That someone close to Agent Maxwell was injured in the blasts. When you see Agent Maxwell, do convey my sympathies to him."

The Japanese man had no reply to that. Still so silently, he stood at the doorway, waiting. Yet the iciness in his countenance made clear that he had heard Anders and he felt the effect of the man's words.

Silence again, and thick tension. The whole tableau treaded the fine line between the bizarre and downright absurdity. Two near mirror-images split into polar ends, and between them, Wufei teetered like an unstable fulcrum.

Wufei realised then, that even in times of turbulence, the little human dramas in life still persisted. There was a very real threat of unrest on the horizon, waiting to erupt. There were larger things to think about, larger purposes to uphold, and *still*, humans could never get over themselves.

Wufei wasn't sure if he should laugh or scream. Maybe both, then perhaps they would *all* realise what fools they were. He could get Duo to join in, and laugh at themselves. They would have a lot to laugh about and for a long time too, because Wufei couldn't quite see the end of this show. He wondered what the civilians would say if they were watching too, especially those who had died. Maybe they'd damn Wufei and company all to hell.

"Well."

The arm disappeared from Wufei's shoulders, the weight of it lifting so suddenly the Chinese man thought he might fall.

A hand was quick to steady him before pulling away. Anders' tensed jaw relaxed into a disarming grin as he stepped away from the cot. "Guess I'll go grab my caffeine. And Agent Chang...Convalescents shouldn't think too much." He reminded Wufei as though the latter was his patient, before turning to leave.

Wufei's mouth opened and his hand twitched, but at length, no words came forth and no action ensued.

Heero and Anders both stared straight ahead as the latter eased past the former on his way out of the ward. Yet, for the briefest moment, twin pairs of cobalt eyes might have met, although there were no spoken words to play witness.

Wufei sat back in the cot. It didn't seem relevant then, but now, Wufei thought he might believe that the last aerial battle between he and Heero had been prophetic. It was a sign that even letting himself be injured by Wufei's hand, Heero would still win. Was Heero going to win this round again?

He looked up as Heero reappeared by the side of his bed. He kept quiet when long, callused fingers settled on his bound arm.

Then obsidian eyes flew wide when he was hauled into a hard embrace.

++++++++++

Duo uncurled his arms from his knees. Around him, the rising and ebbing crests of dizziness nearly made him curl right over and go back to sleep. God, his head...at least he wasn't really thinking anymore, not when his mind refused to form any thread of coherent thought at all. Was this even a good idea, him being ordered home to get some sleep? He supposed it was. Hilde was still unconscious and unable to receive visitors, and he had been keeping vigil for hours.

Besides, what was the use of an officer who was as awake as the walking dead...

He cast a hand about until he grabbed the table-clock. The luminous digits glowed 1...9....49.

He had slept for barely two hours. Well, fuck it. He was going back to the hospital. But first...

A small frown gathered between chestnut brows as Duo sniffed at himself. He recoiled instantly, feeling his skin crawl. The stench from the blast site still clung to his clothes like thick sludge. The smells of charred flesh and blood and acrid cement.

Bile rose in his throat and he lurched sideways into the wall. The nausea...battering at him...He needed to -

Staggering upright, he forced his legs to move, stumbling, almost falling again but he moved. He spilled into the bathroom, feet skidding on the tiles. He was...almost there.

A blind grope and the water lanced down on him. It was cold, not that he actually *felt* it. He just knew it, from the way his flesh seized in reaction and the involuntary shudders that wracked his doused body. The water soaked right through him, his clothes, his hair, and he was almost grateful as he bowed his head to let the water cleanse him.

Duo!

He was turning. Like a detached spirit, he saw himself turn. She was standing right there. Had he ever seen her eyes look that way? So wide, with the whites showing.

Duo, watch out!

Even under the chilling spray of freezing water, there was heated moisture leaking under Duo's shuttered eyelids. They burned a trail down his cheeks, as though making sure he felt them, before getting lost in the ceaseless shower water.

++++++++++

He was giving into the kiss as he would have always in the past. It demanded him to, painful in its blend of force and desperation. A hand was at the back of his head, holding him still even as he struggled to speak between one brutal kiss after another.

They shifted, almost in unison as Wufei fell back onto his uninjured arm, Heero following his descent to grip his supporting wrist. Wufei's back met the sheets with a hollow thump. The sheets twisted around their struggling bodies.

The moment Heero's lips lifted from his, Wufei was hissing as he grated under the other's weight. "Stop it, Yuy! You - " The rest of his words were bit back in a groan as a too-hard hand grasped his shoulder, jarring his wound. He was pinned.

Something painfully familiar and déjà vu in the fingers digging under Wufei's shirt and raking feverishly across his skin. His heart pounding so hard it was a steady ache in his chest, Wufei shoved against the limbs trapping him. There was a moment's pause in Heero's body, then he was leaning harder into Wufei like his life depended on it.

"Wufei, I need..." Heero's hollow plea in his ears and then hands were at the top of his pants, working frenetically at the button.

And Wufei could feel it - the blind panic that had seized Heero's mind and was now translated into this forcefulness. Wrong. This was wrong. Wufei knew Heero's singular, all-consuming and intense desire; he had given in every time before, craving release and solace in the other man's will. It was the only thing that had ever allowed him relief from the shackles of his own consciousness. But it was not the same now...it just wasn't. Even with his mind still locked in a void, his body was resisting. He couldn't give in now, not when he had just learnt with every shred of resolve within him *not* to give in.

Wufei stopped struggling, falling limp to the hands that were rough as they yanked at his clothes. He stared above him where Heero's face loomed down at him. The man's face was deathly pale, his lips trembling and working as though they were speaking, although no sound ensued.

It was like lapsing back into the past, and Wufei was done with the past. Motionless, Wufei made no move to touch Heero, or even to resist. But he did speak and it surprised even himself when his words came out reinforced by steeliness he hadn't known existed within himself. "Heero. Enough." And even as the words left his mouth, Wufei learnt that Heero's hands weren't tearing at him, but shaking against his skin, and that the gleam in Heero's gaze wasn't of cruelty but of despair.

Heero fell against him like he had finally bowed to the invisible burdens weighing down on him. Wufei lay quietly under him, just receiving and absorbing the violent trembling of Heero's body. There was always something profoundly sad when the indomitable fell.

Heero Yuy was such a figure, created as a weapon to fire wherever his creators pointed at. Without that direction and without orders, he was lost in the wake of newfound humanity. He knew only to give and take in precise degrees. Where one person had taken from him, he exacted the same measure from another. Where he was given more, he would bestow the same spillover to another. He had yet to understand that emotions could never be calculated and that losses and excesses and every grey area between them were what made them real. Choices were arbitrary for Heero could only take to fill a void and give when the void turned to flood.

The weight above Wufei lifted as Heero pulled away. Wufei sat up slowly.

They were both silent, sharing the space and quiet until Wufei broke it. "Sometimes it's about wanting. Not needing. And..."

It was a struggle for Wufei to even talk like this. Most times, before he had Heero even became more than friends, he didn't talk like this. Words had been unnecessary following the nature of their relationship. It was a wordless pact, almost instinctive, the way they had used each other when sometimes they thought they didn't deserve the little gifts of brightness that the world sometimes offered. They still weren't used to people, the both of them, Heero perhaps more so than him, and they weren't used to having someone there waiting. Wufei thought he understood that fear of getting used to having someone to return to only to have such a privilege taken away.

"And that is something only you can decide for yourself." He finished simply.

++++++++++

Fingers curled around the dial and turned. Steam rose around him, fogging the mirror and even his senses. His skin turned red. If it hurt, he didn't feel it. It was good hurt, he supposed. This would clean him. He didn't want to smell the blood and the hurt on himself again. He had been unable to get to Hilde in the chaos and he remembered himself falling automatically into routine to rescue the civilians. Even then, his mind was removed from his task.

He hadn't been able to even see Heero through the thick layers of both survivors and corpses.

And breaking protocol, he abandoned his post to search for Heero.

A strangled sob escaped Duo as he sank his head into his hands.

That was his worst fear come true, that he had let his emotions get in the way of his work.

If Hilde had been injured beyond cure, it was his fault. If more civilians had died because of him, he'd never forgive himself. And still...still, there was a part of himself that refused to let go of Heero.

There were precious few things in Duo's life worth clinging on to, and when they were within his grasp, he hung on and could not let go.

He had always wanted Heero. It had started off pretty innocently. He was fifteen - no, they were *both* fifteen, just teenagers despite their chosen paths. He had a teenager's mind, moods, loves but an old man's worldliness. Heero had been an almost total opposite: an intelligence and self-resolve far beyond his years but with the core of him completely untouched by real emotion. A blank piece of paper.

For almost five years since Duo had been scrawling on that same blank piece of paper as much and as skilfully as he could. It was the most difficult task he had ever given himself. He didn't know when to stop, how to stop, whether to stop, and he had no way of telling if he had left even the faintest mark on the enigma that was Heero Yuy.

It was true when he had told Hilde that he had been to both extremes of knowing nothing...and knowing everything. And he had been truthful to himself when he decided he had been happier with not knowing anything.

Well...if that was the case then...

Overhead, the water was relentless, a scalding waterfall.

++++++++++

The moon was young, a pale disc in the inkiness of the night sky. There was a period of time when he stayed watching the moon for long moments. It seemed time always passed by a little more slowly during those moments, making his mind recall, letting him feel. On nights like those, there were also times when he did not watch the moon alone.

This night was the same...yet different.

Once, he would have been waiting for the other presence to slip silently into his room, for the ghost-like figure to reappear right behind him and almost surprising him, for the startling strong arms to curl around him and pull him away from his ritual of moon-gazing. And he would let himself be pulled away, into the dimness of the room where all he could see was the darkness and the haunting cobalt eyes he knew were waiting for him.

Tonight...he was still waiting...but for the other to leave.

He closed his eyes when familiar arms wrapped around him, and he felt instantly, the change in texture and tone of this embrace. The temporary warmth it used to offer had dissipated and in its wake, was comradeship instead. It was a loss nonetheless, although this felt more right than the embraces of the past. This was what *should* have been, and not what had been, that was why this was right.

"Wufei."

Night-black eyes opened slowly. He nodded.

The embraced tightened fleetingly; a wordless goodbye. Then it was gone.

The warmth on his skin surrendered to the chill of the air.

He cast his eyes back to the sky. Night after night, the sky remained the same no matter what happened to the earth below. Sometimes there were stars, sometimes none. At other times there were rains that blazed the whole nightsky a brimstone and rusty orange. But at the end of it all, the night was still there.

It had not been two days after the blasts, the latest catastrophe to strike them. What he found amazing was when the screams had long stopped and the dust settled, he could still see the moon.

"It's been a while," he said to her.

And in reply, he could imagine her haughty toss of head at being proven right. I told you so, that must be what she was saying. She was right. There had never been a single night that Heero had came to him just for him. It was always, always because of Duo. That already should have warned him, but he was a foolish human blinded by his own obsessions and his own selfish desires.

He smiled wryly, tiredly. After having ran around so many circles, he was back to where he was before everything began - solitude. Lifting his head, he took a deep breath of the night air. It was dark still, the night, and even for the moon, he could not see as much of the world as he would have liked.

But the air was clear, and clean.

The door opened behind him. "Wufei."

He waited a moment, before turning. "Ray Anders."

+++++++++

Clipped footfalls staccatoed on the flooring at regular intervals. Lifting a hand, Sally Po raked it through her hair. The locks felt thick and sticky. So did the rest of herself. Just a little while more, she told herself, before she would leave her post to someone else and take a rest. But until then, she couldn't leave the patients alone. The death toll had been minimised. Still, the price had been great, and the true repercussions would only be felt once the storm had calmed.

She found herself heading back to the corridor she had left not too long ago. She had to do it, she told herself. She had to make sure Hilde Schbeiker was all right. And even though the younger woman was still heavily bandaged and kept isolated in the intensive-care ward, she needed to just see Hilde.

It had been a while.

Sally massaged her temple where the throbbing was worst. It had been a while since such a close comrade had been hurt. It brought the reality of unrest to a sobering stop right at the Preventers' doorstep.

Turning the corner, Sally paused in her tracks. She recognised instantly the figure standing motionless outside Hilde's ward, but the actuality of matching face to realisation arrived a little too slow in her fatigued state.

"Une," Sally said at length.

The leader nodded, not looking away from the glass pane that separated the world outside and the ward. When Sally was near enough, she thought she saw the faintest glimmer of pity in the other woman's eyes. But when Une met her eyes, her gaze was hard behind her spectacles.

"How is Duo?"

"Taking it well," Sally replied quietly. It was not a lie, but it was not quite a truth either. It was what was *expected* of any Preventer.

"Good. I need everyone functioning properly." Une paused, then opened her mouth as if to continue. But then she shut it, lips pressed into a grim line.

Sally said it for her. "We still have so much left to do."

"Too much."

"Mission FIR23-01."

Une nodded. "We're going ahead with it. Heero gave me his assurance."

It was unofficial, this sharing of mission details. Sally was specified in the medical field although she was a Preventer, and classified missions were out of her bounds. Yet she knew most of what went on behind the scenes, gleaning her information in bits and pieces over clandestine conversations, grasping the unspoken meanings behind vague dialogues. Not a word leaked from her however, and that was her way of sharing her comrades' burdens.

"His decision surprised me." Une continued.

Sally nodded, her face not betraying her own puzzlement. Heero Yuy's decisions had historically been borne of the most careful calculations. They were extreme, but they could be predicted. They never *surprised*.

"I had thought at first he would pick..." Then Une stopped and shook her head reproachfully. "I shouldn't be talking about this now."

Sally understood. In the face of escalating uncertainties in this fragile world still racked by the after-effects of the Gundam Wars, everything paled in comparison. That was how it was. Here they were, two jaded war veterans discussing big issues in a small hospital.

Silently, they sat side by side. In the even quieter ward on the other side of the glass wall, the third woman slept, unconscious but nevertheless one third of this brief reprieve from the world outside.

++++++++++

He turned the dial and waited for the last of the water to cease on his skin. Around him, thick curls of fog blurred the details of the bathroom. This was an apt physical representation of the uncertainty that dulled his senses. He knew something was wrong with him. He couldn't think clearly, he couldn't see clearly and for the first time in his life, he was a complete loss at what to do. His mind could throw up no solution at all, and not even the feeblest excuse of any suggestion.

Mostly he was tired. It was the kind of fatigue that had nothing to do with need of sleep or rest, but that which seeped right into him with a dull kind of ache.

Outside the bathroom, he knew the apartment would be swamped with darkness like the way he had left it when he had stumbled blindly into the shower. It would be just like those times when he and Heero had clashing work schedules and each of them returned home to solitude. This time, it might be different however.

This time...he had no confidence Heero would even return. Not when he was with Wufei. After protecting Relena, the first person Heero had wanted to protect after her was not Duo.

At least...he himself knew that much.

He should have known it right from the moment he discovered that he was not the only one Heero needed, and the moment that he knew he alone was not enough for Heero. And then there were the moments of keeping himself company while Heero shared wordless, pained looks with Wufei.

Those looks had been in existence even before Duo had decided that it was Heero he wanted.

That was the one thing that he still kept from Wufei, and the one thing that even Heero didn't know. Even knowing that there was unspoken bond between the two men, he had taken a gamble by making his move. He was willing to risk everything he had just to fight for the one person he had ever wanted in this life.

It was not until this very moment, in the face of possible defeat, that he realised he had staked too much in the gamble...and how much of a sore loser he was. He couldn't walk away after all, not like Wufei could and did.

Let Heero do that. If Heero was that good at walking in and out of people's lives, he could do it. Duo was weary of it, and he still had so many pieces of himself to pick up, it was going to take all the time he had from there on to finish it.

Blankly, he watched as the figure took shape in the steam still trapping the bathroom. Was his mind was so taxed by all his obsessing it was starting to hallucinate? He remained motionless, just looking with detached interest as the outline of the phantom thickened into a defined shape, then began to form.

Hilde? His heartbeat quickened. He needed to see Hilde. He wanted her to come right up to him and smack him upside the head like she always did and tell him he was such an idiot, like he usually was.

The moment he saw the colour of the eyes, he knew it wasn't Hilde.

"I'm back."

That was what Heero always said when he returned to the apartment from work. He never had a word of affection or the slightest display of romance when he stepped in from the doorway. Duo had learnt over time that "I'm back" was Heero's equivalent of "I'm home", and that the barest softening of his eyes was an invitation for Duo to kiss him, and when he wanted to kiss Duo he would do it without frills and just do it, and when Duo was down Heero would somehow be around. Those were *real*, those little bits and pieces of moments.

Violet eyes widened. "Heero?" Then they narrowed in confusion. "Why did you - "

This living, breathing, *real* Heero stepped up to him. "Detour," he spoke and the word resonated in Duo's ears and he knew for sure this was no phantom. "I had to take a detour."

"And so you're back now..."

"Yes."

"I see." Standing so close, Duo knew Heero could see his pathetic tears. "That was some detour." He laughed shakily.

Then, Duo lifted a hand and swung his fist into Heero's face.

++++++++++

Heero would stand at a measured distance, using his presence as comfort and his silence as reassurance. He would have responded the way he deemed best for the situation. His emotions would have been real and unsullied by motive, but they would also be checked by rationale. If it were Heero, he would have came and went as quietly as a shadow.

Instead, Ray Anders entered the room with each footfall heard and his breathing uneven like he had rushed there. His expression was a conflict of forced composure and straining concern. There was no stability in his demeanour, and no single-minded intent in his stance.

"Wufei," Anders bit out, realising his presumptuousness a second late. "No, I mean - Agent Chang. Are you - " His cobalt eyes raked swiftly over the dishevelled state of Wufei's attire, and they narrowed, before easing again. "I see. Pardon me. I shouldn't have disturbed your rest. Perhaps I should - "

"Anders," Wufei cut him off. "Would you come here, please."

The other man hung back for a moment, the spark of uncertainty in his gaze a betrayal of his usual suave composure. At length, he seemed to remember himself and he approached.

He stood beside Wufei, at the spot where Wufei had gestured. Wufei regarded him wordlessly. Anders had turned his head so he was looking out into the sky. The customary self-possession had returned somewhat to his eyes. Wufei wondered if he would mention Heero, and ask in his smooth, wary manner what he and Heero had done. Or maybe he would guess and then react in anger at the possibilities a dishevelled shirt could hint at.

Wufei decided that it would take too long to wait for the other man. "Don't talk." He ordered when Anders looked like he was just going to say something. "Don't - just stay like that. Don't say anything."

Taking Anders' face in his hands, Wufei kissed him hard.

Their mouths collided, breaking apart briefly, before melding together again. Wufei felt the hitch of surprise in Anders' breathing, but then Anders' mouth turned pliant beneath his, letting Wufei force the kiss into a near painful one.

Anders was like water - fluid and unpredictable. His taste flowed into and out of Wufei's mouth before Wufei could grasp it; each flavour was followed by the next too swiftly.

Wufei pulled away just as abruptly. He was breathing hard and so was Anders. They were not quite looking at each other. Rather, they did it through feel of the trembling of the air between them and the sounds of their echoed pants.

"You know..."

Wufei looked up.

Anders had turned his head again so he was staring up into the night. "The world does look different at night, doesn't it?"

fin
August 2004