Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Stolen ❯ Waiting in the Hearts of Men ( Chapter 9 )

Stolen

chapter 9

Relena lay there in a daze, trying to break through the fog that was clogging her brain. She brought her outstretched arm back in and tried to physically wipe the haze away by rubbing her hand forcefully over her numb face. When she swallowed, she realized that she was thirsty and began the arduous process of hauling her body up and out of the warm, safe bed it was in. She looked around and realized that she had no idea where she was, and it wasn't just her weirdly fuddled state of mind. But, like most rooms made by modern man it was rectangular and there was a sink and she quickly found out that it worked. Not bothering to look for a cup, she used her hands to scoop water into her dry and foul tasting mouth. Almost immediately, her head began to clear a bit. She realized she needed to relieve herself and looked around for the ubiquitous other door that might lead to a bathroom. When she found it, she immediately realized that this was a man's home. The toilet seat was flipped up and there was absolutely nothing on the walls. Could this be Heero's home? Carefully closing and locking the bathroom door behind her, she flipped the seat down and tried to make it as speedy as possible.

She noticed two things in her short time there. The room was clean enough to both look and smell sterile, and there was no mirror over the sink.

When done, she quickly washed her hands and then her face for good measure, feeling much more in control of her body. Once the strange fog began to lift from her mind, she started to really question what she was doing in this place. How did she get here? What happened before she found herself in Heero's bed with Heero's sleeping face pressed into her hand? She looked around the apartment and took her mind back… back to the restaurant.

"Oh my God! Oh God, Quatre!"

*****

He walked to clear his mind. He walked to release energy without damaging anything. He walked to get away, even for just a little while. Who knows how long a man can walk in that kind of state, but Heero didn't find out. Within minutes, he had walked into a more populated area of the city, and found himself in the middle of Hell. Piles of broken glass in small, non-lethal pieces lay strewn across his path, the obvious result of the smashing of all the shatterproof shop windows on the street. Mixed in were bits of merchandise, discarded purses, an umbrella, smatterings of blood and the heavy objects that had been used to break the store windows open. The street was eerily calm for all the signs of recent violence. The only movement came from furtive figures darting between buildings, a quick flash of fear-filled eyes, and gone before he could stop them.

Riots. Of course there were riots. Chaos was always there waiting in the hearts of men, waiting for a chance to break and shatter and hurt all that lay in its path. All it took was a hint of disorder in the organizations set to rule the human society, and this was what could happen. Heero thought he'd seen the last of broken glass and fire and the screams of women clutching children to their breasts. How could the evil in man's heart still find such power after its ravenous swell during the war? Hadn't it been fed enough for a while? His thoughts, staring at one miraculously intact, wheel-thrown bowl in the corner of a broken storefront were interrupted by the wail of a woman's terror.

He took off in a dead run, automatically trying to find this poor soul trapped in the hungry jaws of chaos. The sound of a gun going off and one more scream led him to an apartment building above a ruined restaurant. He cleared his mind of everything save the details of the moment--the angles behind which an enemy could lie waiting, the sound of his heartbeat, steady though he was running up three flights of stairs, his gun in hand.

He heard furniture overturning with a violent noise behind the door to his right, slightly ajar. He couldn't see past a large back just beyond the opening, but he could guess at least one more antagonist within, probably more. These types always worked in groups. He pressed himself against the wall, ready to spring into the room. When he heard a child cry out for its mother he stopped thinking altogether and sprang into the room, felling the figure by the door as he entered. Quicker than any person in that room had ever seen a human move, he landed one bullet into each of the other five men, one who had been holding a screaming toddler by his neck and laughing, the other two who held a gun to the head of an unconscious man who had to be the child's father and two more who had been busy beating and raping an obviously pregnant woman. In the span of three heartbeats it was over. With the man at the door, he had killed six in as much time as it would take most people to smack a mosquito.

The child immediately ran to his mother, who was trying weakly to free herself of the dead weight of the man on top of her. Heero picked him up and threw him into a corner, still working with the rush of fighting strength. He then saw the look of terror in the woman's eyes, and realized she was just as frightened of him as she was of the men he had just killed. He was never any good at reassurance so instead he went to check on the still unconscious father. He'd been knocked in the back of the head, judging by the swelling bump at the nape of his neck. Heero simply couldn't tell if the skull had been fractured, but he put him into position for trauma recovery and checked that he was still breathing. He then walked to the telephone, hoping it still worked. He'd left his mobile phone in the apartment with Relena.

For a moment, thinking about Relena left him frozen, the phone halfway to his ear. He'd left her alone with only the electronic lock to keep her from walking out into this nightmare. Filled with icy dread, he realized he had to get back, immediately before she figured out how to get out.

Looking confusedly at the phone in his hand he recalled his current situation and quickly dialed 911. Busy. Of course. It was an emergency; they were probably completely overloaded. He hung up and dialed the internal number for Preventer security.

The woman, who was moving slowly to her husband while rocking her son with an automatic motion, only heard a few words that sloughed through her scattered mind, until she realized the young man with the gun was asking her a question as slowly as he possibly could.

"What is the address?"

She blinked trying to remember something so simple and everyday as her own address. She stared at a pool of blood seeping slowly towards her from under one of her dead attackers. Her son was trying to breastfeed and didn't mind that there was no milk. She refused to look at her husband's face, just kept her hand on his back feeling it rise and fall with each shallow breath.

"What is the address here?"

He was talking again. Then he moved towards her. She felt a scream well up in her throat, but instead of touching her, he knelt by her husband and fished around in his pockets. Money, he was after their money. But hadn't they taken everything? No, they'd left his wallet and now this new one had it. She felt rage building inside her as the man stood with her husband's wallet in hand and started rifling through the cards inside. All this just for money?

"791 Foster Boulevard, South. Apartment 3B"

That was it, wasn't it? Their address, their home. Hearing her address brought the woman back a little closer in from the edge she was walking, enough that she realized the man was talking to someone on the phone, telling her address. What was he doing?

"Woman is pregnant with physical trauma; is not lucid. Man is unconscious but breathing with trauma to the head. Child seems physically unhurt. Riot has moved north from immediate vicinity, but armed individuals in small groups remain."

Before it all clicked into place the man had hung up the phone and was checking the bodies of the men he had shot. Were they still alive? She held her son tighter and he squirmed.

Heero checked all the bodies for weapons and removed every gun he found, then chose one, took out the clip and the one bullet ready to be fired. He approached the woman who still immediately clutched her child so fiercely he cried out from his place at her breast.

"I won't hurt you," he tried to explain. She obviously could not understand. He had to get back to Relena. Stooping down five feet in front of her he placed the empty gun on the floor. "This gun has no bullets in it, but if anyone comes to the door point it at them and say that the Preventers are on their way." He really wasn't certain she was taking this in. "My name is Lieutenant Heero Yuy. I am a member of the Preventer force. A medical team will be here soon. They will be in Preventer uniforms. You can trust them." He really wasn't very practiced at sounding reassuring. Relena never needed reassurance, she just needed protection. Yes, but this had never happened to Relena. His gut froze at the thought of Relena beaten and raped on the street where he would never find her until the smell of her decaying body led the way.

The woman tracked his eyes that had shown fear as he stood up. She wanted to tell him she understood. She wanted to ask him to stay, but she just couldn't find words. They had all left her. She was like an infant who wants so much to speak but can't do more than grunt. But she understood. Minutes that stretched like hours after he had walked out the door, shutting it behind him, she put her son on the floor; he had fallen asleep as children sometimes do in the face of catastrophe. On hands and knees and so slowly, stopping to grip her swollen middle every third step, she worked her way over to where the man had left the gun. With the last of her strength she lay down on her left side and pulled the simple looking weapon into a tight grip atop her heart. Twelve and a half minutes later that is just how the Preventer medical team found her, unconscious, the gun gripped in her hand, rising and falling with her breath and kicked occasionally by the child in her womb.