Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ The Creed Arc ❯ The Creed: Stones ( Chapter 7 )

-Stones-

…Stones.

For some reason, it doesn't matter how small it is, being hit with a stone is always worse than being smacked with a stick. Sticks are humiliating, but stones…they're just plain hateful. There's no denying that someone who throws a stone at you really does hate your guts.

What the hell am I talking about? I'm talking about landing your gundam in a damn fire fight, running into a base, plastering explosives on every available surface and then running out again, while pressing your damned finger on a detonator and trying to climb back in your gundam while the debris hails down around you.

Ok, so maybe that's not exactly what I'm talking about, but you get the idea. It was yet another mission gone wrong. I had been attacked before I ever got to the base, had had no time to put my charges in strategic places so had basically settled for putting ten times more than was needed. By the time I reached my gundam I realised it was crawling with Ozzies, so I detonated the charges to shock them the hell off my Deathscythe, which it did. Unfortunately it threw me half way back across the damn tarmac in the process! Then the whole damn factory started raining on me. These aren't just stones; its sheets of plate metal and molten balls of glass. It hurts!

But you don't run away from it. That's the real pain in the arse about stones. You can't run away from them. Sticks, hell yes. Stones, no. Stones leave you stunned, staring at yourself with a bizarre inner mirror. There's a sign in that mirror and it just says ; WHY. Believe me, I read it every damn day. Today just had to be different.

As I stumbled into my Gundam and looked in that mirror I realised the sign still said only one word, but it certainly wasn't `why'.

`FUCK.'

Yup, that was it. My brain was supplying me with the ever faithful one word answer to anything. The hatch closed but the lights in the cockpit didn't come on. I knew why. Evidence of the Oz soldiers was everywhere; they had torn apart all the optics of the Gundam. I was blind.

Now at this point in time I would usually open up a certain panel on the ceiling. Unfortunately said panel no longer existed, which basically meant I was screwed. So I did the only thing I could do. I stared swinging.

The best thing about being a terrorist is you don't have to be careful. You know that everything non-civilian is your enemy. So when trapped blind on an Oz base you knew was blowing up around you, you really don't need to worry about what you might hit. At least, not usually.

Today just had to be different.

"Duo! Don't move!"

My blood froze. I stared around the pitch cockpit, trying to imagine where the voice had come from but it was pointless. Heero Yuy was out there somewhere, and if I moved I could kill him. Correction; would kill him. It was my curse, after all.

A whimper escaped me. I have no idea how, but the open com-link ensured Heero heard it.

"It's okay! I'm right beside you, just don't move!"

"But I can't see!" I wailed. I'll be the first to admit it, but damnit! This was all my fears come true. I had run, hidden, done my damnedest not to lie and Heero had said nothing, just followed me.

"I know."

So soft…Why Hero? Why are you here? I don't understand why you wouldn't let me run!

I was overcome with the most chronic need to hit something. I knew if I touched Deathscythe's controls something would kill Heero, so I settled for slamming my hands down on the control panel.

Pain lanced up my arms, shot through every never in my fingers. It was much more than I should have felt and immediately after I felt the hot liquid spilling across my skin. Cursing I held my hands before me but I could see nothing.

Deathscythe suddenly lurched and I was thrown against the harness, hands falling back against the panel. More pain, more blood. It felt like melted chocolate, so sweet…

I don't know how much time passed. At some point Deathscythe settled once more. I could only assume Heero had picked my whole damn Gundam up with Wing and carried it off. To a safehouse. Alone…with Heero…Dear God, I knew you hated me, but this much?

Something crashed against the hatch outside and it opened without my consent. Before I could open my mouth to speak Heero was kneeling on the large open panel, iron hands wrapped firmly about my wrists.

"Duo…"

Horrified Heero? It's just blood. No different to all the rest we've spilt together. Why so shocked? Look at the panel, its chopped up like it got put through the shredder. It's not like I did it on purpose. I didn't see what the Ozzies had done. I couldn't see…

But I can see now.

"Heero!" The panic was rising. I could not quell it. Looking at my hands it finally registered that it wasn't chocolate. My hands were sliced as badly as the panel that had cut me, over and over. Blood was pooling over Heero's firm hands and the fear in his eyes was stripping me of the last of my control.

Absence from him had made me weak, weakened the mask and made me over-confident. This mask would fail me, I realised, as surely as the last. And I know it, right now, that Duo Maxwell is weak. I can't save myself, and I can't save anyone else. I can't die because death won't have me. I can only remain and watch everyone else fall before me.

"It's alright," Heero was whispering in soothing tones. I was wrapped against his chest, smothered by his strong arms, my hands wrapped in the front of his shirt. How had I gotten here? What was I doing? Where was he taking me? Why won't I stop him? What am I thinking?

I am so lost. He's lying me down on the bed. It's comfortable. It's wide, I can see the edges from the corner of my vision. It's a queen. He's scrambling in the bathroom; I can hear the water. I could run now, jump back in Deathscythe….

But it's dark in that cockpit and cold, and lonely, and I know its covered in blood. My blood. I can't do it. I can't run. I've had enough. It is time to face what is within me. It's time to face that part of me that is so jealous of Duo Maxwell.

Heero is sitting on the bed, a warm cloth in one hand, needle and thread in the other. He's rolling my hand over in his, cleaning wounds before stitching them shut. I expect his face to be cold, but his eyes are bright, slightly sad, and full of something I have not seen in a very long time.

"Heero?"

That is not my voice! I do not sound like that! I sound…

Weak. Afraid. Stupid. Little. Frayed. Broken. Unsure. Terrified.

"Shhh, it's alright." I can't help but lean into the gentle caress as his fingers graze my cheek. I can't control myself. For the first time in…forever…I'm me. I'm the little boy who died with the church. I'm the little boy buried in the ashes. I'm covered in those ashes, but his touch…it's like he's wiping them away.

"I'm cold…" I'm always cold, but what do I expect you do to about it?

"I'm here. And Wufei is on his way, he's just finishing the mission." Wufei had come to get me as well? That explained how Heero had been able to get Deathscythe out of there. Nataku had provided cover-fire…

What if Wufei was dead? What if Wufei had died trying to get me out? Was he late? My body struggled, trying to get up, but I was tired and weak. So WEAK!

"Stop it! Wufei is fine! I talked to him when we arrived! He's on his way here. He's not hurt!"

I settled, forming the mantra in my head; Wufei is fine, Heero is fine, everyone's okay. I repeated it over and over as Heero stitched away at my hands. When he was done he just held them, staring at his handiwork and I let him. I was too cold to do anything else. Too confused. My body was beyond my ability to control and it wanted things I could not define.

"Duo…" He lifted my hands to his lips and kissed the centre of each palm. A shudder went through my body at each touch of those lips. What was wrong with me? I could not let this happen? Why was I suddenly filled with heat? Where had the cold gone?

I shivered as he released my hands and it calmed me. There it was, my precious cold, running through my body like an ice storm. Then my hands were being wrapped in thin white gauze gloves, small antiseptic pads taped over the cuts. I had never seen the like. Heero seemed to have made the damn things, these little petite gloves, especially for me. So that I would be able to use my hands without hurting them more. I still had full mobility.

"You shouldn't have done that Heero! You shouldn't help me! I'm going to be your death!"

I gaped at the ceiling, disbelieving. I had said it out loud. My body had never failed me so completely before, my control had never been so completely beyond my reach. But the little boy was screaming, defying god, desperate to never be hurt again. He knew, even if I did not, what all these emotions flooding me were, and they terrified him.

"Duo?"

It was not Heero's voice, it was Wufei's. Wufei, who I could not fool with all the non-truths my mask contained. Wufei who had almost seen through my so many times and knew what he had just heard was the blinding core of my belief.

What could I possibly say to that? I was doomed, they were doomed. There was nothing more to be said.

I looked up, trying to see the ceiling; this new, unfamiliar ceiling, but I came face to face with Heero, looking down at me from where he had seated himself at my back.

"Duo?" Heero lifted me and I couldn't have stopped him if he had placed a gun to my head. Hell, I wouldn't have stopped him then and not just because I was too weak. Kill me Heero and you will live.

"Say something!" Such trepidation Wufei! You want me to speak but you fear so much what I might say.

I did my utmost to gather my mask, to put it on, going so far as to physically raise my hands to put it on. They were shaking, my hands, those little white spiders now wrapped in gauze that was already stained a faint pink.

"No," Heero admonished, pushing my hands down and wrapping his arms around my torso as if he feared I would run away, pulling me hard against his chest. The heat of his body burned the skin of my back. I had to get away, but that damned little boy wanted the ash washed off and he wasn't moving.

"No masks," Wufei finished off Heero's requests and I…melted. The mask crumbled in my hands, left me raw and when I looked up at Wufei I saw him cringe. He had known what lurked beneath the mask but he had ever tried to see it, had known he couldn't bare it and I had proved him right.

I began to laugh. It took me a long time to realise I couldn't stop.