Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ 3 Ties That Bind ❯ Twenty-Nine ( Chapter 29 )

Lights were flashing above me…bright fluorescent ones…flash…flash…flash…

“Hold on, Sir Maxwell…”

Those words mean something…what do those words mean?

Flash…flash...flash…

“Stay with us…come on…”

What?

I closed my eyes as the noises around me got louder…

Flash…flash…flash…pain…

“I love you.”

I stared at Kayla in saddened horror…because I knew what came next already.

“Love again, Duo…”

The machines were louder…they were all over and louder…the voices were more mixed and I wasn’t being shoved out the door.

“I want you to love again…”

Why was it so quiet?

“Hello?”

No one answered me.

I stared down at the decimated stones of the church I’d once called home as the air conditioner blew too cold air around the area.

I’d heard once it was to keep the dead from decomposing.

I shivered hard, moving away backwards from that…

The bright light…that was…

I dove out the window with Heero, working my thermal scythe to save both our asses…the damn jackass hadn’t ever thanked me for that…he still owed me that damn part…

It was still cold.

I heard beeping and looked around as the plasma screens popped up warning after warning of enemies approaching.

“I don’t have time for this!” I shouted at the screens.

I had to get the girls…

Girls?

“Ashley’s a pretty name…”

Selena was smiling at me.

I worked the controls hard and took off, praying that this would work…praying…

“You’re in here again?”

I turned to look at Heero in annoyance as Wufei followed after him.

“What are you doing?” Heero snapped.

“Come on,” Wufei added, “we’re gonna be late.”

The girls…

“One more! One more drink!”

“You’re stupid drunk!” Wufei hissed, yanking the cup from my hand and slamming it down on the counter. “You drink anything, it’ll be water!”

“Stupid drunk?” I laughed at him.

“Oh, Duo,” Lanni muttered, touching my cheek. “You’re such a dear heart…”

“Mr. Johnson! Mr. Johnson!” A group of teenage girls darted up to me with pictures. “Thank you so much!” I got hug after hug as they shoved the pieces of papers and pictures into my hands and ran off almost as quickly.

“Mr. Johnson!”

The girls…

“Tio Duo, I have to pee…”

“Please, hold on…just…please…”

Who was that? I didn’t know that voice.

“You’ll make an excellent father…”

I turned to look at Relena…and wondered if I’d done good.

Why was it so cold?

The noises were coming back…the beeping…

“Maybe…I’d better leave.”

Som.

I blinked at the boy, wondering if it were really him. I’d had so many dreams…

“Duo?” he asked, looking at me.

I tried to smile, but for some reason I couldn’t really move…

He did one of those little gasp laugh things, darting forward to grab my hand…he was so warm…

“Duo?” he asked again.

I forced my eyes to open again.

“Hey, open your eyes,” he muttered.

I’d said that to Dean…

Dean?

I forced my eyes open, seeing him smiling at me with tears in his eyes. He wiped at them, then turned to dart for the door.

Hey…wait…

Where am I?

The music was pounding…Wufei was right there…he always smelled like that in clubs, especially when we were dancing. He laughed and bit my arm…and this time it stung…

“Aa…ow!” I tried to move away from the pain as I blinked at a man in a white jacket. “Ow!”

“Shh, shh, shh,” the man soothed me. “The pain will stop in a minute.”

I heard the heart monitor beeping a bit erratically, looking around the room in confusion.

“So you’ve decided to live, have you?”

“What?” I asked blankly, swallowing hard.

My chest felt weird.

“Majesty! He’s awake!” he shouted.

“What?” I repeated, realizing that meant Heero.

“I’m sorry for this,” he noted, indicating something he was injecting into my arm. “It’ll help you heal faster, though.”

Heero dove into the room with wild eyes, instantly moving up to my bed side…and shoving at my leg, glaring at me.

“You look like hell,” I informed him. His hair was mussed and his clothes were rumpled. There were huge rings under his eyes, and he looked like he’d been crying.

“I look like hell?” he demanded. “I look like hell?”

I grinned slightly at that.

“You got shot three times in the chest, and I look like hell!?”

“As your Majesty wishes,” I noted.

He started laughing, tears in his eyes as he dove down to hug me.

“Ow…ow…” I protested as my chest started to hurt…

“Oh, sorry, sorry…” he pulled away, wiping at my eyes as he looked me over, then moved around the bed so he could stand across from the doctor and studied me. “Duo…what happened?”

“I’ll tell you later,” I muttered as I remembered Jun falling to the floor…and then some guy had come…anyway, it didn’t matter, because the doctor was there.

Wait, if they were calling me by name…

Heero ran hand along my forehead, his eyes sad. “Everyone knows. We moved in as soon as we could after we found out that Fei was getting the girls…I’d been trickling the troops to Branton anyway…and the news teams saw you being pulled out on a stretcher. We know what Wufei and the girls told us…you were going after Jun…and we don’t have his body.”

I met his eyes, my stomach clenching.

…the heart monitor sped up.

Heero glanced at it, then met my eyes again. “What happened?”

“I...he was alone,” I explained, looking to the doctor expectantly. “He was alone when he came into his room…I got him with my knives,” I noted, meeting Heero’s eyes again. “Across the throat…but then someone came in shouting and shot me.”

“So he shouldn’t be alive,” Heero noted, thinking about that.

“I don’t know,” I returned, looking away.

“Tell no one,” Heero ordered the doctor in a cold tone.

The man’s eyes were wide as he stared between us…and he nodded. “Of course, your majesty.”

“You half assed it?” Heero added to me irritably.

“I was interrupted,” I snapped back.

“What…” the doctor hesitated.

“I ordered him to take out Jun Martin,” Heero lied, looking back to the poor guy. “Knives are generally more quiet than guns, but some set ups are more difficult than others.”

“Of course,” the guy bowed, then swallowed and pointed at my arm. “Did it stop hurting, Sir Maxwell?”

“Not hardly,” I muttered, focusing on him with a grin. The pain was sort of heady…and very real…and really, I’d never been an anti-pain advocate.

He blinked at that, then tilted his head and looked at something in the vial before nodding…and pulling the thing out of my arm.

I hissed at that one.

“See,” Heero muttered in pleasant Japanese as he studied the doctor, “you were a good boy and I gave you a treat.”

I started laughing at that, then started coughing.

“Som and Selena have been bickering,” Heero added, looking back down to me as the doctor half bowed and darted from the room. “They’re arguing over why you smiled at him. He’s saying it was because you two still have a secret thing going on and Selena’s trying to insist he was just funny looking.”

I laughed again, but that hurt, too.

“Hey, are you all right?” he muttered, shifting to be in my face better.

“All right?” I demanded. “I was shot three times in the chest.”

He smiled.

“Actually, I woke up because I heard him,” I added, feeling very tired. “I woke up…and he was talking to me…and I tried to smile, but it didn’t work.”

“If you die now, I swear I’ll march right after you and kick your ass.”

I laughed a bit at that, shaking my head. “I’m tired, Ro…I’m really tired.”

“So why did you smile?”

“Huh? Oh…because…because…Dean.”

“What?” Heero asked blankly.

“He talked to me…like…to Dean,” I returned as my eyes started closing again.

“Oh come on, you can stay awake longer than that,” Heero protested, his warm hand on my face again.

I liked how warm he was.

“Told me to…open my eyes,” I explained a bit more, “like I talked to Dean…”

“Duo…”

“Told me…enm…eyes…like…Dean…”

“Duo&# 8230;” I protested…but the heart monitor had settled into the steady beat it’d pretty much been in since we’d come running when Som said he’d smiled at him.

And, of course, I was at the hospital alone.

I had never wanted to wait like that again…to know that someone I love was that close to death. Kayla had been one time too many…and then they’d all done the shift-around thing that we’d done, but when I’d come back last time, the waiting room had been in shambles and Duo’d been sedated.

It was more like the waiting room would be spotless and I’d be sedated this time.

He had woken up, he had talked to me…sure, he’d slurred and mumbled some, but he had tracked our conversation.

So was Jun dead or not?

Probably, if Duo’d gotten him with his knives.

But if Duo had been interrupted…

This was just…too much.

It’d been two days since the girls had shown up with Jesse. It’d been two very long days that Duo’d been in the hospital showing no signs of coming out of the…the coma…or whatever they wanted to call it.

When we’d gotten the confirmation call that the girls were with Jesse, and that Duo had been left in Branton…well, I’d given up on the game of just-in-case with Jun and we’d all loaded up and headed out. The Branton armory had been the staging point. It’d taken us less than half the time it should have to get there, but by that point, the police had cleared the roads and let us go while the news replayed interviews and noted that they had no new updates.

It hadn’t mattered anyway.

Duo had been somewhat cold when he’d been found, alone in that bedroom. There’d been more blood than could be accounted for around him, so he’d probably fallen rather close to Jun, if not outright on top of him.

The initial triage had taken place in a helicopter when we all thought he was dead.

It’d been terrifying to know that he’d asked me to take care of his family and Som beforehand…like he could tell something was going to go wrong…

The thing about it all had been after Som came running into the waiting room to say Duo was awake. We’d rushed back, and Duo’d had a slight smile on his face, but he wasn’t anymore awake than he’d been previously. The eighteen year old had pointed out the smile almost nervously as if it proved he’d been telling the truth…and after a long moment of us all being disappointed, Nira’d demanded why he was smiling.

Som’s instant and somewhat flippant reply was that seeing your lover always makes you happy…which had been followed by him realizing what he’d said and getting very nervous as Keith walked out of the room.

Selena’d laughed and retorted it was probably because his hair was so messy.

Poor Som.

He’d been shipped off to L-3 for training when he was ten. He’d gone through some regular school processes, but he’d had the intense kind of training the rest of us’d had that we’d never wish on anyone else.

His hadn’t been as hard, considering he didn’t know anything about the Gundams or the maintenance of MS in general, but he had the rest of our skills and a language or two more than most of us.

Thai had been his first language.

Aside from that training, though, the only attention spared him had been because he was a ‘pretty little Asian boy,’ and as soon as we’d realized it we’d all regretted teasing him and Duo about it.

He talked to me and Trowa about these things. He’d spent the two nights sitting with me, and early mornings sitting with Trowa when I’d go to sleep…then he’d go back to the castle and sleep at Duo’s apartment before coming again to do our nightly vigil.

He’d never been taken seriously before. His opinions or thoughts had never been valid. His mother and his sister would listen to him, and his sister did care, but…his father had only even started to acknowledge him when Jun had wanted him. When he’d ended up sleeping with Jun, his father hadn’t done more than turn his head.

He’d actually had a few relationships with older married men who seemed a lot like Duo, really. They’d show they cared and sweet talk him, coax him into trusting them, and then…drop him by the wayside. He’d repeated to me the conversation he’d had with Duo that first morning before Quatre had come in, and justified the comparison with flying colors. The only difference was that Duo hadn’t ever intended to just chase him off. Duo wouldn’t have completely abandoned him…and, of course, noting this had sent him off into a ramble about how it actually was different.

Not the best way to wait for your best friend not to die.

I hit Duo in the leg again, shaking my head as I started back for the waiting room.

Didn’t it figure he’d pass out and let me have all the fun?

Shit, what were friends for?

It was nice to be warm.

I opened my eyes, looking at the blond head laying on the mattress beside me. I smiled slightly at my niece and moved my arm to touch her soft hair. It took me a second to realize that Alex was on the other side, and I smiled even more.

The girls.

I touched Alexia’s hair, realizing I was high as a kite. Whatever pain meds they’d pumped into me were really working. I could hear the steady beat of the heart monitor, and beyond that, a general lull of people walking and talking in the hall through the open door.

I was dreaming about Selena that time.

“You ass.”

I jumped slightly, focusing on Marlea.

“How am I supposed to knee you in the nuts if you’re on a bed?” she explained. “You told me I could, because this was your fault…” and she extended her wrapped arm.

“Tio!” Alex muttered, roused by her cousin. She jumped forward and hugged me as best she could around the neck. “Tio Heero said you’d been awake, but we didn’t know if he meant it or not…”

“Hey, baby,” I muttered, hugging her back some. “Thoroughly traumatized?”

Alex giggled, shifting back so Lea could hug me.

“What happened?” Lea added, frowning at me. “You…got shot. I thought that didn’t happen to you.”

I laughed a bit at that. “I’m not immortal, I’m sorry to say. I’m also not a god…”

“You say now that you’ve been hit,” Trowa retorted from the door to the room. “I do recall you claiming to be the god of death at one point or another.”

“Teenage hormones,” I returned, smiling at him. “Put one of the girls in Deathscythe and they’ll claim it, too.”

They grinned at that.

Trowa moved across the room and hit my leg.

“Oh, Geeze,” I muttered, rolling my eyes slightly. “You’re all going to do that, aren’t you?”

“Do what?” he retorted.

“Hit me there,” I explained, moving my right knee. “Heero did it, you did it…when Fei comes in, he’ll do it…where’s my baby? Where’s my daughter? Shit, where’s my wife? At least if she hits me, she’ll make it worth my time.”

Alex giggled wickedly, smacking my arm.

I grinned at her, then looked back to Marlea.

“Wufei actually got a tank,” she informed me with a grin. “He came riding in sitting beside the man-hole thing.”

I groaned, smacking my hand to my face.

She laughed happily. “Had a whole platoon behind him…and a SWAT team showed up first, though, searched the hotel rooms and kinda did the honor guard thing. Jesse was laughing his ass off the entire time, but they were really reporting to Fei.”

“We didn’t know if Jun’d found you or not,” I returned, studying them both. “It’s one of those formalities.”

“Duo…”

I looked to the door at Wufei’s voice.

He moved across the room, studying my eyes…as the heart monitor sped up.

Heero could control his hear-rate, but me? No…

Marlea looked to Alex as she moved out of the way, and Trowa grinned as he stepped back.

He was either going to hurt me, or he was going to break down.

…or both.

I held him as best I could as my leg throbbed where he’d punched me.

“I hate you so bad,” he whispered in my ear.

“I love you,” I returned, not letting him pull away. “I’m sorry.”

“Sure…he’ll apologize to him,” Marlea noted wryly.

“I’m gonna kick your little blond ass,” I informed the girl.

She gave me a challenging look. “You wish.”

“If I didn’t have bullet holes in my chest, I’d so chase you down.”

She laughed delightedly, moving up to the bedside again as she studied me.

Wufei pulled away to study my eyes a long moment, then sighed…and hit me in the same spot again.

I hissed, giving him a look. “Wufei…”

He grinned impishly at me.

“Oh, so he is awake,” Quatre noted dryly.

I sighed. “Where is my wife? She should be present with my daughter and my son.”

“So you don’t want to see us?” Heero asked happily…he was holding a baby wrapped in a blanket.

I studied the bundle, trying to guess the size.

“I mean…we all come over here every day to watch you sleep, and you’re not happy to see us?”

“Well…I do…I…” I sighed.

“Daddy! Mom! Dad’s awake! Hurry up, Mom! Heero!” Ashley’s bossy little voice was music to my ears. “Heero! He wants to see Dean.”

Heero grinned as Ashley bounced between everyone and darted up on to the bed itself, climbing up my legs to sit on me and study me with narrowed eyes.

“What?” I asked, wary.

“Mom said you were being stupid again,” she informed me.

“And your mother is always right,” I agreed, grinning at her.

“She told me that I can be mad at you, so I am,” she noted.

“Give me a kiss, then.”

“What?”

“Give me a kiss,” I retorted, giving her the same sort of bossy look she was giving me.

She crawled up the side without tubing and leaned in to kiss me before I yanked her to me and held her a long moment. The spots on my chest weren’t happy about it, but she wasn’t struggling against me…as she started to cry.

Yeah…my baby girl was strong, but my baby girl was a baby girl. She clung to me.

“In case you couldn’t tell,” Heero added, moving to stand beside me, “we talked this morning.”

“All right,” I muttered as Ash finally pulled away. “Look at you,” I muttered, wiping at the tears. “You look terrible when you cry.”

“You look terrible when you cry,” she retorted, wiping at my tears.

I smiled at her.

“Heero,” she snapped almost impatiently, “he wants to see Dean.”

“Don’t take that tone with me,” Heero retorted, lowering Dean so he was sitting against the bed near his sister and blinking at me…he smiled.

“Hey, junior,” I muttered, grabbing his hand. “What are you doing?” I muttered, shaking his arm so he smiled larger, his entire face beaming since he was being played with. “I bet your mommy’s pissed at me,” I noted as he made an excited noise. “I bet she is…yeah…she got sissy all pissed at me…”

Ashley giggled.

“Okay, Ashley,” Selena noted from beyond Heero. “You need to get off the bed now.”

“Aww, Mom…dad didn’t tell me too…”

“Listen to your mother,” I muttered to the girl as Heero moved with Dean away from me. “She wins all the arguments anyway.”

Ashley grinned her wicked grin, then turned to Trowa so he’d take her down.

…it seemed like years since I’d seen my wife.

She smiled at me as she moved closer, and I could see the dark rings under her eyes, too. She moved up to the bed and slid onto it, crossing her legs as she gave me a pointed look.

“I’m sorry?” I offered instantly.

She arched her brow.

“I won't do it again?”

Raised eyebrows.

“I shouldn’t have done it at all?”

She tilted her head.

“Uh…I was…stupid?”

She started laughing, leaning down to hug me tightly.

“Oww…” I noted, trying to hug her back.

“You’re such an asshole,” she informed me pointedly, kissing me.

I let that carry on for a bit before sighing and pulling away to nuzzle her.

“Hilde and Relena are going to come later with Jacob,” she noted, touching my face. “Do you want Dusty and Faye?”

“If it weren’t such a hassle, I’d say get everyone here now…I don’t know how long I’m gonna be awake.”

“You’re not that special,” she informed me.

I grinned, kissing her again.

“Duo…Som is terrified that you’re going to hate him,” she said quietly.

“Hate him for what?” I demanded, rolling my eyes. “He hasn’t done anything.”

“Well, he did run around half-dressed trying to catch you up when he first got here,” she noted, her fingers exploring my face.

“Mm, that feels good,” I returned, thinking about it. “Shit, Nira…it was all in fun when he first got here…and then I got over it. He actually got the shit done I needed done.”

She giggled a bit.

“What?” I asked.

“Oh, I dunno,” Quatre mused, hitting me in the leg.

I focused on him in irritation…and noted Som standing beside him with wide eyes.

Selena giggled more.

“Would you stop doing that!?”

End

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E/N: Ties That Bind...the story of living, learning, and getting over it. One more life by the wayside, one more stumbling block down the road. No one ever said life would be easy, but stick with it and you'll make it to the end. For the years that've passed since I started Blood on the Window, I always saw this as a trilogy. For some reason, though, it's not. There's at least one more story waiting here, and hopefully it won't take me another two years to spin it out, huh? Thanks to everyone who bore with the waiting, I hope I didn't dissapoint. ~Kye