Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Duo's Jewel of Peace ❯ Chapter 8

Duo's Jewel 8/8

By Nix Winter

Disclaimers: I don't own GW. I don't get to make profit from this story until I manage to own the characters.

Pairings: 1+2, 3x4, 5xoc female

Warnings: total fantasy science of the kind that makes me go "I wish!"

Notes: I'm told that Heero has a type A blood type, and that Duo has a type B. I'm going to be bad and declare for the sake of this story, that Duo has type AB. The reason for this will become apparent farther down in the story. I hope this is just a small change and doesn't bother anyone.

Duo's Jewel

It was very simple. Duo needed a heart. Heero had one. If Duo died, he didn't think he'd need his anymore. So it was a very simple. Some missions could not fail. The annoying woman from Hospice had left, and Heero wasn't sure just when. He laid Duo's hand down, noticed the bruising around the IV line and promised Duo that he'd complete this mission as well as he could.

Mission mindset settled around him. He needed to write two letters. He needed a gun. Mission mindset was harder now than it used to be and he couldn't get to Duo's lips, so he leaned over and kissed his cheek, taking unfair advantage of his friend. "I told the nurse I was your life partner, Duo," he whispered, "I don't know if you feel like that about me, but I do about you. I love you. I love you enough to give you my heart, in every way. Live Duo, you have to live."

Duo moved slightly, head held in place y the tubes in his mouth, his nose, and for a moment Heero was afraid that those eyes might open and make this harder by far. He couldn't help it, his fingers caressed over brown hair softly. He didn't know how he'd make love to Duo, if he'd had the chance, but he wanted this touch, wanted to feel that hair for just this moment. He left one of his tears on Duo's ear, slipping around to pool at the back where restrained hands couldn't reach it. It was soon joined by tears from Duo's eyes, even if they didn't open.

Heero walked, back straight, eyes cold. Now it was just a mission, no more emotion.

In a hotel close to the hospital…

Quatre sat up straight in bed, panting like he would never catch his breath again. "Trowa! Trowa!"

The taller man eased up onto one elbow, reaching out to pull his lover closer, comforting him gently. Trowa had expected Duo to die. This saddened him. What shamed him was that he was much more concerned about his lover's reaction to the impending death of their friend than he was worried about the death. Duo was his friend. Heero was his friend, but Quatre was his soul. "I'm here, come, lay back down."

"No! Heero! Oh, Trowa! Heero's going to kill himself!"

Trowa didn't find that surprising. Heero had come on a mission, and sometimes the favorite pilot of the Earth's Sphere wasn't all that different from when Trowa'd first meet him. "I'll go to him, Quatre. He'll be at the hospital. If Duo had died already, they would have called us."

At the hospital ~

In the hospital garden, barren as it presently was, Heero gave himself fifteen minutes to write a letter to Duo. For the first time that he could remember, poetic images and words flowed through him as if he were in a daze, but all that made it to the paper was, "I love you." There was just too much emotion and weight and Heero was tired of it.

The second letter stated his will that his body should be donated, that while the heart could only be used for Duo Maxwell, the other organs could be harvested and used wherever suitable.

In Duo's room ~

Duo's heart stopped. The monitor screamed. Medical personnel reacted. His doctor ran from his office, the Prime Minister's barely veiled threats like demons around him. There was no way he was going to pronounce Duo Maxwell. The crash cart was waiting for him and he broke rules. "Scrubs! Now. Get me an OR cart!"

Seconds counted. Procedure didn't count for nearly as much if the Prime Minister was willing to break the law to save someone. The head nurse looked at the senior doctor, assessed, and suspected. "You can't open him here," she said, already slipping into her own sterile scrubs. They might buy the boy a few more hours by doing this, but they'd weaken him, making it harder for a transplant to succeed. It would cost them a heart and a patient, and the doctor's license.

"I will not let him die." The doctor snarled. "I'd open him on the street and massage his heart forever. He can't die."

The head nurse didn't understand why. Duo didn't seem overly important to her, not with another several hundred injured people and more that couldn't even get into the hospital right now. He was just a money less do gooder, a murderer on top of it. Her skilled hands were moving though, pulling the nasogastric tube out, then the ventilator, as they'd be doing him manually. Other personnel had the patient stripped and the bed up and the doctor reached in and took hold of Duo's damaged heart.

Duo himself was standing on the other side of the room, dressed neatly in black and white, hair full and shiny, an amused smirk on his face. Sister Helen stood next to him, a cross in her hands, a soft prayer on her lip, and Duo felt like he'd come home finally. Watching some crazy doctor pry his chest open was just amusing in this state. When he closed his eyes he could feel Quatre crying, and he send thoughts of comfort and peace to the blond. Such a good man, was Quatre.

Sister Helen finished her prayer and wrapped her arms around Duo, hugging him tightly, but when she spoke, he couldn't hear her. She looked so beautiful, just as he'd first seen her. Her smile was joyous and she ran fingers that felt solid though his hair, and he read her lips, "My son, you were the son of my heart, Duo Maxwell, but you can't come home just yet. I'm so very proud of you. God loves you, Duo, but you must find Heero. He is your family now as well, and your daughter. I love you, my son."

Even spirits cry, as tears start in the soul long before they touch the cheeks. "Sister! Don't leave me. It's too hard here, too sad!"

"Find Heero," she said, soundlessly.

Duo had his mission mode too. Turning his back on the disappearing Sister Helen and his own body which was open and way too red, he ran out of the room, trying to think where Heero might be. It wasn't so hard, to find him really. Duo found his heart drew him, like a golden line between them, he followed, running with a strength he hadn't had in months. Up the stairs, down the hall, into something labeled the 'blood and organ bank', Duo ran, passing easily through doors and people. It was the best stealth he'd ever pulled off and he was really pleased with himself. He didn't like finding Heero in a place of that name though, and liked even less what he heard Trowa saying, "Yuy, consider carefully. They will not allow this. They will not let you give your heart to Duo."

Duo stopped, back against a wall of tan colored coolers. He didn't know he could be a ghost and still have his heart beating a mile a minute and taking up his mouth.

Heero's voice was that deadly serious mission first asshole voice that Duo rather hated. "They will have no choice. They can not allow Duo to die if they have a donor for him."

"Heero," Trowa said, and Duo heard the step that the taller man took. "Your life is important as well. Duo would not want this."

"How do you know?" And this voice of Heero's wrung Duo's soul. So much pain, so much agony, Duo almost wished for the mission asshole voice. "How do you know? He loved being alive, Trowa. He was so much life and I should have been here sooner. I should have come with him! I should have protected him! I should have told him I loved him when he could hear me!"

Duo stepped away from the coolers and around the corner, and there was his Heero, pistol pressed to the back of his head, just behind his ear. Duo tilted his head and smiled. Heero. Heero was so beautiful, so brave, so damn stubborn. There wasn't anything in heaven that counted half as much as those blue eyes and the chance to see them smiling. Heero closed his eyes. Duo lunged. Heero squeezed the trigger. Spirits are faster than bullets though and Heero's arm shot up, grazing that stubborn head, tracing a line of red, but the bullet imbedded itself in the metal of the bank's ceiling. Heero dropped to his knees and Duo's spirit kissed him.

For just a moment, Heero thought he could feel Duo's lips on his, that sweet coffee chocolate taste that he'd always imagined Duo would taste like. Braid against his thigh where he knelt, he just knew he felt the weight of Duo's braid on his thigh and when he opened his eyes, he saw them, those dancing violet eyes, smiling and healthy. "I love you,' Heero heard the whispered words, "I will always love you."

"Duo!" Heero screamed, but Trowa had gotten close enough to take the gun now, and had already disassembled it. "Duo! Don't leave me! Duo! Please! Duo!"

Then Duo felt the pull, felt it jerk so hard that it hurt. If this was dying it wasn't supposed to bloody hurt so much! He wrapped his arms around his chest, feeling pain like his chest was ripped open, his heart cut out, even in his spirit form. "OH fuck me!" He snarled and then he was gone.

Heero just sat there, feeling that Duo had gone, trying to etch the look of those ghostly violet eyes in his mind forever. That was the last thing he'd ever thing about.

Duo's doctor stepped around the bank of coolers just the way Duo had. His scrubs were gone, but he was still dotted with Duo's blood, a grim and furious look on his face. "You! Selfish prick! Get up off my floor. I need your heart, the DNA of it. Your prime minister friend has gotten this hospital into dangerous illegal experiments. You don't mind, do you? Contributing DNA?"

"Why?" Trowa asked, suspicious, more so because of the scent of blood. It brought back battle scenes for him, brought him back to being Noname. "Heero's heart is not available."

"I don't take hearts from living 'donors'. I have gotten Maxwell's heart beating again. He's on full life support. We have maybe 36 hours, and we're going to build him a new heart, and fast. So if your friend wants his DNA in the heart, he'd better get up off the floor and swear that he'll have no more weapons in my hospital."

Heero looked up, finding breathing almost painful. "Duo's alive? I'll help, tell me what to do?"

Thirty-six hours was not enough time. Ming explained via video phone, transferred data that was decades ahead of medical science that Duo's doctor had even thought of as theoretical. He created stem cells, from donor cells taken from a baby that he was told Heero had sired. He didn't really believe it, but he didn't have time for the usual checks and research that he'd normally have done. In twenty four hours, he had created something that he would have bet his life, even with the information that Ming had given him, he would have sworn he'd have needed two years to create. And yet there it was, beautiful, perfect, the healthiest infant heart he'd ever seen, build of the DNA of Heero Yuy and the stem cells of one little baby girl named Jewel.

Heero had built equipment that Ming had sent specifications for, technology that would save untold lives beyond Maxwell. Within the field generated by some of this equipment, Duo's new heart beat, and aged. The plan was to let it age, just until about a 10 year old equivalent, another three hours. The doctor slept. Heero slept, one hand on the plastic tent that encased Duo in a sterile environment.

Relena had arrived and she had been allowed to see what her political pirating had accomplished. So there she stood, in front of what was genetically, and emotionally, Heero's beating heart. It was a heart that would beat in Duo Maxwell's chest. Seeing there, she didn't mind so much. It was the heart of a child and made her see them both in a new light, covered them both with a kind of innocence that she couldn't associate with herself just then. What she didn't see was the Chinese woman watching the room from a vid screen, but who was now watching her, intently.

Relena's mobile phone rang and she answered, listening and watching the little heart beat. "Yes, yes, of course, we will want to set up an aide package. I will be back to the office soon, Manon. Can't you just put everything on hold until I get there? I need to be here with my friends."

Ming watched this woman walk out. She didn't know who she was, but the red head no longer interested her. Ming decided she needed to go to L2. It was a lovely, lawless colony anyway. And who ever that lady was, she suddenly got named Lady Charity in Ming's mind.

A few hours later ~

Trowa and Wufei were both there when the doctors came to get Duo and Heero had the distinct feeling that he was being baby sat. Heero thought the installation of Duo's new heart took longer than the creation did. During the 18 hours of surgery, Heero ended up holding Duo's Jewel rather more than he would have liked. The child grew on him though, which he supposed was only fitting, as he was legally her guardian. He'd been required to register her birth and he'd named her Jewel Yuy-Maxwell. He hoped Duo approved.

At one point in the surgery, Duo was literally heartless, and that left his spirit free to wander the halls. He found Heero sleeping once, with Jewel on his chest, holding her just as he liked to himself, and he smiled. He didn't think he was going to die, even though he didn't really understand what they'd done to save him.

It was two weeks, three days and four hours, thirty six minutes when he finally woke, back in his own body. Heero was there, as he had been in many dreams, but this time Heero leaned forward and kissed his forehead. Duo took a deep breath, felt his chest expand, contract, didn't feel any pain. "Heero?"

"Welcome back, Duo." Heero smiled just a tiny bit.

"I go some where?" Duo asked, his voice hoarse. "I had the damnest dream, that you were going to shot yourself in the head. Tell me that's not true?"

"I'm here. We're alive. Are you in pain?" Heero reached for Duo's hand, a hand he'd grown comfortable to holding. It was odd now that Duo was awake, how those fingers didn't seem to fold so perfectly into his hand now, instead, those fingers moved against his, seeking to hold his hand in return.

"No pain. Feel really good. You been waiting long for me to wake up?"

Heero closed his eyes for a moment. This was Duo, flippant, casual. How to explain. "I've been waiting a life time for myself to wake up. You about three weeks. Trowa and Quatre are here, Wufei and his partner as well. The children at the church are all safe. You have a new heart."

"A new heart? Heero, you wouldn't give your life for mine, would you? I don't want your heart!"

Heero looked pained, his dropping down to his feet, fingers trying to pull away, but Duo held onto him, not with the strength in his hand, because he didn't have any, but just that Heero couldn't pull way, as long as Duo tried to hold him. "I'm sorry, Duo."

"Heero!"

"You do have my heart, Duo." Heero laid his palm on Duo's chest, and felt it beating there, against the rapidly healed chest. "This heart within you was created from my DNA and from your little girl's cells. You have a brand new heart, Duo, but it's still my heart."

Duo closed his eyes and took a slow breath, slowly moving his hand to cover Heero's. The last thing he remembered was… shooting the man who he thought had hurt Heero. "Then will you accept my heart in return? I'm in love with you, Heero, like sexually attracted and uh, you're my best friend, so like I know, you're with Relena and all, but yeah, um," Duo squeezed Heero's fingers with all his strength and sought for more words in the silence. He as delusional, totally delusional, to think that Heero had been crying for him, whispering that he loved him. Yeah! Right. The silence drew out a bit. Heero was with Relena and that was best. "I'm sorry, Heero. Just forget I said anything, okay? Please?"

That was when warmth lingered over his lips. When he opened his eyes, he found blue eyes staring into his, then thin lips pressed to his. It was a virgin kiss, just lips to lips and stillness. Duo blinked, tilted his head just a little and slipped his tongue out to touch Heero's lips. Heero jolted, eyes going wider, but then he leaned a little forward, his tongue shyly moving out to meet Duo's. One heart. One kiss, and Heero was not with Relena.