Moments in a Dorm Room Part 7
Out of Commission
When Duo opened his eyes in the morning, he glanced at his clock, frowned, and shut his eyes again. Maybe it would change things if he pretended to go back to sleep, he thought, but his mind was unfortunately not sleepy enough to buy the faulty logic. Dammit. It was too early in the morning to be irritable.
He cracked open one eyelid and peered at his clock once more. The time was still as he expected. Three minutes before his alarm clock was scheduled to go off -- scheduled in theory, anyway, since it never actually went off. Every night, he turned his alarm clock on, and every morning, he woke up four minutes before it started beeping and he turned it off before it could do so. Having an accurate internal clock was convenient, yes, but he found himself really looking forward to the day that it sprouted an on/off switch.
With a mental groan, he flipped his alarm off and dragged himself out of bed, thinking just how marginally amusing it would be if the alarm clock didn't actually work. He didn't remember ever testing it out. With a shake of his head for clarity, he gathered a few things and trudged toward the bathroom, careful to make enough noise that Heero wouldn't get edgy. He knew his roommate was probably awake anyway. Heero usually gave him a few minutes head start, then got dressed and was ready to use the bathroom by the time Duo emerged.
This day differed. When Duo came out of the bathroom, Heero was very uncharacteristically still in bed. Though the young man had started out on his back, he had shifted slightly onto his side, covers drawn up partially over his head. Duo blinked in wonderment, then shrugged philosophically and went on to gather his things together for the day. A couple of minutes later, he was ready to head out, and Heero still hadn't budged.
Duo frowned, then decided he ought to do the conscientious thing. Standing over the prone form, he nudged the bed frame with his foot, shaking the structure enough to alert, but not alarm. "Hey. Wakey, wakey."
No response.
He tried again. "Hey, Heero? Your classes get cancelled this morning or something?" The blankets stirred in a manner consistent with a person reluctant to get out of bed. He sighed. Well, if the boy wanted to sleep in, it wasn't his problem. He figured his moral obligation had been discharged. "Whatever. I'm outta here."
He went to class. Heero managed to make an appearance, slipping in with his head down right before the teacher called roll. For some reason, Duo's respect for Heero rose another notch. He hadn't thought that the serious 01 would ever even dream of being late for a class.
His expectations were exceeded when Heero cut his last two classes altogether, or so he assumed. The five of them did not have all of their classes together, although they all had each class with at least one of the others. Duo reasoned that it was a carefully calculated move on the government's part to make sure they didn't feel isolated and cast out, while simultaneously encouraging them to meet others. This made Duo rather disgruntled. He didn't like it that the government could and would arrange pieces of his life to its own liking. If they didn't live next to each other, the government probably would have kept them apart to keep them from fomenting rebellion, too.
When Heero didn't show up to their shared class after lunch, Duo spared it only a moment's wistful thought. Heero's truancy was just about the only interesting thing that happened all morning. Maybe next time, Duo would join him.
Duo lingered in the halls long enough to avoid most of the student rush before heading back to his room at his own unfrenzied, uncrowded pace. He had already dropped his backpack on the floor against the back of his desk, pried off his boots, and was circling around to gain access to the functional side of his desk when he noticed something quite curious -- Heero was in bed.
Something strange was definitely happening. Heero did not nap, and he certainly didn't cut class in order to nap. "Hey," Duo called out. By now, he was no longer surprised that he received no response. What was this, some sort of silent treatment?
"Heero," he said more loudly. He waited a few seconds out in silence, then shuffled over to his roommate's side of the room and, as he had done that morning, kicked lightly at the bed frame. "Hello, anyone home?"
Now that he was close enough to make some more detailed observations, he noticed the pallor of Heero's skin, and suddenly felt as cold and clammy as Heero looked. "Heero?" he repeated, even more loudly this time as his chest tightened in a precursor of terror. His wide eyes focused absurdly on the tiny gleams of sweat he could pick out on Heero's foreheard, and with a determined blink he shook himself out of the brief stupor and reached out to shake his roommate tentatively by his shoulder, something he ordinarily would never have done.
He half wanted Heero to startle violently and seize his arm in a fierce grip, but he was not gratified. He shook the shoulder more firmly and repeated his hail, then jerked his hand back as if burnt when Heero's head seemed to loll lifelessly to one side. Stumbling back a step, he nearly jumped out of his skin when he finally won a low moan.
Far from pleased, he backpedalled another step, and then another, and then he all but ran from the room and down the hall to another door and started pounding on it. "Quatre!" he called through the wood, only a choking breathlessness keeping it from becoming a shout.
When the door opened, he practically fell against the blonde's chest. "Duo? What's wrong?"
"It's--" Duo gasped out, his words tripping over themselves in their haste. "I can't--! He's not waking up!"
"Who?" Quatre interjected, his single word cutting through the haze. His demeanor immediately took on a serious air. He could feel something approaching panic coming off of the other boy, and he knew this was no joke or false alarm. Behind him, Trowa glanced up from the book he was reading and tensed.
"Heero." Duo made some vague gestures in the direction of his room. "I can't wake him up!"
There was a brief second allotted for an astonished blink, and then Quatre went into action, making his way swiftly towards the room of their comrades and perforce dragging Duo along with him since the former Deathscythe pilot had latched on to his shirt and gave no signs of letting go. He pushed the door open and wove his way to Heero's side. As they approached that side of the room, Duo released him and stayed back to hover nervously by his dresser.
Lying on his back, one arm draped over his midsection, Heero showed no more signs of consciousness than he had when Duo had fled the room in search of their teammate. Quatre took a single glance at the situation and fell to his knees by the bedside. "Heero," he tried experimentally, prodding the teen's shoulder. Getting no response, as expected, he immediately started checking vital signs, not even glancing up when Trowa materialized at his elbow seconds later. Heero's pulse beneath his fingers was strong but accelerated, and just short of erratic. His color was pale, his temperature raised. Quatre lifted a hand to check his pupils, but when his fingers fell near Heero's eye, Heero twitched.
"Heero?" Quatre called again, lading his voice with a sense of power and urgency. He managed to lure out another slight head movement, coupled with one more quiet groan. "Heero, can you hear me?"
Lips parted reluctantly, but eventually let out a breath of acknowledgment.
Quatre wasn't quite sure yet whether that was worthy of a sigh of relief. "Heero, can you tell me what happened? What's wrong?"
The effort was obvious as the mouth moved in minute, soundless syllables. Heero paused, then tried again with just enough substance to be discernable. "Nothin'... happened."
The blond frowned, trying to figure out whether Heero was just being typically Heero, or if nothing really did happen to precipitate anything. Perhaps it was something spontaneous, like the rupturing of an appendix. "What's wrong? Where does it hurt?"
Heero grimaced faintly, his eyes still shut and lines still marring his brow as he struggled to find some words through the muzziness. It wasn't easy when he could feel his consciousness wavering. Despite all that, he made the effort to try and push himself up on to his elbows, made even more uncomfortable and vulnerable with lying down while everyone else hovered around him, but he failed miserably in the endeavor, as expected.
Duo stepped into the gap, arms wrapped tightly around himself as he ventured forth a wary step and recognized the pinched look on his roommate's face. "Shit," he breathed. "Tell me that's not just the mother of all headaches."
The puff of breath in response sounded like an 'aa'.
Quatre turned to Duo with a firm look. "Headache?"
Duo stood mesmerized for a second before he swallowed and answered. "Yeah, headache. Heero's been getting these migraines lately. Bad ones... but not this bad."
"Migraines? Migraines don't generally knock a person out."
"Yeah, well I guess Heero's just special then."
"Have they been getting worse?"
"I dunno. Maybe? It's hard to tell with Heero."
"Zero?" Trowa said. His eyes had stayed on Heero, and he thought he had successfully puzzled out what it was Heero's lips were trying to form.
After the chill had gone down their backs at hearing the name of the dreaded system, Duo asked, "What the hell does Zero have to do with anything?"
At the same time, Quatre asked a question of his own. "You think the headaches are related to the Zero system?"
It didn't look like Heero was trying to correct their impression, so they must have figured right. Quatre started analyzing the possibilities aloud. "He hasn't been near Zero for a while, so if it's not something Zero is doing now, it must be something Zero did. Maybe longterm exposure to the system caused some sort of damage..." He paused, then came back with decision in his voice. "Duo, get Wufei."
"What?" The tone of authority snapped Duo out of his haze.
"Trowa, get the car. We need to take him to a doctor."
"Doctor?" Duo repeated in protest. "We can't take him to a doctor."
"I know it goes against the grain, Duo, but it can't be helped. If the headaches have been getting worse... We need to know what's happening, and we can't find out by ourselves."
"But Heero wouldn't..." Of course Heero wouldn't want to see a doctor. He'd set his own goddamn leg before seeing a doctor. And he'd do it without the benefit of painkillers and other advances in modern medicine. Duo tried from another direction. "What the hell are the doctors going to find out? They don't know anything about Zero, and they aren't exactly going to rush us through the ER for a bloody headache, either!"
"We're bringing him to the base doctors."
"What?" He managed to keep it from coming out as a squawk. "You want us to go running back to base?"
"I know how you feel about them, Duo, but like you said, this is probably a little beyond the scope of a regular hospital. Now get Wufei." When Duo didn't budge, Quatre shook his head impatiently. "Fine, I'll get Wufei. You stay with him. Trowa?"
Trowa nodded, and the two of the them left the room on their tasks.
Duo glared at the door after it shut behind them, but a shifting from Heero's bed brought his attention back to their fallen comrade. He studied Heero for a little bit before speaking in a hesitant voice. "Heero? You're... okay, right?"
Mentally preparing himself first, Heero willed his eyes to open. It was easier now that some time had passed and there weren't so many people in the room. He blinked blearily at the ceiling a few times before he managed to cobble together an answer. "I'll be okay."
Once again, he tried to push himself upright, unnerved by his show of weakness, but when he faltered, Duo rushed forth from where he had been standing back at a safe distance and helped him sit up. He knew how galling it must have been for Heero to accept the assistance, and ordinarily he might not have given it, but it just disturbed him too much to see Heero so infirm. At least he could pretend that it was business as usual if Heero wasn't flat on his back mimicking unconsciousness.
Heero took a careful breath as he waited for the dizziness to pass. When it became clear that it wouldn't be doing so any time soon, he resigned himself to enduring it, and carefully enunciated his words through the white noise in his head. "But I think... it might be wise... if I paid a visit to the doctors anyway." See, that wasn't showing weakness, just... taking precautions.
"Are you sure?"
Heero understood Duo's mistrust of doctors, especially government doctors, but given his condition, he felt his options were limited. He had already tried waiting the headaches out, had been silently enduring them for a month now, and things had only gotten worse. He wasn't particularly anxious to see what would come after debilitation to the point of being unable to get out of bed. Thinking better of moving his head in a silent response, he murmured, "Aa."
"I mean, have you tried just taking an asprin or something?" Duo was well aware of how lame that sounded, but this whole situation had fried his brain. He didn't want to see Heero like this, and he didn't want to visit a hospital just now, nor put themselves at the mercy of the government. Hell, even Zero was involved. He didn't want any of this.
"Duo. I see things." Asprin wouldn't help with the mild hallucinations he had experienced. Even now he felt like there was a golden glow overlying his thought processes. Zero was not to be dismissed lightly.
Duo inhaled slowly, then let the breath out with equal deliberation, trying to get a hold of his nerves. "Okay. Okay." Get it together. "Let's, uh, get you up, shall we?"
He was working carefully to get Heero into a travel-ready state when Quatre came back with Wufei. Between the three of them, they managed to get Heero downstairs without too much jarring via the elevator they never used. Duo found it grimly amusing that they would end up using it in an emergency of all times, in defiance of what all the signs advised.
Whereas normally the middle seat in the back was reserved for the loser sorry enough to get sandwiched in the most uncomfortable position, now it was used to support Heero on both sides as they made their trip out to the base. It never seemed longer to Duo, especially once Heero started drifting in and out of consciousness again somewhere along the way.
He almost would have been glad when they got to base and the alerted med team gathered Heero up and swept him away, if only it didn't involve the base, a med team, a gurney, tense uncertainty, and a Heero whose eyes had been twitching rapidly beneath his lids for the last fifteen minutes.
*****
"How are you holding up, Duo?"
Duo started when he heard Quatre's voice directed at him. Most of the med team had taken Heero away to the bowels of the infirmary, leaving two members of their staff to interrogate the remaining pilots on what light they could shed on the condition of their teammate. Since the conclusion of that interview, very little had been spoken between them.
"I'm fine, Q. I'm not the one being god-knows-what-ed back there by the docs." He waved vaguely at the closed double doors. "It's been like an hour, hasn't it? What are they doing to him?"
"Are you sure, Duo?" Quatre asked, sidestepping the avoidance for the moment. Duo had been rather... skittish at first, and he had just spent the last half-hour staring silently at nothing in particular. Duo was more upset than he was letting on. "You're the one that found him..."
Duo shrugged, not lying about the matter, but not admitting much, either. "It threw me for a loop, is all. I'm over it. I mean, Heero just... doesn't do this sort of thing often, you know?"
"He'll be fine, Duo. I know he will."
"How often does Zero leave a person 'fine', Quatre?" He shuddered internally at the memory of the images Zero had shown him when he had been plugged into the system. He was pretty sure he would have cracked if he had been seeing even minor echoes of those same images over and over for the last month.
"Zero's not just a bad thing," Trowa said from his place in the chairs across from them. He had been thumbing through a National Geographic magazine.
Duo snorted. "Yeah, says the guy that got hit hard enough by Zero to reverse the trauma done to him earlier by Zero. Uh, no offense, Q," he appended with a weak smile.
Though Quatre grimaced a bit, he returned a similarly weak smile. Had Heero not forced him to use and overcome the Zero system in the final weeks of battle, he might have had the same sentiments towards Zero as Duo did.
"I, too, found that Zero showed me a clearer path," Wufei reminded them.
Gritting his teeth and trying to accept that they were not ganging up on him, he waved sharply at the backrooms of the infirmary again. "Oh, and I guess Heero passed out today because he was walking a clearer path?"
"Heero used the system longer than any of us," Quatre reasoned. "If he passed out because of any ill side effects, it's only because he used the system to help us win the war. Without him, without Zero, we wouldn't have had what we needed to counter Epyon."
"You countered Dorothy on Zero just fine without the goddamned system."
"Dorothy wasn't using it for hand-to-hand combat."
"And that made a difference?" The door to the backrooms swung open, and one of the doctors strode out with a chart in his hand. "Finally," Duo muttered under his breath before jumping to his feet.
"Dr. Schultz," Quatre said. "How he is?"
The doctor adjusted his glasses before answering. "He's not in any immediate danger, but I believe that, had we waited much longer, he might have suffered permanent brain damage." He consulted his chart for a moment. "We have him sedated right now to lower his brain activity to safer levels."
"Sedated?" Duo muttered loudly enough for everyone to hear. "We could have sedated him ourselves."
The doctor harrumphed and shot him an unpleasant look. "Yes, well, it seems this is indeed related to the Zero system. We've taken numerous scans, and...."
*****
Duo sat quietly by the side of Heero's bed, relieved beyond belief that the machines monitoring Heero's vitals were not beeping aloud. They whirred steadily in their mechanical contemplation, but they were only observers; Heero required no assistance in supporting himself. Granted, the ex-pilots had been left with strong words of caution about the uncertainty in Heero's condition, but Duo felt he could ignore that for the moment and just pretend everything was going to be okay.
Some masochistic need drove him to inflict himself with this sight. He wasn't comforted in the slightest. Things within him had finally loosened with the image of Heero asleep peacefully instead of ashen and ill, but it still wasn't in their dorm room. Strange how, just a day ago, he considered that room a cage, and now he was itching to go back to it as a comfort zone.
The others weren't worried at all. They had no doubts that Heero would be alright. That annoyed Duo more than he cared to admit. "I don't get it, Yuy," he spoke softly to the slumbering form. "The guys have all seen you, same as I have, too out of it to even lift your head from your pillow, and yet they're all still convinced you're some great superhero. Okay, Trowa, maybe, I can understand. He watched you bounce back from your big boom. But really. They don't even blame Zero or anything. It's like some stupid price we had to pay for peace. Some badge of courage, some sign of your sacrifice. I see someone sick as anyone else, and they see someone bearing war-inflicted, Zero-inflicted battle scars, and ain't that just great and mighty and noble of you. How do you do it?"
"Wish I knew. Th'n maybe I coul' stop doin' it."
Duo stared down at him, at eyes yet unopened. If he hadn't seen the lips move, he might have thought he was hearing voices. The words had been slurred and the voice rusty, but they had indeed been released into the air by the figure in the bed. He glanced at the graphs monitoring Heero's brain activity and noted that it did indicate an increase. That was good. He knew Heero could regulate his breathing and his heart rate, but he'd be a little worried if Heero could control his brain waves, too. Then again, if he could do that, then they wouldn't even be in this mess. "What the hell are you doing awake?"
"Wha' th' 'ell am I on?" Heero asked instead. A flex of his left hand confirmed an IV insert. He could feel the difference. His thoughts were dull and sluggish, whereas the last thoughts he could remember had been altogether too fast and out of his control, reminiscent of the first few minutes he had been hooked up to the Zero system, before he had wrestled it under his control.
"Isn't 'where am I?' supposed to be the first question?" Duo joked nervously, a little off-balance. He hadn't meant for Heero to have heard his earlier rambling. "Although maybe I should just be glad it wasn't 'who am I?'"
"You're here. Mus' be safe. 'Sides, I wasn't out th' whole time." He blinked his heavy eyelids until they managed to crack open enough for him to see a blank ceiling, an IV rack, some curtains, and his roommate's face hovering nearby. It took a few moments, but he eventually succeeded in beating his brain into recognizing enough details to confirm his memories of being in the base infirmary. But that was all he really remembered. He recalled the familiar face of Dr. Schultz, bright lights, unintelligible voices, but they were all jumbled together and covered with the golden haze that reeked of Zero's interference.
"Heh, well..." Duo scratched his head with uncertainty. "I'm not really sure what you're on, specifically. I think the docs are kinda making up your medication as we go along." He felt remiss in not knowing. A member of their team was down, and they should have been covering him, watching his back. They were as fully apprised of the situation as they could have been, but Heero's case had involved some rather hefty neurochemistry, so they hadn't been qualified to follow events as closely as they would have liked. Still, he knew enough, and he passed that on to Heero now.
"But basically, what's happened is that the docs have been testing like mad, and they've decided that Zero has a few side effects from long-term use. Wish they'd mentioned that sooner, huh? Turns out you're suffering withdrawal, more or less. You know, Zero boosts performance, increased brain activity and all that shit, and I guess your brain chemistry adapted to deal with it. And then you stopped using the system, and bam! withdrawal. Your brain's producing too much of some neurotransmitters, and they haven't been breaking down as well as they used to when you were on Zero, so they've been building up, and I assume you're intimately familiar with the symptoms of that by now.
"So your brain activity was, heh, unhealthily high when we got here, to say the least -- I mean, you were getting delirious for a while there -- so the docs got you sedated to try and keep a handle on that, which is why you really shouldn't be awake." He paused to poke Heero accusingly on the shoulder. Why couldn't Heero have woken up on someone else's watch? "But I wouldn't be surprised if your brain is burning its way through all the sedatives at a pretty fast clip, at the rate it was going. And besides the sedatives, the docs have been trying to come up with ways to get your neurotransmitters back under control, but of course, they've never done that before, so they're kinda guessing, maybe taking things on the safer side since you don't seem to be in any immediate danger anymore, but I suppose maybe you didn't want to hear that? Whatever. Anyway, that's what's going on, and sorry I don't know exactly what they're pumping into you, but, well, that's that, I guess." He shrugged guiltily, avoiding eye contact.
"Ah," Heero murmured. He hadn't quite managed to process all of that, but he got enough out of it to understand what was going on, more or less. He'd ask for a more thorough briefing when he was in a clearer state of mind. Dammit, he hated drugs, hated being all fuzzy-minded, but from what he gathered, the alternative right now was being on another one of Zero's trips through wonderland, which left him very fuzzy anyway, so he supposed he couldn't complain. He was almost starting to get used to being unable to concentrate on anything. "Where're th' others?"
"We've been taking turns. Less input and stimulation for Zero to muck with that way."
"Hn." As a thought exercise, he started to go through his thoughts, trying to sort them out into some semblance of order. The last morning he remembered had him waking up with difficulty, having been plagued by visions and images all night. He had managed to get himself to his morning classes, but by the time lunch came, he was having problems figuring out what was real and what wasn't, so he decided to forego food in favor of lying down. Then he must have forgotten to get back up again, because the next thing he knew, Quatre was leaning over him, checking his vitals.
"Sorry f'r passin' out on you," he said abruptly into the silence that had fallen between them, almost one hundred percent certain that what he remembered had actually happened.
"Huh?"
"You..." He paused to review his memories for accuracy, then continued. "...seemed distressed yest'rday. Sorry."
Duo laughed sharply, hiding his face in his hand for a moment so he could mutter to himself. "Zero was fuckin' taking over his mind, and he's sorry he passed out on me? Geezus, Yuy, you are such a nut job sometimes."
Heero shrugged unapologetically. It had seemed like the thing to say at the time, so having been said, he moved on to the rest of the confused clutter in his head.
"Oh, and that was the day before, incidentally. It's Saturday, today."
"...Oh." He frowned and updated his internal clock before continuing with his self-analysis.
In due time, Duo interrupted him. "I'm... sorry, too, you know," he said.
Heero blinked at him, trying to pick something out of his memories that would justify such an apology. He found nothing, and so delivered a questioning glance to his roommate.
Duo slumped in his uncomfortable chair, eyes focusing on his fingers as they played with the hem of his shirt. "I kind of... you know. Wasn't too helpful. When you passed out. And a while after that, I guess. Although you probably don't know that, but... I know it, and I flipped out, and I shouldn't have, so... sorry, I guess."
"You... flipped out?"
"Yeah, I... Well, maybe it wasn't like went-totally-crazy flipping out, but... I froze, man. That's... unforgivable." If it had been a real emergency, something very bad could have happened.
"...I don't remember that."
"Didn't figure you would. Doesn't make it any less true. I just... I just saw you, and you looked... sick. Like people I knew before, only they were sicker, like, dying sick, but still. It started out that way. You'd wake up one morning, and some of your buddies wouldn't, no matter what you did. And hospitals, God, don't even get me started on hospitals. They... were completely useless, if they weren't making things worse, so when Quatre brought it up... that wasn't too good, either. But you know, all that was just memories and stuff, and I really shouldn't have let it get in my way, so sorry."
"...Sorry," Heero echoed softly.
"Huh?" He took his eyes off his fingers to look at his roommate, and found Heero's eyes had slid closed again.
"Sorry for passing out on you," Heero repeated once more.
Duo stared at him for a few long seconds before getting out of his seat rather suddenly. "You know, I should probably go tell the doctors you're awake or something." He excused himself hastily and left the room.
OWARI
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