Author: Sami-pi
Rating: R overall?
Pairings: 1x2x1
Warnings: Melodrama, Amnesia!fic
A couple of bored days at work started spawning this ridiculous fic. ^O^;;; I apologize in advance for the limited 3rd person pov that switches people in the middle. but, to be fair, I did break it into a new section... ^O^;;;; hopefully is okay. ^O^;;;;;
Top of the World Falls on You Part 1
"Duo..."
Relena's voice sounded weak, strained.
"What's the matter?" Duo was halfway out of his chair and pulling on his uniform jacket before the last word had left his lips. "Relena, are you crying? Where are you? I'm coming to get you."
He looked over at Heero's desk, neat and clean, just as he'd left it three days ago when he was assigned to guard Relena on a goodwill tour. Duo's gut tightened and he clutched the phone tighter.
"Relena... Where's Heero?"
"Duo, I'm sorry!" she sobbed. "I didn't mean to..."
"What happened? Relena, please calm down and tell me what's going on!" He didn't want to yell at her, but somehow he'd lost control of the volume of his voice.
"I don't even know how it happened, but, Duo, I promise you I'll fix it! I will, I swear! It'll be fine! I'm sorry, I'm sorry... Duo, I'm so sorry, please don't be cross with me, I'm so sorry!"
Her frantic words turned into a jumble of sounds as she sobbed into the phone. Duo sat back down into his chair, stunned, afraid, and yet feeling strangely calm. What on earth could Relena be apologizing for? Surely it didn't have anything to do with Heero. Heero was invulnerable, invincible, and many other things starting with "in-". As a matter of fact, it was inconceivable that anything bad had happened to him.
"I want to talk to Heero. Relena? Put Heero on the phone... Relena? RELENA!"
She didn't, or perhaps couldn't, answer.
Duo listened to her cry.
And with every hitching breath she took he became more and more frightened.
Suddenly, Relena's crying was cut off.
"Rel--RELENA! Relena, talk to me!"
There was silence, static, background white noise.
Five years in Preventers together and Duo had never once felt as scared for Heero as he did at this moment. They'd seen Heero beaten, cut, stabbed, shot, and tossed into a canal to die, and still it had been easy to keep faith in his ability to survive.
But the intensity of Relena's anguish cut right through Duo this time.
"Maxwell, this is Chang."
"Chang!" Duo seized upon what he hoped was going to be a cool-headed and impartial intrusion into the conversation. "What, exactly, is your status?"
"You need to get on the first flight out here..."
'A simple goodwill tour.' That's what Heero had said when he'd kissed Duo good-bye the morning that he'd left. 'I'll bring you back a souvenir Relena bobblehead.' And then he was out the door.
Duo found himself shaking slightly and he tried his hardest to stop it. He told himself again that Heero was nothing if not near indestructible and that whatever it is, it was probably just Relena overreacting. If he could just see Heero, if there was still a Heero to see, then everything was fine. All he had to do was get there.
"Where... is... 'here'..."
"L2-1X10."
"Oh, motherfucker." It slipped out before Duo could check himself.
"Ah, it's... not as serious as Relena is making it out to be," Wufei said slowly, softly, as if talking to a wild animal... or a particularly slow child. "But... You'll want to be here. Come as soon as you can, and come directly to Our Lady of Mercy hospital."
"Wufei..." Duo hated the way his voice cracked. "How bad is 'not that serious'? Please... I need to know."
There was a moment of silence and Duo could almost hear the gears grinding in Wufei's head. But Duo knew that Wufei would have the balls to tell him, straight up, if Heero was missing any important limbs or organs. He'd already implied that Heero wasn't dead. But... any Preventer on active duty knew that "not that serious" could mean so many different things.
"I... WE... really don't feel that it's right to tell you over the phone." Wufei sounded hesitant and Duo felt like maybe he wanted to beat the man with a brick. "It's not life-threatening, I promise, so don't worry. It's just... Please come, Duo. Heero needs to see you."
Somehow, in a strange daze, Duo made it to the spaceport and managed to seat himself in the appropriate shuttle bound for the main colony of L2.
"Please, Heero," he whispered, raising a hand up to touch the bright "stars" that were the L2 colony cluster, "please wait for me. I'm coming."
~*~
Our Lady of Mercy was a nice hospital. It was one of the nicest ones in all of L2.
Relena thought it was crap. It looked like crap. It smelled like crap. And all the staff in it were crap, crap, and just more crap.
Wufei laid his hand, so gently, over hers.
"You're going to tear your skirt if you keep wringing it like that."
She looked down and was appalled at how her linen skirt was bunched and wrinkled, wound tightly around her clenched fists.
"What are we going to do, Wufei?" she whispered the question, afraid to voice it, afraid of what the answer might be. "What am I going to say to Duo?"
He merely shrugged and turned away to find a nurse.
She bit her lip and tried not to yell at him for brushing her off. It wasn't Wufei's fault that they'd been sitting in the waiting room for close to six hours now and all they'd heard on Heero's condition were the generic, bland platitudes of a bevy of generic, bland nurses and doctors. She thought it was impossible that there was really "nothing for it but to wait and see", but somehow no one heard her demands for a solid answer. To her mind, they were all just incompetent.
Wufei had refused her request to threaten someone at gunpoint.
Relena thought that Heero would have granted said request.
Wufei thought differently.
He did point out that Duo would undoubtedly have granted her request. And the two of them fell silent again as thoughts of Duo and how he was going to react to this situation dominated their thoughts once more.
"It'll be fine, you know," Wufei suddenly said. Even though he was still looking for a nurse and wasn't looking at her specifically, Relena felt a bit better at being acknowledged. "It's certainly not the worst thing that could happen. They'll get over it. You'll see. Once Heero sees Duo, it'll be all sorted out."
Relena hoped so, but she wasn't so sure. Wufei hadn't been there in the ambulance with Heero. He hadn't seen the way those unfocussed blue eyes had gazed up at her, the smile he'd given her... It was more than what the doctors were telling them. There was something very, very wrong with Heero.
She worried her lower lip between her teeth.
Wufei managed to corner one nurse just as she was about to enter the staff washroom. They conversed in low tones for the most part, but Relena could not help overhearing the same, three, stupid phrases that had been pissing her off to no end today, repeating over and over again.
"...I'm afraid there're no new developments with Mr. Yuy, sir... Yes, he's still under sedation, sir... Please, sir, if you'll just have a seat in the waiting room, someone will let you know as soon as there are any changes in Mr. Yuy's condition..."
The sound of the nurse's voice grated on Relena's nerves. She wondered if the woman knew how patronizing she sounded, with her affected sweetness and compassion. Relena suddenly hoped that she, herself, didn't sound like that when people brought their petitions to her.
After being stonewalled a couple more times, Wufei finally let the nurse go back to her "business" and returned to where Relena was sitting on the hard plastic chairs of the general waiting room.
"It'll be fine. Just relax." He parked himself next to her and patted her hands again.
Then they sat there, in silence, trying their best to look "relaxed".
When Duo arrived, it was both a blessing and a curse. He blew in like the whirlwind that he was. Even at the height of his worry he was all charm and smiles. He hugged Wufei and kissed Relena's cheek and managed to finagle his way in to see Heero all within a few minutes of his entrance.
And then he remembered to come back out to pull his two friends into Heero's room with him.
Relena always felt that Duo had the power to make everything better. It was just the way he was. With his optimism and charisma, he always told her that the good guys would win and then he charged forward and made it happen. That was the Duo that Relena had always held in her heart, but... Now that they were faced with the reality of him... watching him bend low over Heero's sleeping form and pressing a gentle kiss to a blood stained cheek... Suddenly she wished he hadn't gotten here so fast.
So preoccupied was Relena with fretting over what Duo's reaction would be when Heero woke up that she was taken completely by surprise when he suddenly reached out and pulled her into a strong hug. She let out a small squeak but Duo took it as a stifled sob and he tightened his arms around her. He patted her back and murmured comforting nonsense noises against her hair.
"You had me so worried," he finally said. "I'm glad you're okay."
She wanted, very much, to bury her head against his shoulder and cry and take comfort from his warm embrace, but she knew she couldn't. She knew she had to tell him, give him some kind of warning.
"Duo, you need to know..." Relena pulled away from him so that she could look him in the eye. She squared her shoulders and steeled herself to deliver the words she'd been rehearsing in her mind since they had arrived at the hospital.
"Relena, Relena," Duo said tenderly, wiping at tear tracks on her face. "This is not your fault and don't you even dare say it! Heero's just got a couple bullet wounds and a nasty crack on the head. He'll be fine." Duo chaffed her arms a bit and hugged her again. "I just don't see why you and Wufei were acting all mysterious on the phone--"
Relena thought that, even though Duo almost threw her aside suddenly to rush to hold Heero's hand, it was quite sweet that Duo could tell Heero was regaining consciousness from the mere change in the rate of beeps from the heart and EEG monitors.
Wufei, who had been silently watching from the doorway to Heero's room stepped in then. Relena thought he looked a little tense. She wondered if he was there in his capacity as a friend... or her bodyguard. Unable to stop her trembling, Relena discretely backed up until she could reach behind her for Wufei. He gripped her hand, but could do nothing to dispel her tension for he was shaking slightly too.
Duo was leaning over Heero again now, brushing his lips against his cheek, his jaw, his ear. Relena thought she heard whispers of love and devotion. Her heart melted even as it broke.
For when Heero opened his eyes, the first words out of his mouth were a hoarse: "What the hell are you doing here, Maxwell?"
TBC...
The title is just a line in the song I'm listening to right now. ^O^;;; Later on after a couple more chapters, let's see if we can come up with a better one. ^O^;;;;
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