Please don't be mad.

GROUNDED

Part IV – Duo's POV

A broken body lay in the bed. A broken spirit sat in the chair, keeping vigil.

Monitors beeped. Machines whirred. The smell of disinfectant and death hung in the air. In another room an agent whimpered, in constant pain from his burns, accompanied by the broken whispers of his mother who tried to comfort him. Down the hall nurses spoke in hushed French. Duo couldn't understand a word they were saying anyway; he had never bothered to learn the language.

L2 had been the colony closest to RS42 when Duo had narrowly escaped the explosion that depressurized the entire resource satellite. The shuttle he had managed to commandeer was slow and he burned through too much fuel pushing the dated rocket thrusters to full speed to outmaneuver a second shuttle that had been on his tail, firing at him while he piloted a defenseless cargo ship. Thankfully the other shuttle had soon given up on the chase, to avoid getting caught in the Preventer web that would close around the satellite.

Duo had barely managed to get them to dock 20-A on L2, crossing the last of the distance on fumes. His landing was more like a controlled crash than anything else, with sparks flying behind them as there was no fuel left to engage the reverse thrusters, and he had to use the friction against the bottom of the landing strip to slow the ship down before it would collide with the back wall of the hangar at speed.

The Preventer agency had an office on L2 – like they had an office on all of the five major colonies – including a Preventer medical center for emergency care of agents after a mission. During the flight Duo had instructed mission control on L1 to coordinate with the medical staff on the colony and by the time his shuttle came to a stop at the bottom of the dock, a medical team was waiting for them to rush them to the center.

That was three days ago.

Duo's injuries were minor and he wouldn't even let the nurses tend to him until after they had wheeled Heero into the operating room and there was nothing he could do for his partner anymore anyway.

The nurses had been fretting over him, worried about grave injuries. There was so much blood. They didn't know that none of it was Duo's.

He had a broken hand and glass shards between the knuckles. He had a deep puncture wound in his thigh from when a mechanic had stabbed him with a screw-driver, trying to stop him from stealing a shuttle. He had two cracked ribs from a big guy who had managed to land a kick in his chest. His lungs burned from smoke-inhalation and he'd been walking around with an oxygen mask for the first twenty four hours.

It was nothing. He was fine.

Only he wasn't fine.

Heero had been in and out of surgery so often the past three days that Duo had barely been able to be at his side and that didn't help to calm him down. Eventually an orderly caught him off guard and before the pain of the needle in his upper arm registered, his body was already dropping to the floor, one arm swinging in vain to defend himself and his right to freak out when they carted Heero beyond his reach again. He'd slept for six hours. Heero's latest surgery lasted nine.

He was still drowsy from the administered drugs and he sat leaned to one side, with his elbow on the armrest and his chin in his palm, propping up his heavy head. His eyes burned but he forced himself to keep them open. When he slept, he had nightmares, he had discovered. He was used to nightmares, but he had also gotten used to waking up from them and knowing that the memories were far behind him. When he woke up now, he was still right in the middle of the nightmare.

Outside the L2 lights simulated daylight, but inside the room it was dark. The shutters on the windows were closed and lamps were switched off. Only the screens of the monitors glowed and painted every shape with cool shades of color.

Heero was kept in a medially induced coma and intubated as he went in and out of surgery again and again. The medical team flown in from L4 worked tirelessly to fix him to the best of the abilities of modern medicine. Still though, Duo couldn't peel himself away from his bedside. What if Heero did wake up and he'd be alone? Duo was already burdened with more guilt than he could stand. The thought of his partner waking up alone, not knowing where he was and what had happened – waking up trapped in that broken body – wrecked Duo.

The hours ticked by. Duo was unaware of the passage of time. Some seconds seemed like they lasted hours. While some hours flew by in seconds.

A nurse came every thirty minutes to check on the patient and record his stats. After a change in the shift, a new nurse came and the first three times he came into the room, he asked Duo if he wanted anything – water, coffee, food, something to help him sleep. But by the fourth time he had caught on that Duo wouldn't even look up from the spot on the floor that he'd been staring at to acknowledge the nurse's presence, so he stopped asking.

It became dark outside as well and on his next visit the night-nurse decided to switch on one of the overhead lights, to aid his own work.

Duo's phone lay on the nightstand, next to the vase with a bouquet of flowers that had been sent. Not much had been left of the bouquet after Duo had come back to the room and had seen it next to the empty bed – Heero was in the OR again. He had grabbed the arrangement of roses and dahlia's and had started ripping the flowers from the stems. What good would flowers do? He had thought to himself, while hot tears streamed down his face.

The flowers had been sent by Quatre. The former Sandrock pilot and the former Heavyarms pilot were not on L4 – where they had their home – but were on earth for a business trip and they couldn't get a seat on the next few shuttle launches, so they wouldn't be able to come up to the colony for a few days. Some problems couldn't be solved by throwing money at it. If the shuttles are fully booked, they're fully booked.

Other than the Preventers and the former Gundam pilots, no one knew what had happened yet. Otherwise, Relena would have surely been able to throw her political power around to reach them on L2.

Duo wasn't entirely alone on L2 to look after Heero. WuFei had flown out immediately. However, Duo didn't see much of the Major; while coordinating Heero's medical care, he also had the disastrous aftermath of a failed mission to deal with. Duo didn't mind. WuFei never had much of a comforting effect on him anyway.

Despite the damage to the entirely depressurized resource satellite, the structure itself had remained sound and RS42 was still in orbit around the earth. No debris had come loose to cause danger to the other colonies. Recovery teams had flown to RS42 to reclaim the nuclear warheads, but they were already gone. The data systems had been wiped.

63 Individual human remains had been salvaged at that point. One of them was Isra Beck, recovered from under the misshapen steel. The bodies of Haytham Grace and Havana Viver would never be found; they had been obliterated in the first explosion they had triggered.

With them both dead and with their families not even having a body to bury, Duo couldn't be mad at them like he wanted to be. He could only be mad at himself. They shouldn't have been there to begin with. He shouldn't have let them come along on the mission.

The American agent plucked at the skin of his dry lips, drawing blood. He sucked on the small wound until it stopped bleeding, familiar with the metallic taste.

"… Du-…?"

Duo's body went rigid at the sound of a gravelly voice trying to speak his name. He scooted the chair closer to the bed and he put his hands on Heero's shoulder to let him feel that he was there. "Heero?" He squeaked.

Heero's eyes were rolling under the lids. Then his whole face scrunched up as he squeezed his eyes shut tightly.

"Heero?" Duo reached for the little remote dangling off the edge of the bed and he pressed the red button to alert the night nurse.

Suddenly blue eyes flew open with panic and his body started to convulse. With uncoordinated fingers he grabbed the tube coming out of his mouth and he scratched at the neck brace. His face went red and his eyes became bloodshot as he struggled against the air being pumped into him and he felt like he was choking. Frightful eyes looked up at Duo, begging for help.

Duo got up from his seat and put his hands on both shoulders to push him into the mattress to subdue him as much as he could. "Heero, it's okay. It's okay. You're intubated. It's fine. Try to calm down. Let it breathe for you, it's okay."

The male nurse appeared in the doorway in response to his call and when he realized the patient had woken up, he quickly went to get support.

Heero slowly calmed down. His arms dropped back down onto the mattress as his sides. His gaze remained locked with Duo's. He never even blinked.

Duo put a hand on his cheek and stroked his thumb back and forth. "Shhh… Shhh…"

"… Hu…ssss," the Japanese agent trained, tears welling up in his eyes. "Hur-sss…" His brows furrowed in frustration.

"I know it hurts… Don't try to speak. It's going to be okay," he promised him, and it felt like a soul-crushing lie. He leaned down and pressed a kiss to his cheek, careful to avoid the mouthpiece that kept his jaws open and the oxygen tube in place.

The French team of doctors and nurses poured into the room. Duo straightened up but maintained his post at the bedside. He wasn't going to step away unless it was absolutely necessary. Relief washed over his body and his shoulders slumped when his helpless, searching gaze landed on a familiar face. "Thank God, you're here."

"Shuttle docked forty minutes ago." Sally Po offered him a smile and rushed to the opposite side of the hospital bed. She leaned over to look into Heero's eyes, but Heero didn't tear his gaze away from the other agent. "Heero?" She tried. "Heero, can you hear me?"

Finally he looked at her and an expression of alarm settled on his features.

"Hey, it's been a while," she said lightly, smiling at him as if nothing was wrong. As if her mere presence didn't make it clear he was in bad shape. Without glancing at her staff she ordered: "Cinq millilitres de sodium thiopental, s'il vous plait." She extended her hand back and a nurse placed a syringe in her gloved palm. She inspected the syringe and flicked it with her finger to check for air bubbles. "I'm going to put you under now. You won't feel any pain anymore. You'll sleep and in the meantime we'll fix you up. Sound good?"

Heero didn't respond but Sally didn't need him to. His blue eyes followed her hand as she brought the syringe to the IV tube connected to the back of his hand.

"This is going to feel like putting your hand in hot water, but by the time the feeling is up to your shoulder, you'll be asleep," she informed with a calm, even tone. She inserted the needle into the IV valve and squeezed the clear liquid into him.

"I'll be right here with you, Heero," Duo promised his partner, causing him to look at him again.

Heero blinked once. Twice. Then his eyelids fell shut and he didn't open them again.

Duo petted his hand through Heero's hair, not caring that it was greasy.

Sally spoke to the nurses and the two other doctors. They reviewed Heero's stats, reading off the different monitors. The computers beeped with the press of each button when some settings were changed.

The crowd of people shuffled out of the room, but Sally stayed behind and watched them for a moment. "I figured," she said.

"Hm?" Duo tore his gaze away from the relaxed, pale face of his Co-Captain, put at ease by the thought that he would be free from pain in his dreamless sleep.

"When you were at the Academy, the way you spoke of him… I figured there was something going on between the two of you."

Duo didn't care that she had put the puzzle pieces together. There was no point to worrying about that anymore. All he could focus on was Heero's health and what they could do improve it.

"Don't worry, I won't tell. We'll consider it doctor-patient confidentiality."

"I wasn't worried," he said. "Not about that at least… Not anymore…" He sat back down in his seat, realizing how weak his body was since he'd been neglecting it for the past few days.

Sally nodded.

"I'm so glad you're here. He needs you."

"I came as soon as I could. But there was a lot of work to be done at the research facility first. I had to stay there to oversee the work and coordinate the transport of all the equipment."

"I understand…" He took a deep breath before he dared to ask: "So what happens now?"

"The work goes on," Sally simply replied. "It won't be easy. It won't be quick."

"Is the medical coma really necessary for the entire duration?" Duo wondered, feeling antsy and unsure about not being to communicate any of the process ahead with his partner.

"It's for the best. He doesn't need to be awake for this; for the pain, for the disorientation of going in and out of surgery. Besides," she tried with an amused tone, "I have a feeling he wouldn't be the most cooperative patient to get to stay in bed for as long as we need him to."

Duo returned a weak smile, knowing it was true. Heero was impatient, most of all with himself, and he wouldn't tolerate the limitations of his body in the current state it was in. He asked a question before he had carefully considered if he really wanted to know the answer. "Will he be himself again?"

Sally sat down on the foot end of the bed with a sigh and looked at him the way Duo imagined a loving mother would look at her child when she was about to tell him something they didn't want to hear.

"Don't," he stopped her before she could start and he cast his gaze down to his feet, unable to look her in the eye and unable to look at the limp body on the bed. "I don't need to know. Not yet." He put his hand over his stomach, feeling nauseous and he waited for it to go away. "Just promise me you'll do the best you can."

"I'll do the best I can," she readily vowed. "Just like you did the best you could do."

He snapped his head up to look at her with doubtful, watery eyes.

"You did your best, Duo," she assured him. "There was nothing else you could have done for him."

A sob escaped him – the most pathetic sound he had ever made – and it opened the floodgates. He buried his face in his palms and wept uncontrollably. He didn't want to cry, especially not in someone else's presence. He was mortified, but he couldn't stop himself and the more he thought of his own shame and selfishness, the harder he cried.

Sally sat there and didn't react. She didn't look away nor did she offer any comforting touches or words knowing both would be worthless and her impassiveness was exactly what he needed to get a grip on himself. He choked: "He begged me not to. He told me to leave him there."

"You saved him."

"Not all of him!" He laughed darkly at the inappropriate remark. He wiped away his tears and sat back in the chair, feeling even more tired after his emotional outburst. He rubbed his fingers along his mouth, resisting the urge to pick at his dry, scabbed lips.

"You saved him," Sally repeated. "And now it's my turn to save him." Sally sounded so sure of herself, Duo wondered how much of it was genuine confidence in her abilities and how much of it was an act for his benefit, to keep him from having a mental breakdown.

"I don't mean to interrupt," a deep voice spoke.

The two of them turned their heads to face the man standing in the doorway.

Major WuFei Chang.

"Doctor Po," Chang greeted his ex-fiancé stiffly with a courteous nod. "I was informed of your arrival."

"Major Chang," she fired back. Impressive how she could make a title sound like an insult.

"I'd like an updated report on agent Yuy's medical status. If you could please accompany me to another room, so we can discuss his recovery and rehabilitation in private." He gestured out into the hallway.

"Yes, Sir, of course." She slid off the hospital bed and told Duo: "I'll be back to check on him soon, okay?"

The agent nodded gratefully.

"I'm going to monitor his stats for the next five hours and if he's still stable by then we're going to get him ready for transport. The medical shuttle is already on standby at 20-C. You boys will be home soon."

"Thank you."

She gave him one more calm smile before she smoothed a hand down the front of her white coat and followed Chang out into the hallway.

Duo leaned forward in his seat and folded his arms on the edge of the mattress, next to the pillow and he rested his chin on his wrists. "Hear that?" He whispered optimistically in Heero's ear. "We're going home. Sally is going to fix you up and you'll be good as new."

He wasn't lying for Heero's sake, he knew his partner couldn't hear him; he was lying to himself.

If you need something light-hearted to cleanse your palate after this short but heavy chapter, check out my first entry for the GWCU.

But leave your predictions first!