Fly on Broken Wings Chapter 38: Falling, a gundam wing/ac fanfic

LSC / 12-1-11
(Fly on Broken Wings - Chapter Thirty-Eight: Falling)
rated: R - language, content, violence
shounen-ai/yaoi

CHAPTER 38

Falling

Immediately after they were marched off the bus and safely redistributed to the hospital's oppressive walls, Quatre was summoned aside by one of the nurses, the one who had caught him sneaking back into the theater. She was flanked by two orderlies, the green and red ones, whose scrubs clashed as they stood side by side and looming. Quatre took Sandy's ear into his mouth and bit down, hard.

"Winner, come with me," she said briskly. She thought to take his arm, but Quatre shifted just enough to stay out of range. Fortunately did not press the matter, and waved him into the nurse's station. He sat where she gestured, into a mint-green, hard plastic chair. "What were you doing outside the theater?" she asked, deceptively sweet.

"I… had to use the bathroom," Quatre mumbled around Sandy's ear.

"Take that out of your mouth and answer the question," said the red orderly, the covert smoker.

Quatre focused on making himself very small. If he could disappear, he would.

The nurse persisted. "Did you sneak out?"

She wore sensible white shoes with velcro straps, but one of the straps was undone. Quatre nudged the tile with the toe of his sneaker.

"Search him for contraband," the nurse said with a sigh. Quatre looked up in alarm. Before he could move, before he could say anything, the green orderly clamped a strong hand over his shoulder.

And that's when he started screaming.

"And the popcorn was stale and tasted burnt, like how do you even fuck up popcorn that badly? It has to be a malicious act of sabotage or something, I'm convinced," Duo rambled at Wufei without really hearing the words tumbling from his lips. The younger boy stood mute under the assault, poised warily and on edge, as if waiting for a physical blow to strike him down.

The lucky "we get to leave for a few hours" kids had just returned, streaming into the common area in ones and twos. Duo had not been sure at first his eyes were cooperating when he spotted Wufei among the crowd; honestly, he'd been half expecting, half fearing Wufei would not return. He'd been unable to resist throwing his arms around the boy, Wufei stiff and yielding beneath him, and had begun to talk for a lack of anything better to do. He was good at that.

"Where's Quatre?" asked Zechs, who had been silent up to that point.

Wufei flinched a look over his shoulder, and then frowned. "He was right behind me."

"Wait, what?" Duo asked. He rose up on the tips of his toes to look out over the sea of patients and partitions and chairs. The only blonde heads he spotted were the girls. Dorothy saw him and changed directions. "Did you lose Quatre?" Duo asked in disbelief.

"No, he was right here," Wufei protested.

Dorothy broke in among them, Relena right behind her. "Hey, there you are. I told you I wasn't through," she jabbed a finger at Wufei. "What's this about sneaking out with Quatre?" Although she spoke to Wufei, her eyes were anchored on Zechs's face. He looked uncomfortable with the attention.

"I did not," Wufei took a cautious step back. "Winner followed me."

"Oh, man," groaned Duo. He exchanged a knowing look with Zechs. "So you did try to escape!"

"No!" Wufei insisted. "I was not trying to escape. Catalonia is mistaken."

Dorothy tossed her head, scattering her long fall of gold hair. "So you went off to do whatever and then came back? What a waste of opportunity! How is it that Quatre got caught sneaking back in and you didn't?" She huffed out a sigh. "Did you at least do anything cool with your brief freedom?"

"Wait," Duo interrupted. "Quatre got in trouble?"

"He followed me," Wufei repeated.

Duo and Zechs exchanged another look. "Fuck," said Zechs.

"Yeah, I agree." Duo shook his head. They'd been the ones pressuring Quatre to keep an eye on Wufei, and it seemed to have backfired. He turned to Wufei. "What the hell did you do?" Duo asked, folding his arms over his chest.

Wufei opened his mouth, maybe to respond, maybe to tell Duo to mind his own business (which seemed the more likely scenario) but something stopped him. It stopped them all, pouring through them like a cold wave. Duo shuddered, even Dorothy gave pause, as the great keening wail soared into the silence. It was a howling, wretched scream, the sound of which rose the air along Duo's arms.

"What the hell?" said Zechs. He alone looked around in confusion for the source of the noise.

"Quatre," groaned Duo. "That's Quatre. Shit! What are those bastards doing to him?" He broke from the group and went forward on long, angry strides. The screams were definitely coming from… Duo adjusted his trajectory, but found someone latched over his arm, pulling with insistence.

"Maxwell, don't," Wufei anchored his feet to no avail. He stumbled along, rather than let Duo drag him. "Stop!"

Duo turned in a fury. "This is your fault for running off!"

Wufei's dark eyes glinted steel in response. "I never asked him to follow me."

"No, we did," Zechs said quietly, hands shoved into the pockets of his khaki pants. Relena and Dorothy stayed where they had left them, heads together in conspiratorial whispers. Zechs continued in the same soft tone, "We were worried about you."

Duo jerked his arm free of Wufei's suddenly slackened grip. "Yeah, well," Duo grumbled. He was loathed to admit Zechs was right, and the dumbstruck look on Wufei's face unnerved him almost as much as Quatre's screams, which rose in pitch before abruptly ending.

The three of them exchanged uneasy, guilty looks; Quatre only stopped screaming when they tranquilized him. Zechs leaned forward to say something to Wufei, too quiet for Duo to overhear (and boy did he try) but Wufei pulled his head away, shaking it slowly side to side like a wounded animal.

"I never asked you to worry," Wufei said. He tried and failed to maintain a glare.

Duo fixed his eyes on the nurses' station, waiting for the door to open. "Come off it, 'Fei, what did you expect us to do? You said it yourself, you'll get released this week with good behavior... and then you haul off and punch me, try to disrupt therapy - your plan wasn't exactly subtle. And for all the times you bitched at me for bad behavior, for running off, for skipping my meds and shit! You're always a model patient, why the hell wouldn't you want to get released from here? Never asked me to worry? You damned idiot, of course I'd worry about you! We're friends."

Wufei flinched as if the words were bullets. "I..." he said. High blotches of color appeared on his cheeks. His dark eyes grew round and luminous, wet like fresh ink. He blinked quickly, lashes clumping with unshed tears.

"Hey," Duo said gently. "Don't cry." He reached for Wufei's shoulder.

"I'm not!" Wufei snapped. His voice shook unsteadily, betraying his denial. He knocked Duo's hand away and took a step back, colliding into Zechs. "Just, shut up! Shut up, Maxwell!" the words came out with a sob, and Wufei spun away from them both. He broke off running and barreled right through a nurse. She shouted after him and, when he neither stopped nor turned, hurried after him still shouting.

Duo started to follow, but a firm grip on his arm stopped him. "Let me go," he growled at Zechs.

"No," said the taller boy. His fingers curled tight over Duo's elbow. "Leave him alone. Haven't you done enough?"

"You're one to talk! You got him into this mess in the first place, screwing around with Treize like that. He was fine until you showed up. What the fuck is wrong with you anyway? Who does that to someone? It's his body. You might as well have raped him."

Zechs's nails dug into his arm until Duo gave a sharp yelp of pain and tried to jerk away. Zechs held on tight, and when he spoke it came out rough and dangerous, like a caged tiger. "You listen, Duo Maxwell, because I'm only going to say this once. What happened, that's between me and Wufei, and fuck you if you think I'm going to let you say something like that ever again. Do you hear me?"

This time when Duo tried to pull his arm free, Zechs released him. He overbalanced and had to windmill his other arm to keep from stumbling. "Fuck you," Duo said, out of habit, but without any real heat in his voice. "Don't get pissed at me just because you screwed up."

Zechs grate his teeth together, hard enough that Duo could hear the molars protesting. "You are insufferable. I don't know what Wufei sees in you."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Don't be stupid," Zechs sneered. "I know that might be hard for you."

Duo tumbled a few readied insults around in his head for a moment before replying, and in that hesitation his eyes drifted sideways over Zechs's shoulder. The door to the nurses' station swung open and two orderlies, absurdly Christmas color themed in their scrubs, stepped through with a small, blond bundle hoisted between them. Quatre was on his feet, but just barely, being all but dragged through the commons. His head lolled to one side, like a broken doll's, and Duo forgot all about being pissed at Zechs.

Much as he would have liked to go up and start yelling at the orderlies to get their damn hands off the younger boy, he refrained. He could be a model of self-restraint; why did no one give him credit for that? Duo stalked them down the hall to Quatre's room, which used to be his (he was so over being bitter about that, though, really he was) and waited impatiently for them to leave. The trio went into the room, and after what seemed a longer time than necessary, the orderlies left, leaving the door half-open behind them.

Zechs, damn him, had followed. "Go away." Duo made a shooing motion with his hands. "You're not helping."

Zechs shrugged lazily. "Does he scream like that often?"

Duo bristled, uncomfortably reminded of when he first met Quatre and asked a similar callously worded question. Before he could get worked up into a rage, however, Zechs rolled a shoulder and looked contrite. "I mean, has this happened before? You and Wufei knew it was him right away," Zechs added.

"Just his first day, happened twice… I've seen him go a little panicked, but," Duo lowered his voice to a whisper as he pushed on the door to Quatre's room. "Not like this, not with the screaming."

Quatre was laid out on the bed, head tipped to one side and eyes closed. Duo crept forward cautiously, but even so the boy gave an uneasy stir, head rolling over the pillow. "Hey," Duo called, not wanting to startle him, stopping halfway between the door and the bed.

Quatre rolled on to his side, facing away from them, and curled both arms to his chest as if trying to gather something close. The action tugged at a little edge of Duo's memory until something clicked over into understanding. His teddy bear, missing from the scene, and Duo took a few careful steps forward to search the room. Maybe the orderlies had brought in with them anyway; Duo knew better than to assume Quatre hadn't had the damned thing right there with him before the screaming fit.

"What are you doing?" Zechs hissed in a whisper, looking warily toward the bed.

"His bear, Sandy, it's not here." Duo jerked open the top drawer of the dresser, which was empty. Oh, yeah, his stuff had been in there before. Quatre clearly had no expanded into the open area of the room. Everything looked exactly as he'd left it, minus all his crap of course. He slammed the drawer with more force than necessarily, causing Quatre to shift again. Duo held his breath, but Quatre just seemed to curl tighter in on himself, eyes still closed.

"Come on, let's go," Duo jerked his head toward the door. Once they were out in the hall, Duo pulled the door closed and leaned back against it. He twirled the end of his braid over his mouth, thinking. "He'll be out for a while. I want to get his bear back before he wakes up and realizes the damn thing's missing. You want to stand there and watch or help?"

Zechs hesitated, looking up the hallway and then over to Duo. "What do you have in mind?

Duo paused for a moment, nipping gently at the loose ends of his hair. "You make a distraction at dinner, after I've eaten, so I'll have a legit reason to be hanging around the station for med checks. Make a huge scene, something that'll draw their attention. I'll sneak into the nurses' station and get it. You could knock Relena's dinner tray into her lap, or punch Dorothy in the face. Maybe do both of those things, start a huge food fight."

Zechs stared at him for a moment, and then walked away.

"Hey!" Duo shouted, hurrying to keep pace with Zechs's much longer legs and swift stride. "All right, you don't have to punch Dorothy. I wouldn't be surprised if she got you back with a one-hit K.O. upper cut. I'd be scared, too, of picking a fight with her. How about knocking Relena's tray, though? That's a pretty good one."

"Do me a favor, and shut up," Zechs said mildly. He put a hand into Duo's chest and pushed him, lightly, with just enough force to make him rock back. "Stay here, and don't move."

"What are you…?" Duo's question faded as Zechs walked straight up to the nurses' station and stood there until someone came to see what he wanted. A change passed over Zechs's face when he smiled at the nurse, so that he actually looked charming and polite, less sure of himself, like someone you wanted wrap in a blanket and serve hot chocolate overflowing with marshmallows. It was bizarre.

Duo couldn't hear what Zechs was saying to her, but the nurse nodded agreeably. Zechs smiled again, this time apologetic, and the nurse disappeared for a moment. She returned holding Sandrock, all cream fur and dark paws, and just handed the bear over. Just like that.

Duo knew what sort of slack-jawed idiocy had to be stamped over his face, and he tried to straighten up and look unaffected when Zechs came walking over with a cocksure grin in place. Zechs barely kept the gloat out of his voice when he said, "Didn't your mother ever tell you? You catch more flies with honey than vinegar." He swung the bear by its paw once, twice, and sent it sailing in an arc toward Duo.

He caught it easily and managed to scare up a scowl. "My plan would have worked," Duo objected. He started walking back to Quatre's room with his prize. For some reason, he just assumed that Zechs would follow, but it was not until he reached the closed door of Quatre's room that he found it was otherwise. Duo frowned at the hallway; well, good riddance, the smug bastard would have just wanted to gloat about it some more, maybe even hang around until Quatre wore up, and milked the younger boy for gratitude and awe.

Duo pushed open the door. Quatre lay in the same position as before, and Duo tiptoed carefully around to the edge of the bed. He plunked the teddy bear down into the gap between Quatre's thin arms and his chest, and the boy stirred. His fingers curled and straightened against the plush fur, the motion reminding Duo of a mewling kitten. Quatre pulled Sandy close, his whole body curling around the small bear.

(Author's Notes)

I guess I don't have much to say except thank you, thank you so much, for still being around. I can only guess at the surprise many of you must have had seeing an update notification. I very much hope you are enjoying the story still, and please look forward to more soon.

Thank you for reading!