Serious ficcish thing by Cat Who
Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing. I know that. Don't sue me, etc.
Nenmuro Memorial Hospital, Colony One. Heero breathed in the friendly recycled air of his old home. It was funny, really; Colony One wasn't someplace he'd ever expected to miss, but now that he was here, he realized that he'd been almost homesick for the slightly off gravity and breathtaking views of stars through the Side walls.
The streets of Colony One were no longer so lonely. People had begun to rebuild their lives, and buildings once shattered by explosions had either been replaced or torn down. The very face of the cities within the Sides of the Colony had changed, as well. Gone were the war-orphans in the streets. Many of them had grown up, and moved on with life, and the rest had somehow found a home withing the wreckage that was civilization.
Had he found a home? Sure, he had a place to stay, a woman who loved him desperately despite his flaws, and dear friends who could and had died for him. But part of him still felt like a wanderer, lost in the aftermath of his own violent youth. His hands, so stained with blood, could never be washed clean. All he could do was vow never to kill again, and continue on with his life...
The hospital was a small, squat building, not much more than a clinic, really, deep in the heart of the Japanese section of Colony One. He walked inside the doors in broad daylight. Unlike the IGD, the records at this hospital were open to him, thanks to his somewhat unofficial affiliation with the Preventors. And, in an odd way, after the Barton war, he'd become something of a hero to the people of Colony One. Heero the hero. He smiled to himself. It had a nice ring to it.
Heero walked up to the main desk, where a plump secretary glanced up from her work, her piggish eyes squinting through owl-rimmed glasses.
"Can I help you?" she asked in an annoyed voice. Heero took a calming breath. No reason to be hostile to the only people who could help him.
"I'm looking for someone. Someone who was born here."
"What year?"
"I don't know."
"What name?"
"I don't know."
The secretary frowned at him. "Honey, you know I can't just let you flip through all our records until you see one you like. Do you at least have the parent's names?"
"Yuy, Akima and Hiroshi."
Something about the names caused the secretary to pause. "Akima and Hiroshi Yuy? You mean, Akima Yuy, the old Heero Yuy's sister?"
Heero felt the blood drain from his face. So THAT was the connection. He managed to keep his expression calm. "Yes. I want to see the records for their child."
The secretary frowned again. "What relation are you to them?"
"I don't know." Heero grimaced. This was going just great so far...
"Look, hon, you're gonna have to have better answers than that before I let ya see the records. I mean, we can't just let...oh!" Heero had taken out his Preventor's ID card. Never mind that it had expired last year. The impact -- and the name -- were enough.
"The new Heero Yuy! Well, why didn't you say so?" The secretary puffed up importantly, something Heero felt she didn't really need to do to make a -- large impression. "Yuriko, would you please come up and watch the front desk for a moment?" she said into a callbox. She stood up and beckoned to Heero, and led the way into the inner sanctum of hospital records department.
"A lot of the files were destroyed in a fire during the war. Fortunately, I think the Y section survived intact." Above their heads, three meter tall shelves lined with thousands of records loomed imposingly, their bulging folders bright against the cool gray of their metal cages. An occasional desk was tucked among the rows, and data entry clerks were hard at work, converting the records to the latest storage format. Heero took it all in with wide eyes...so this is how civilian hospitals worked, eh?
"Ah...here we are. Akima Yuy. I remember her. She died during childbirth, you know."
Heero felt a icy vise close around his heart. No, he hadn't known.
"Her last request was to name their son after his uncle, your namesake, I believe. Her husband did so, and was so overcome with grief at the loss of his wife that he commited sepuko. He knew they shouldn't had tried natural childbirth in space, and he blamed himself for her death. It was all over the news when it happened, about twenty ought years ago. Ah, here's the record."
Heero tried to control his sense of anticipation as she opened the records. Therein would like the secret of Akima Yuy's son, the nephew of the real Heero Yuy.
"What the..." the secretary whispered as she opened the records.
Gone. All of them were gone. Ripped out from the roots, the green folder still containing shredded fragments of the carbon copies...but the files on Akima Yuy were no longer there.
"Damn," Heero whispered to himself.
"I don't understand. No one should have access to this backroom without permission. Why would someone do this?"
Heero shook his head. "They're trying to erase her from history, just like they all but erased Heero Yuy from history. Tell me, you were here when she had that child, weren't you?"
The secretary nodded. "I've been here since before the assasination of Heero Yuy. He was taken to this hospital, to be treated, but he'd been shot through the heart. Damn the man who did that to him. Damn him for all eternity." The plump secretary trembled in indignation, her black coif bobbing in the combs that held it fast.
Heero shook his head. "The man who killed Heero Yuy served his penance for the rest of his life. Even if he is in hell, he suffered greatly for what he had done..." Heero had known that Odin had killed Yuy long ago. Ironic, really, that his adopted son had taken on the code name of the most important figure he'd assasinated.
"Anyway, is there anyplace I might be able to find information on Akima Yuy? It's important...to me."
The secretary thought for a few moments. "You may want to try the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, on Earth. Akima was a classic example of space-birth complications, and they're the ones who handled her autopsy."
Another lead, then. "Thank you very much," Heero said, with as formal a bow as he could muster. "You have helped me more than you can imagine."
The secretary blushed. "You're very welcome, Mr. Yuy." She tried to bow back, but her bulk made the logistics of such a move difficult. "Oh, Mr. Yuy, before you go, may I ask you one question in return?"
Heero paused. He'd already started to walk towards the door, eager to continue his quest. Akima Yuy was the key to the whole mystery, he was sure. "Yes?"
"Can I....can I have your autograph?"
If Heero were capable of a facefault, he would have done so. The plump secretary looked so hopeful, so meek and supplicant. But since facefaulting was more along Duo's style, Heero did what he himself did best instead.
"Hnn."