ttw11

Thicker than Water
eleven


You'll be okay, Relena.

Survive...survive for me.

My only sister, I'm so sorry for all this.

___

You have to tell me about the Peacecrafts, Relena coughed, being loaded into the ambulance. I want to know about who I am.

Heero stood at the back, his arms crossed. Zechs, ungloved and demasked, swallowed back the bile clotting his throat and told her that he would. The EMS workers worked over her and waited for someone, anyone to board.





Zechs waved Heero off and loped to the Stingray he had air shipped to the US the day before. Go with her. I have some things I need to do here.

Wufei sat in the dirt, his back to the wheel of the Cherokee and nodded at Heero. See you later.

Without another word said, Heero climbed into the back of the ambulance and took a seat. Zechs barely saw it, but Relena's hand opened on the stretcher, and Heero took it without hesitation.

___

An hour later...

Noin slammed her foot into the brake. We're late.

Bad late, Sally unlocked the seat belt around her waist and got out of the car. What happened?

Zechs didn't bother to get off the hood of the Stingray. And Wufei didn't get up, knowing that they couldn't see him from the other side of the Jeep. Sally stood in the exact spot where the ambulance had been.

Relena's been taken to a hospital, Wufei said, disembodied. We were late too.

Oh no, Noin's hand covered her mouth. What happened, Zechs?

They got to her first. Captain Leonard Vance gut shot her and killed himself, he explained without much expression, not letting them see the sorrow in his eyes.

Dorothy sat on the top step of the cabin, so far unnoticed, and held her face in her hands. This was the last thing I thought would happen, she thought, Relena can't die. She can't.

___

Tell me that I'll see you again, Heero.

You will see me again, it was a promise.

___

Those hours were probably some of the most painful I'd ever experienced. The others arrived not too long after I sat down in the empty waiting room. Zechs was taking it real hard, and from one soldier to another, I could tell that he was blaming himself. Just like I was.

They haven't said anything, Sally told herself aloud.

Wufei pinched her arm. Shsh, woman, can't you try not to disturb the hope in this room?

Noin sat next to Zechs, rubbing the crook of his arm, she was hurting more for him than for his fatally injured little sister. Dorothy had come along as well, straggling. She didn't sit next to any of us, but walked along the rows at the back of the waiting area. Awkwardly, she looked tense. Ruffled and so unike the collected Dorothy we'd seen during the Eve Wars.

There was a lone woman on duty, watching us all through her glasses. She rifled through papers and tried not to let us know she was crying. I heard it, the sniffles. She knew who was in the ER, and it affected her just as much as it did each of us. This woman didn't even know Relena, and she was weeping already.

___

She's stabilized, the doctor said, leaving Relena in the ER to be cleaned up. If her heartbeat goes up again, notify me immediately.

Relena lay on the operating table, drenched in blood and fluids, iodine and water. The breathing monitor they'd placed in her throat looked awful, and blood on the floor made it appear as if a massacre had just passed through. A resident surgeon and two nurses cleaned up their patient, who'd fought long and hard through the night to remove a single bullet. Her hair was in a bun, matted with blood. Her eyes closed, completely motionless, she seemed as if she was in a slumber no one would ever wake her from. It scared the nurses to even face her for a period of more than five seconds. It was too much for them to see the world's angel and sweetheart comprimised to threadbare life and death such as she was now. How could anyone try to kill her?

To be continued...