Disclaimer: Still not mine, la di dah…

Disclaimer: Still not mine, la di dah…

AN: Sorry!!! I was at home and on vacation and then I got back and I was at work… Yeah. ::Bows:: But here's more, for those who want it. ;)

Walking The Dividing Line

Part 9

The first thing I heard was the steady …BEEP...BEEP...BEEP… that seemed to coincide with the throbbing pain that was the first thing I felt. The second thing I felt was the tube down my throat.

The first thing I thought was, *He didn't slap me this time.*

The second was, *I'm not dead.*

With the amount of effort I would have thought necessary for me to physically lift a Gundam itself above my head, I managed to open my eyes. At first everything was a fuzzy shade of grey; a wave of confusion washed over me and I wondered why I was lying down – why I wasn't suspended from the wall, shackled and staring at my feet as I had been for what had to be days now. I wondered where Duo was. I wondered where the knives were.

I wondered how much blood I must have lost to be seeing Quatre's concerned face above me, green eyes wrought with worry as he peered down into my face.

"...Alison? Alison, can you hear me?" he asked softly, the concern in his face evident in his voice as well.

I tried to make a sound, realized it was impossible around the tube in my throat. I managed to blink in response

The concern disappeared immediately as Quatre's pale face lit up at my movement. "Alison! I can't believe it - you're awake!"

I couldn't be awake. There was no way. I had to be dead. Or dreaming. He was lying - he wasn't even here -

He stood quickly and turned towards the door. "I'll be right back," he told me, before running out the door. I could hear his voice echoing down the hall as he left, "Sally! Sally, she's awake!"

I laid there and wondered what had happened. I had thought there was no way

out - no, I had thought I'd found a way out, I had thought I was dead. The last thing I could remember -

Something soft, and blue. Someone's arms. Someone carrying me -

I blinked. That couldn't have –

But somehow I was lying here, on what looked like a hospital bed in a very Spartan-looking room. There was a window off to my right, pitch-black sky dotted with pinpricks of light showing through the glass.

I suddenly noticed that I was wearing clean clothes: a grey t-shirt at least – I couldn't feel my legs very well, other than the vague sensation of dull razors being scraped across my skin. I also noticed my hair… My hair had been cut. At least, it wasn't in my face, I couldn't feel it against my ears, and I couldn't feel a ponytail. What had possibly happened -?

Quatre burst back in the door, followed closely by someone else, taller and wearing green with long brown hair twisted into two braids -

Sally - Sally Po.

Quatre stopped on one side of my bed, hands gripping the bedrail where -

My hands were tied. I could barely feel them. But they were tied to the bedrail.

So. Nothing had changed. My stomach dropped. Maybe I would have been better

off dead.

But Quatre was looking excitedly up at Sally. "See? She's awake!" he exclaimed; Sally looked down at me before glancing at the monitors that seemed to surround the bed on both sides.

"Yes," she replied. "Heart rate's still a little low, but that should improve." She looked down at me. "Alison, can you understand me?"

I blinked, managed a miniscule nod but winced at the pain that shot up my

neck as a result.

"All right. Listen, I'm going to have to leave that tube down your throat for a little longer, just to be safe." She looked up, addressing Quatre, "Would you get her a pen and some paper?"

"Right away," Quatre answered, rushing out of the room again. As he left, Sally looked back down at me, checking the IVs in my arms and the bandages that seemed to cover every inch of my body. "Alison," she said, finishing her brief checkup and looking at my face once more, "I'm going to be blunt. I'm sure you know - you were on the verge of death when they brought you back here. You've lost a lot of blood; you're malnourished and you have quite a few broken ribs. You've been in a coma for a week."

A *week*?

"You would have bled to death had they left you there," she continued, voice level and quiet. "You stopped breathing twice since then - that's why I'd like to leave that tube there for a while; I'd feel safer if you were hooked up to the respirator a bit longer. If you're in pain I can give you something for it."

Hell yes, I was in pain. Every part of me hurt - it hurt to lie on my back, like lying on sandpaper although I knew there was a mattress beneath me. The entire left half of my face was numb, although my cheek throbbed painfully in synch with my heartbeat. My arms and legs stung, my midsection felt like one big bruise. I felt like I'd been through a blender a couple hundred times.

And that was only the tip of the physical pain.

I didn't even want to think about how cold and empty my mind felt.

"Here!" Quatre's voice rang out as he returned, handing a pen and paper to Sally. She looked from them to the bedrail – and my tied hands.

"We're going to have to untie her," she said curtly.

Quatre looked at my bound hands as well, paused for a moment. I saw something flash in his eyes - something that looked like... betrayal. Pain. He looked down at me, green eyes boring into mine as if searching for something. Then, "All right. Just - don't tell the others."

I suddenly noticed the ghost of a bruise on his chin.

My heart nearly stopped - I had...

I had given him that bruise. The last time he...

The last time he'd untied me.

And I knew all about betrayal and pain myself. I knew about it so well that at that very second I couldn't fathom why I was lying here still breathing.

Didn't he know that I couldn't be trusted? I didn't trust myself – I had no fidelity and no –

No memories. Not of any allegiance to either OZ or the pilots. Giniko had taken care of that, when she had burned my mind in the cockpit of Deathscythe. All I knew was that I was a nobody who couldn't be trusted and who now knew nothing but betrayal –

Quatre gave me no more time to think as he reached down and silently untied

my wrists.

"All right, help her up," Sally said, setting the paper aside to reach over and slide a hand behind my back just as Quatre did the same. My eyes widened and despite the tube in my mouth I gasped in pain at the contact – their arms on my back set my skin on fire wherever they touched, and the pressure of their hands felt like they were branding their handprints into my back.

Quatre winced and Sally looked down sharply.

"I'm sorry," Quatre whispered, as they lifted me and propped another pillow behind my back. It might as well have been covered in burning tar, for all the comfort it gave me.

Sally turned and handed me the paper and pen.

I lifted my hand, shaking from the effort of that action alone but nonetheless trying to make it work, to write out on the paper what I had to tell Quatre right now, because –

Because somehow the look in his eyes was only tearing the hole in my gut deeper. Because somehow, with no loyalties, I felt an attachment to him and the pain in his eyes and I couldn't stand that it had been my fault –

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry," I scratched out, shoving the pad at him, looking at him and trying to ask his forgiveness even though I didn't really know why, because it wasn't like I mattered, even to myself. But I had to get his eyes to brighten, so they wouldn't look like they did now.

So I could forget that I'd betrayed him. Because something inside me *hurt* at the thought of betraying him.

But I couldn't forget, because I knew that I had no friends. I had no loyalties. I had no purpose. I would be so much better off dead -

"It's all right," Quatre's soft voice broke my fervent thoughts. "I forgive you."

With those six words, he thought he could absolve me. With that look in his eyes that was soft and compassionate, that was anything but how Duo had looked at me –

No. Don't think about that.

But there was still a problem here.

"Why did you -" I began to write, but suddenly Quatre's hand had shot out and grabbed the pen, effectively interrupting me and I looked up at him, wondering why.

"Because," he said, softly, forcefully, "you're my friend. You're *our* friend. I don't care what anyone else says."

I blinked up at him. I couldn't believe what he was saying. After I'd –

After I'd betrayed him, so personally, after he'd trusted me before and let me go only to end up hurt… He still trusted me.

I couldn't believe that. It was all I could do to sit there and stare at him, and –

"Thank you," I wrote. "Thank you –"

His slender fingers covered my small, bruised ones and I looked up at him.

"It's all right," he said. "It'll all work out somehow. I promise."