Part 8:
yue kato
130302
I got something to say you know, but nothing comes
Yes I know what you think of me, you never shut up
I can hear that…
'Cause sometimes, I said sometimes
I hear my voice, and it's been
Here, silent all these years…
---- "Silent All These Years", Tori Amos
The soft beeping roused him from troubled, restless images of loss and blood-soaked braids, snapping him back into the waking world to find himself amongst tangled covers half-thrown off and his hand wrapped around his gun. He grabbed the comm unit and flipped it open to meet Quatre's ever-young face looking back at him a little anxiously.
"Heero, he's awake. Woke up about 5 minutes ago. We haven't gone in to see him yet, since Relena insisted we let her speak to him first…"
The rest of Quatre's speech washed over him and he barely registered the words. He could only focus on the first short phrase. "I'll be there." Without further elaboration, he closed the unit and flopped back on the bed, curling instinctively around a pillow and inhaling deeply.
/He's awake…/ A tremendous relief, unlike what anything else had ever engendered, even the ending of the way, surged through him, and he raised his left hand slowly, observing it with clinical detachment. It was shaking – the tiny tremors would have been perfectly evident even to the smallest child.
He let his hand drop and clutched the pillow tighter. A childish voice eerily similar to the little girl's who always haunted his dreams asked why he was trembling. "Are you scared, onii-san? Are you scared because you're lost?"
His aimless gaze fell upon a strand of chestnut brown spilled lazily across the mattress. Before he knew it, his fingers had curled around it as he attempted to bury deeper into the mound of covers where Duo's scent imprinted itself. /No, I'm not lost. Not any longer… But I almost lost the one who found me./
After a while, he finally sat up, scrambling out of bed to enter the bathroom. He passed his own twin bed, neat and untouched, as he stepped under the water to shower swiftly. For once, he decided to indulge himself, and allowed the hot stream to soothe some of the tension out of his lean body.
Turning off the water left him with a deafening silence, punctuated only by the erratic drip of water from the showerhead. He suddenly realised how used he had become to the sound of Duo's voice being part of the background noise. It could have been just babbling and small-talk, plain and simple; or it could have been his awful, off-key singing as he head-banged to the cacophonous sound he termed ancient rock; or his quiet, preoccupied murmur in those rare, introspective moments when he actually slowed down, stilled.
It hit him how much he treasured those times, so few and far between, when he would come out of the bathroom to see his American partner standing in front of the hotel room window. The shutters would be open, and the wind would be billowing in, lifting and playing with chestnut locks let loose to fly in the forceful breeze. Part of him would automatically want to berate the idiot for exposing himself so – you never knew where your enemies would turn up – but the rest of him would be struck, shaken by this image of Duo's… beauty.
Beauty – there seemed to be no description more appropriate. He wondered if he'd always seen the other man as beautiful as he roughly towelled his hair dry and pulled on his ubiquitous tank top and jeans. After careful, meticulous sifting through and examination of the facts filed away in his mind, he decided he probably had. Duo's looks were too striking to not have been noticed, but they had been appreciated in a more detached sense then, viewed more as a potential battle tactic rather than savoured purely for its aestheticism.
Yet now, Heero found that he was unable to conjure up the brown-haired man's image without the associated emotions of pain, near-loss, trepidation, confusion, relief, lingering hope, and a mysterious, fragile ache in his heart… When had that begun? After he and Relena had separated? When he had discovered Duo's broken, battered body on the highway? Or had the seeds been planted much, much earlier?
Only he had ignored them, suppressed his own emotions in favour of the soldier's single-minded dedication to the mission. He had not followed his heart.
/Does that mean I failed you, J, in the end?/
/Or maybe I just failed myself./
He was about to leave for the hospital when a thought occurred to him. /Duo would HATE those hospital gowns./
The hotel room was stripped of all black clothing as the Japanese man departed.
***
"Hey, guys… Guys! I'm fine!" Duo weakly tried to bat away helpful hands as he attempted to get out of bed. He so had to go to the bathroom NOW and he wanted to get there on his own steam. He may have been nastily injured, but he was a Gundam pilot after all. He might not have been as tough as he used to be, but he definitely did NOT need people to help him around!
Trowa and Wufei were alright. They had retreated into the background once they had established he wasn't permanently damaged, but Quatre's protective instincts had apparently been kicked into high gear, and he had joined forces with the other females in a diabolical plan to coddle him.
"Are you sure you'll be okay by yourself in there?" Quatre asked worriedly, hovering near the long-haired man as he made his slow, careful way into the bathroom.
"Yeah, I might actually topple head-first into the toilet bowl," Duo retorted sarcastically.
It seemed to go right over the blonde's head. "In that case, maybe I should—"
Duo groaned and shut the door in his face.
As he sank down on the covered toilet seat to catch his breath, he could hear the amused chuckles from Trowa and Wufei, a counterpoint to Quatre's slightly indignant outburst. Sighing, he rubbed his face tiredly, wincing at the residual pain the movements caused.
At least Relena had left, he thought as he forced himself to stand up and relieve himself. An entourage of Preventer agents had arrived earlier to escort the Vice-Ambassor back to the local headquarters. He wasn't really sure how to behave towards her yet, especially when his mind was still in turmoil.
It was hard enough to think as it was, but all the visitors – glad as he was to see them – were just making it all the more difficult to sort things out for himself.
Despondently, he washed his hands and sat back down on the toilet, resting his chin in his hands. Half of him was chiding himself for being so depressed and mopey.
/Shouldn't you be celebrating like right about now? Your greatest wish has come true!/
/Yeah, but… but what if Relena's wrong? Or she's just joking, or playing a trick on me…/
/Come on, you know she wouldn't do something like that, especially about THIS…/
/Yeah, but still…/
/Still what?/ Impatience was seeping in.
/What if… what if we do get together, and Heero realises that he doesn't want me after all…/
/Damnit! Don't you know that's life? You never know what you're gonna get! But if you don't first take the chance, then how are you ever going to know for sure how this story will end?/
/I—/
/Do you really want to sit here saying 'what if' for the rest of your life?/
/No, I…/
/Because that's what you'll be doing if you keep running and hiding, Duo Maxwell./
Drawing in a deep breath to fortify himself, he pulled himself up and opened the bathroom door. "Lord, give me strength," he prayed softly. "When he comes, give me the strength to say and do what I must."
Looking up, he gave the room a bewildered once-over. "Hey, where's everybody?"
"I sent them out. They were disturbing you." The abrupt, emotionless voice made him whip his head around so fast he made himself dizzy. The man he'd been agonising over the past few hours – the past few YEARS – was sitting on the couch at the corner of the room, watching him an unnervingly intense gaze. And beside him was…
"Heero, what on earth did you bring?! The entire hotel room?" Duo asked incredulously as he gradually made his way to the other man, anxiety temporarily forgotten in his amazement that Heero would actually bring him something – even if it was just his own clothes.
Heero didn't quite blush but his mask cracked long enough to allow a look of discomfiture to flit over his face. "Baka! I didn't know which ones you wanted to wear."
"So you brought everything? Not that I don't appreciate it, Heero my man. But if you happened to notice, they're all black. Not much of a difference, is there—" His enthusiastic speech ended in a startled yelp as he overestimated himself and lost his footing. Resigning himself to a painful landing, he opened his eyes in surprise to find himself cushioned against the hard hospital floor by a warm, firm body.
"Um, thanks?" he offered weakly.
"You're still not strong enough to be walking around, you idiot." But there was no real anger in Heero's tone as he lifted the American easily and deposited him back on the bed. "The fact that you're still breathing should be a miracle."
"Well, don't you just admire my abilities then?" Duo returned playfully, falling back into their normal pattern of seriousness and banter.
"Yes, I had counted on those skills right from the start," Heero replied wryly.
Duo was quiet for a while as Heero settled him under the covers. "Heero?"
"Hn?"
"You told me that once before, you know." Hero was alerted to the sudden change in his partner's mood by the wistfulness in his voice. He remained silent, but his mind swiftly raced back.
"Aa." He HAD said it before, back during the first time Relena was kidnapped by Dekim Barton.
"Heero?"
He raised his head to meet the vulnerable violet orbs. "I—I'd always…" Duo squeezed his eyes shut for a long instant as he muttered, "God I hope I don't regret this." He opened his eyes again and reached out determinedly to take Heero's hand, encouraged when the Japanese man didn't pull away but instead tightened his own grip around Duo's fingers.
"Heero, I'd… I'd always wished that you would have admired me for more than my skills." Heero didn't say anything, but he sat down on the edge of the bed beside Duo. Duo swallowed and made himself continue. "That you would admire me for me… That maybe you could like – even love – me?"
Duo didn't become conscious of how much closer Heero had moved until he stopped speaking, and now their faces were only inches apart. His hand was still securely caught in Heero's.
"Duo?" There was a sparkle in those dark blue eyes he'd never seen before.
"Huh? What?" It was difficult to concentrate when such a distraction was so near him, and bearing even closer with each passing second.
"Hai."
"What?…" His eyes widened as the meaning behind that single word registered itself, or it could be the pleasant shock of Heero sealing his lips over Duo's own.
Heero finally pulled away slightly, leaving Duo dazed and breathless, arms entwined Heero's neck.
"Itsumo."
Duo stared up as a smile that Heero thought was unbearably radiant spread across his features. "Hai. Itsumo," he softly echoed just before their lips met again.
He needed no other words.
owari
Author's Notes: Oh my god, it's finally finished!! Finally!! Yes! YES!! Can u believe this whole thing actually took me 5 – FIVE – years?? I'm not sure I would have started it back then if I had known it would actually have taken me this long to complete it. And because I kept going away and returning again over the years, there might have been changes in style and such from the beginning to the end. The initial chapters of this story have gone thru several revisions so I'm reluctant to do further editing. Besides, to me, they're milestones for various stages of my life and I'm happy for them to remain as they are, a reflection of my mentality then ^_^
Thank you very much for reading all the way until here. I very much enjoyed writing this last chapter, and have tried to describe Heero to the best of my abilities. Hopefully I have done a decent job. Heero, in many ways, has been very foreign to me – his motives and personality and why he does what he does – which is why I can write him better from a 3rd person's POV, since I've never really been in his head.
And thank you very, very much for reviewing this fic. I truly appreciate it – most likely I would not have finished it so quickly if not for all those reviews. For all of those who asked me for a happy ending, well, this is it. Hope it was worth the wait ^_^ Please do let me know what you think!
All the best!
----yue