Reach the stars and fly a fantasy
Dream a dream, and what you see will be
Rhymes that keep their secrets
Will unfold behind the clouds
And there beyond the rainbow
Is the answer to a neverending story-Neverending Story, New Found Glory
***
Duo reached over and toggled the connection to Preventers Headquarters off. He remained in front of the communications console for a long, silent moment, trying to gather his thoughts. Finally, shaking his head, he rose and left the room.
Before going down the stairs, he stepped inside Heero's room to check on the Japanese pilot. Heero was still asleep, his deep even breaths filling the room with a semblance of peace that Duo found ironic. Heero's arms and legs were tied down to the bedposts with a length of nylon rope. Knowing that Heero was fully capable of bending steel, Duo had no real hopes of the rope actually restraining him for long, but the bell tied onto it would at least let them know if he began thrashing again.
He went downstairs, snagging a cup of coffee from the kitchen before heading into the living room. The other three pilots were there, each holding a mug of coffee in his hands. Bodies crying out for sleep but minds refusing to allow it had driven them to caffeine. There had been a surprising amount and variety of coffee in the safehouse; Wufei had said it was Heero's, adding another piece of evidence to Duo's theory. Duo knew – and told the others – how druggies sometimes used large amounts of caffeine to counteract the crashes a drug high brought.
"Lady Une's flying over," he told the others as he sat down. "She'll be here by morning."
Trowa and Wufei nodded, while Quatre gave a tired sigh of relief. "How's Heero?" he asked Duo.
"Sleeping like a baby," Duo reported, taking a big gulp of his java as he did so. "Let's hope he stays like that until Lady Une gets here."
Lady Une barked orders to her secretary as she began preparing to fly to the Gundam pilots' safehouse. Two other gofers scurried around, packing her papers and arranging her shuttle flight.
Still snapping commands to the three harassed young women who trailed her down the hallway, Lady Une began striding swiftly to the airdock. For something like this to happen, now, right when she'd thought the stress of the WhiteClaw was over... Actually, considering that Heero was the top intelligence operative in the world, and that a Heero in a fit or a Heero with a drug problem could cause all sorts of extremely sensitive data to end up in the wrong hands, this could rapidly develop into a worse situation than WhiteClaw…
Relena had been at the spaceport to meet with Noin and Milliardo, her brother, and was now accompanying them as they went to report to Lady Une. The two had just arrived from Mars, ready to be reinstated in the Preventers corps. Relena decided to go along with them; she needed to give Une a copy of the revised budget anyway. She had managed to wrangle a substantial increase for the Preventers…
All three were on the way to Une's office, watching with amusement the celebratory parties still going on throughout the building, when they bumped into the Preventers Commander herself.
Almost as surprised by the near-collision as they were, Lady Une stared at them until Milliardo broke the silence. "Er…Preventer Wind reporting in for duty, ma'am…?" The last word ended in a question as Lady Une ground the heel of her hand into her forehead, muttering, "Damn! Damn, damn, damn!"
She looked at the three and offered an apologetic look. "I'm sorry, Zechs – " Zechs made a slight face, but he was expecting it; practically the only people who called him Milliardo were Relena and Noin, and even they forgot sometimes… "- Noin, Miss Darlien. A…situation…has arisen with the WIPEOUT operation that I need to supervise. I apologize; I cannot keep my appointment with you today. Could we reschedule?"
The two Peacecraft siblings inclined their heads in gracious acceptance, recognizing the flustered Preventer head's apology as genuine. However, Noin frowned in confusion. "I thought that op was over," she said, gesturing at the celebrations still at full-blast around them. "What came up?" she asked, Preventers agent in her coming to the fore.
"Er…" Lady Une really did not want to admit such a huge blow to the Preventers hierarchy, with one of the best people in the organization possibly taken out – and she especially did not want to tell these three, each of whom had personal ties with Heero.
But the decision was taken out of her hands when Lucas Shaw stormed up to her. "What is this I hear about Agent Yuy being taken to a hospital for drug-testing…ma'am?" He barely remembered to add the honorific at the end, proof of how this infamously calm and well-mannered man was upset. He had pitched it in a low voice, but it still carried over to the three standing nearby, whose eyes widened in shock.
In the end, the shuttle flying to the Gundam pilots' safehouse had three more passengers than expected. It would have been four, had Une not managed to convince Shaw to remain behind to coordinate things first.
Duo straightened from his slouch, jolted out of his half-doze by the doorbell. Vainly trying to rub the sleep out of his eyes, he half-stumbled over to the door and wrenched it open. On the doorstep stood three impatient Preventers and an even more impatient Vice Foreign Minister.
Lady Une started to say something, but looked at Duo and abruptly closed her mouth. "God, Maxwell, didn't you sleep?"
Duo yawned. "No, not really. It was sort of hard, when you live in fear of Heero having yet another fit and…"
"Yet another? Just how many times has he gone into fits?" Lady Une demanded.
"Eh, a few times," Duo replied as the five of them went into the house. "He completely shredded a coil of thick nylon rope when he was thrashing, once. He's asleep now; Wufei's drawn guard duty and Quat and Tro are asleep in their rooms."
They were in the living room now. Duo took a big swig of semi-warm coffee before remembering to offer his 'guests' some. "Wanna cup?" he asked them.
"Er, no thanks, Duo," Noin answered, eyeing the brownish liquid warily. Everyone else nodded in eager agreement.
"Can we see him?" Relena asked, practically on her toes from sheer anxiety. Duo managed to grin tiredly as he quipped, "Wondered when you'd get around to that, princess," using his nickname for Relena.
Zechs glared at Duo's back, offended and slightly jealous of Duo's familiarity with his younger sister as they climbed the stairs.
They entered Heero's room, blinking at the sudden darkness. Wufei sat by the door, back to the wall and bared katana laid across his knees. His forehead was resting on the blade, and soft snoring emanated from his direction.
Duo snorted, and roughly nudged the sleeping boy's ribcage with his foot. Yelping in pain, Wufei sprang to his feet.
"What was that for, Maxwell?" he yelled. "Stupid (untranslatable Chinese insult), I should…" He cut off suddenly as Duo, smirking, jerked a thumb at Lady Une.
Wufei stiffened in salute. "Commander."
Lady Une nodded in acknowledgement. Relena was already over by Heero's bedside, eyes wide as she took in his pale skin – too pale – and the dried sweat tracks marking it, the irregular, shallow breathing. He shook his head from side to side, slowly and labouredly, as though he was fighting some collar on his neck. He muttered softly, switching between English and Japanese rapidly.
Relena traced the outline of his suffering face with one finger, almost unaware of what she was doing. She took her hand back slowly, clutching it to her chest. "Lady Une," she said, softly. "He's running a fever."
Noin was at the bedside at those words, feeling Heero's sweat-damp skin for herself. "Relena's right," she said tensely. "He's very hot…"
Duo looked worried. "He didn't seem sick earlier…sure, he was raving and delirious…but I mean, he wasn't feverish or anything…"
"Maybe his wound got infected," Zechs said, coming up behind his sister to study the boy lying on the bed. His blue eyes narrowed slightly. It was hard for him to accept that the small, seemingly-frail figure lying here was Heero Yuy – Heero was his rival, a fellow pilot and soldier, and occasionally a cause of concern whenever his sister seemed a bit too worried about him…but never this.
Never this.
Zechs shook his head, and then pointed to the bandage wrapped around Heero's left shoulder. It was dark with dried blood – a lot of it. Duo and Wufei looked at each other with an expression that seemed to defy words. "How did we miss that?" Duo asked the other boy.
Wufei shrugged, though his face looked slightly sheepish. Well, what passed for sheepish on Wufei. "It wasn't like Yuy had any trouble using his arm last night. It was like it wasn't even injured."
Noin interrupted. "That's because it isn't." She had peeled back the bandage, and underneath the bloodied cloth was an expanse of unmarked, unbroken skin. There was no hint of any wound that could have bled enough to mark the bandage like it was – there wasn't even a scar.
"The hell?" Duo demanded. He shoved in beside Noin (the bedside was rather crowded now) and stared at Heero's uninjured arm. "So…apparently he wrapped a bloody bandage around his shoulder for no reason whatsoever?" He shook his head in disbelief.
"Can we forget the bandage?" Relena asked, voice steely in the way it only got when she was basically shaming/intimidating the entire lawmaking body of the United Earth Sphere into supporting pacifism. "The important thing now is to check what is making him sick! An uninjured arm can wait, no matter what's wrapped around it!" She looked at them all with a regal blue-eyed gaze that not even her brother could match.
"Relena's right," Une said briskly. "I've already called in at a local hospital to make arrangements. They're trustworthy, they'll not leak us to the media or anyone else," she reassured Relena, who was beginning to open her mouth. "I know the hospital director."
She turned to Duo and Wufei. "Wake up the others. We'll take the van we brought to the hospital; it's better than the Jeep you have, it's got more room. Zechs, Noin, help the boys carry Heero out to the van. Wufei, put the house's security system to Code Alpha," naming the highest level of alert that the safehouse could go to, and one that basically ensured that no one would be getting in without the current inhabitants' say-so…or a beam cannon.
Relena put in, "I'm coming too." Une nodded, knowing better than to argue. Noin elbowed Zechs, who knew no such thing and was beginning to open his mouth. "Do you really think that Relena would stay here or go back to Sank? With Heero like that?" she whispered in Zechs's ear. He scowled but acquiesced.
Quatre and Trowa entered the room then. After saluting Une and greeting the three newcomers, they got down to business. Wufei left, going to the ready room to prep the security system. The others lifted Heero off the bed, Zechs and Duo slinging him between them, the other two flanking them. It wasn't that Heero was especially heavy; actually he weighed the least of them all. It was in case he awoke that they surrounded him. Heero began to stir as they lifted him off the bed, head shaking more firmly. He let out a long groan, his eyelids flickering slightly.
Quatre looked at his awakening teammate and sighed. He looked vaguely disconcerted as he readied a syringe and inserted the long needle into Heero's arm. The boy gave a long exhaling sigh, and was still.
They checked Heero into the hospital. During the ride, it had been necessary to tranquilize Heero once more – Noin, who had been privy to Sally's rants about Heero's unusual medical files, explained that somehow, a part of Heero's brain could instruct his glands to release body-manufactured chemicals that could null or counter any chemical imbalances.
In other words - it took him a lot quicker to recover from tranquilizer shots than most people.
They told the doctor in charge this, and also - reluctantly - that Heero could be a danger to the medical staff if he awoke. So, they set up an IV drip in his room with a liberal amount of tranquilizer in it. Heero would remain asleep until the tests were done.
The doctor who drew the blood sample from the patient's arm couldn't remember having such a large audience. Four boys, one man, one girl and two women watched as the red liquid slowly filled the syringe he had inserted into the vein, with such intent looks that he really could not help but feel rather nervous. When it was done, he nigh-well fled to the lab.
Thank god technology had improved so that urine samples were no longer needed. He could not imagine trying to obtain that kind of sample under that kind of scrutiny.
The dreams had increased as time had passed. It was as though his mind had been throwing up unconscious, yet powerful barriers against those dreams (he refused to call them visions) but with each dream that had gone through a crack in said barrier, the dreams gained more of a foothold, the cracks of the dream-barrier had widened. The more he dreamed...the more the dreams would come.
And now, he was trapped within slumber, no period of wakefulness to escape - yes, that was the word, escape - to, no real world to help him push the strange, fantastic images away. No barriers; not anymore.
The dreams themselves began to change. Now they weren't moving events for him to watch as an impartial observer - now they were still, sharp-edged images, thrown at him with increasing speed and intensity. They flicked from one to the other quickly, leaving him to make the connections on his own. Strangely, he did; like, after seeing those leopard twins placed on a strange bed, he knew that they were having their blood replaced with some strange substance to make their battle more certain; he knew they were doing it for that man with the pale blue hair, the man with the strange connection to the boy with the white dragon; and he knew that it would, somehow, kill them. And then he knew that the silver-haired boy was not at all what he seemed, after a single glimpse of him/her...he knew that the boy with the white dragon had wings, and that the wings were considered an accursed mark, even though all he saw was the girl with the green eyes holding a feather....
He knew, somehow. He knew it all.
In a place that was impossibly distant, and not only in terms of spatial relationships, another shared his plight. Only this was no young boy dreaming of dragons and swords; she was a queen who had a husband going nearly out of his mind with worry, worry about his green-eyed queen, worry about this coma she seemed to have lapsed into. And she dreamed not of dragons, but of giant war machines; not of swords, but of guns.
But both dreamt, and learnt, a story of war. And both would know its entirety by the time they awoke.
A red stone long dormant began to glow.
AN: Whoa, it has been a while since I worked on any of my fics, ne? Gomen, gomen.... I've been busy with school (I hate third year) having periodic nervous breakdowns about college (any Filipinos out there with tips on how to apply for college abroad?) and working on a pair of independent story projects. (none fanfic, though one was supposed to be a GW alternate universe before it morphed...)
I should be working on my SATs, but I had to finish this. Anyway, as you can see, nothing really happens in this chapter...it's mostly build-up. The next few chapters will have some surprises, though... =) Wait and see!
As usual, I apologize in advance for any discrepancies in actual medical procedure that I have written. If you spot one, maybe you could pretend that hospital MO has changed in AC 196? ^_^;;
Lucas Shaw is very protective of Heero - not only as his best agent, but also in a more personal way...um, maybe you could compare it to Jack Ryan and the Judge's (I forgot his name) relationship in Tom Clancy's novels...
And while I have the plot mostly figured out, I lack some stuff to really flesh out the chapters. If anyone has any ideas for what could happen in the next chapters, little stuff you'd like to see, please email me! Or leave a review! It'd really help me get these chapters out faster.
Anyone interested in doing fanart?
Plug: Someone please read and review my new SRATSS fic! Please? I've tried to make it so you don't need to know the series to like it...
http://www.fanfiction.net/read.php?storyid=455636
Wow, I sound so kapal. Anyway, thanks for reading, minna!