DISCLAIMER – I do not own Gundam Wing.
Chapter Twenty
Heero winced as he accepted yet another hug. Funny how a couple of weeks ago, all the affection he allowed his friends to show him was a firm hand on the shoulder. Now he was busy hugging Duo, Quatre, Sally, Hilde, and Catherine. Quite a jump in the affection-meter.
"You should let me look at that, Heero," Sally said, looking at the little smears of blood on her hands. Heero's back was still bleeding slightly.
He nodded, and she went to retrieve some supplies. Heero looked around Noin's ship while he waited for Sally to return. Catherine was busy switching between kissing her brother and kissing Quatre. Wufei was talking to Noin, and Heero thought he was also waiting for Sally to return. Even though she refused to admit she cared about him, Hilde fussed over Duo, making sure he wasn't hurt and didn't have any wounds the way Heero did. Duo finally got tired of her asking questions and tackled her in a kiss. Heero tried not to laugh as Hilde blushed a bright red.
"Ouch," Heero blurted out as something stung his back.
"Hold still, Heero," Sally instructed. She rubbed more antiseptic onto his back, cleaning his neglected open wounds.
"I can't believe I just heard Heero Yuy say ouch," Duo teased, holding Hilde around the waist. She squirmed out of his grip, but continued to hold his hand.
"He's been doing a lot of things that we wouldn't believe lately," Wufei said, handing Sally a fresh sponge and assisting her in cleaning Heero's back.
Heero remained silent, biting the inside of his lip as the stinging pain of Sally's ministrations on his back increased. He closed his eyes when she started using a simple needle and biodegradable thread to stitch up some of his larger slashes. Carefully placing sterile gauze, Sally put padding over the opened skin.
"Wufei, help me," she said quietly. Wufei came around in front of Heero and took the wrapping she offered. Together, they succeeded in holding the pads in place while wrapping cloth around Heero's torso to protect his back. "You can put your arms down now, Heero," the doctor said as she finished.
"Thanks, Sally," Heero said, smiling at her wearily.
"You look tired," Cathy said, coming over and peering into Heero's eyes.
Quatre came up behind her, putting a hand on her waist. "You've had a hard day, Heero. You should probably rest."
"Has it only been one day?" he asked. It seemed like it was years ago when they had all been safe at Relena's palace and decided to leave in the middle of the night to go on this crazy mission. It seemed like years ago when Jinx had abused him in the hold of the OZ base's detention cell. Jinx. "Has anyone heard from Jinx?" he asked.
Faces looked sad and hopeless. "We think she may have survived for a while after you saw her Heero," Trowa explained. "The base blew apart moments after you escaped the hangar. That gives us reason to believe that she was alive long enough to set the detonation on those explosives. She carried out that part of the mission, Heero."
Heero's face set in a stern expression. "The mission…" he repeated with a distant tone to his voice. He stumbled a little as he got off the table.
Trowa was there, supporting him with an arm around his shoulders.
"Rest, Heero." He heard several different voices say softly. They all wanted him to go to bed. To close his eyes and forget that Jinx was still out there somewhere, floating through space. No, who was he kidding? Jinx was dead. She had to stay behind and set off the explosives. She killed herself to fulfill the parameters of the mission that fell in her delegation. All logic led down one road, and that said Jinx didn't survive the destruction of the base.
His knees felt weak. Even with Trowa's strong arm around him, Heero swayed and started to fall again. Before he knew what was happening, he felt his feet lifted off of the ground and his body swing perpendicular. Normally, he would have fought against Trowa. He would have fought against his own swimming mind and tried to walk himself to a bed nearby. But he was not normal now. His thoughts focused on her. And he couldn't bring himself to fight against the support and love that his comrades were showing him now. Heero snuggled his head into Trowa's chest and settled down.
* * * * * * *
"How is he?" Quatre asked when Trowa returned to the room where all of them had gathered. This room was like a little kitchen and den in one, for the comfort of the crew members on Noin's craft.
"Duo's staying with him," Trowa explained. He sat down on a couch and put an arm around Cathy. Quatre was too busy pacing back and forth behind the couch to give too much affection to Catherine.
"But will he be ok?" Quatre asked another question, reaching the coffee maker and turning back around to walk across the room to the refrigerator.
"No one can tell but him," Trowa answered
"He will search for her." They directed their attention to Wufei who was getting up from the other couch. "He will search for her until he finds her body."
"There won't be much of a body to find," Hilde said softly.
Sally stood up next to Wufei. "Won't Noin be sending a sweep crew? Can't they look for traces of her mobile suit or something? Maybe she was able to get away from the base in time," she said. It was against her character to cling to false hope, but she had to stay positive in the group of pessimists.
Quatre stopped pacing. "I'm going out with the sweepers."
Trowa stood up from the couch and have Catherine a sad look. Silently he followed as Quatre walked out of the room in the direction of the mobile suit hangar.
"I'll go over the data collected before the blast," Wufei offered. "There might be something useful in there."
* * * * * * *
Something was wrapped around his hand.
Before Heero even opened his eyes, he knew that someone or something was next to him in bed, and something was wrapped around his hand. He gingerly lifted his arm, not disturbing the sleeping body curled up next to him, and peered at the long braid wrapped around his hand. For a moment, hope flickered in his chest.
It was Duo.
Heero let out a sigh and brushed his hand over Duo's sleeping face and head. Duo stirred a little, but he didn't wake up. Heero couldn't help but smile at him. How many times had they needed to get up early in the morning and Heero had to shout in the American's ear to wake him up? Sliding his arm out from under Duo's resting head and putting a pillow there instead, Heero stole out of bed and cringed when his feet hit the cold floor. He hadn't remembered taking off his shoes, but Trowa must have done that.
Not knowing what time it was, but only aware that it was early in the morning, Heero made his way down the hallway and to the common room they'd all been in earlier. Sally was asleep on the couch. Why wasn't she in a room?
A faint glow from behind a control room door caught his attention, and Heero pushed it open slowly, peering inside. That's why. Wufei was busy at a consol, reviewing data of some sort. Reviewing in binary. Heero found himself analyzing what he saw. Binary meant that the data was of the primary computer systems of…he watched the numbers scroll across the screen…the data told of air circulators and atmosphere regulators. On a time grid. Other random information about living conditions scrolled across the screen. The system was too large to be Noin's ship. It looked like information off a small base or satellite.
"So you're up, Yuy?"
Wufei's voice snapped him out of his analysis of the simple binary data. "Yea," he managed to say softly without waking Sally behind him. He carefully entered the room and shut the door behind him. Several monitors were on and glowing binary numbers at him. Another had a schematic of the meteor base on it. Voices were talking from somewhere on a couple of different radio speakers. Trowa and Quatre's faces were visible on another two smaller monitors. They seemed to be concentrating on something.
"Where are they?" Heero asked, motioning toward the two on the screen and pulling up a chair to sit next to Wufei.
"Sweeping the debris of the base."
"For me?"
"For her."
Heero was silent a moment. His friends were out there, after having fought a battle for hours outside of the meteor base. Out there in cold space rather than in here, warm and content lying in bed. He had such good friends. "What are you doing? Going over the base systems?"
Nodding, Wufei answered, "I'm not as good at this stuff as you, but I have found something interesting."
"What's that?"
"Evidence that Jinx is alive somewhere."
Heero leaned forward and looked at Wufei expectantly, hope shining bright in his deep blue eyes. "How good of evidence?"
"Well," Wufei started, trying not to smile at his friend's earnest or his own glee, "I found that the security log reports a break in of the mobile suit hangar. A private busted through security codes and stole a mobile suit in the confusion of the battle when Duo appeared so close to the base. Keep in mind, a lot of soldiers launched from that hangar when Duo's mobile suit evaded the cannons of the base, but the security log does report an unauthorized launch."
Heero nodded violently and hung on to each word from Wufei's mouth as he spoke.
"And another thing. About three nanoseconds before the base exploded into dust, the fire alarms went off."
A confused look crossed Heero's face for a moment before his eyes brightened again. "She set the explosives to respond to the fire alarm," he reasoned.
"That's what I thought," Wufei said. "She had to know that you'd go to the storage hangar and bust out of there. Or that one of us would fire a shot into the base whenever you got safely out. All being considered, it's a safe bet that the fire alarm would eventually be triggered in the base, and most likely it would be done after you escaped from the base."
"She had to…" Heero breathed.
"That's what I think," Wufei smiled as he spoke. "So keep your hopes up."
Heero smiled back.
* * * * * * *
Quatre's mansion seemed to shine as they walked up to it. It'd been three days since the attack on the meteor base. Three days since they'd witnessed it explode into a million different pieces. Three days and they'd had no contact from Jinx.
Heero took a deep breath. He was glad Relena wasn't around right now. The silly girl had her authority revoked over this incident and now was in the middle of negotiating with the Executive Counsel to get herself into one of the chairs. It didn't matter what happened to her, he decided, just as long as she wasn't around during his recuperation time.
He watched Quatre and Cathy skip up the steps, hand in hand. It tugged his heart a little to see them so happy together. But he wished them all the happiness in the world, no matter how he ached to find that happiness again with Jinx. Sally and Wufei quit worrying about the public display thing and were now comfortable walking with arms around each other. Their sharing of a room on Noin's ship was not secret, and no one bothered Wufei about it as he promised a slow death to anyone who disturbed his and Sally's new living arrangements. Even Duo and Hilde seemed to be getting back together, but Hilde was stubborn and going to make Duo work extra hard to regain her affections.
Maguanacs assaulted them from all sides when they entered the mansion. Gifts and praise showered down on them, and they were promised a large feast and much dancing later that evening. Duo brightened at the mention of food. His happy face fell a little though, when he remembered that Jinx was missing from their entourage.
When the faithful Maguanacs left them in peace and went to prepare the feast, the pilots fell silent. Wufei tightened his grip around Sally and looked mournfully at the swords hung above the fireplace mantle, remembering when he and Jinx had sparred in Relena's gym. Trowa stared out the large windows at the gardens in Quatre's yard. Quatre wept openly, and Catherine cradled his head against her chest as he sobbed quietly. Duo too, wiped tears from his eyes as he thought of her. The last time they were here, he almost laughed at the absurdity, Heero had thought Jinx liked him. Heero had been so wrong.
Heero sighed loudly. He wasn't crying. He'd cried for three days while waiting to hear of something from Jinx. But they'd never gotten a signal from her. They'd never found pieces of her mobile suit. They'd never found any other evidence to support that she was alive or dead, that she even existed at all.
"I'm going to sleep before the feast," he said with a polite smile. He knew they would all be worried about him.
"We'll be right here, Heero," Hilde said, giving him a little kiss on the cheek.
Heero smiled and looked around the room before he started up the stairs. The walk down the hallway to his room was long, and he swore he could hear his footsteps echo on the soft carpet. No, that was his heart thumping that he could hear. He shook his head. Just what I need, he thought, to go crazy and hear things.
Pushing the door of his room open slowly, he dumped his small bag on the floor inside the door. He stared. Was he seeing things too?
The figure in his bed rolled over and moaned softly in her sleep.
Heero held his breath. If he breathed or made too much of a sound, she might disappear. He slipped off his shoes and socks, keeping in mind how she liked him in jeans with bare feet, and he made his way across the lush carpet to the large bed.
Slowly, he reached his hand out to touch her. His hand wavered in the air above her face snuggled in the pillow. Was she real? Heero gently ran his fingertips over her forehead, pushing her bangs away from her face to see it more clearly. She stirred in her sleep again.
Her crimson colored eyes widened when she saw him standing there. She smiled. She rolled onto her back and reached up to him. Heero fell onto her, holding her close and shuddering as relief and happiness washed over him.
He kissed her lightly and rolled over on the bed, gathering her into his arms. She snuggled her head against his chest and wrapped an arm around his waist. Already, she was beginning to fall asleep again. He could feel her heart beat against his side where she curled up over him. Heero's fingers sought out the areas of her head where the interrogation chips had been implanted. Hair had been ripped out in perfect circles on the side of her head. She'd pulled them off herself. She was still tired from having to fight against them.
Just as Heero was about to succumb to the sleep that tugged heavily on his conscious, thudding footsteps ran down the hallway in his direction.
"She's here, Heero! Her mobile suit is outside! She's…" Duo burst into his room yelling. He stopped short when he saw Heero lying in the middle of his bed with Jinx curled in the nook of his arm and side. Duo grinned brightly and walked to the side of the bed.
Jinx opened her eyes again, having been awakened by Duo's yelling. She didn't stir from her comfortable position against Heero, but she reached her arm over her head. Duo took her searching hand in his and kissed it gently. She smiled contentedly and pulled on his hand.
Duo took the hint and crawled onto the bed. Jinx rubbed her cheek lightly against Heero's chest and held Duo's arm tightly around her. She drifted off to sleep between the two of them.
"Everything is going to be ok now," Heero said in a soft voice to Duo, running his hand over Jinx's dark hair and admiring her sleeping form.
"No," Duo said with a smile as he closed his eyes. "Everything is going to be great."
_____
Ha ha, total sappy ending! I love it! You didn't think I'd have some angsty ending, did you? Hope you enjoyed.