Disclaimer: Nope, don't own Gundam or anything cool like that. Just using it for my own devices. g

Watching You

Part 2

I turned back to Quatre, who had begun pulling tape from the roll. Right. We needed to finish bandaging Wufei's ribs so they would at least stay in place until a real doctor came.

"We need to sit him up," I said, and Quatre handed me the tape before gingerly sliding his hands beneath the unconscious boy, lifting him carefully into a sitting position and balancing the limp body on his shoulder as I finished with the tape.

I took the first long strip and wound it around Wufei's body, maneuvering between his limp arms and Quatre behind him.

"You look a little relieved," Quatre said softly; all the same I was startled and I looked up at him, his green eyes staring right into mine.

"I… do?" I asked, turning back to my work so that I wouldn't have to look at him. For some reason… I just couldn't look at him right now. I didn't know why.

"Yes," he replied. "I know you're doing your best – you're not going to hurt him, if that's what you're worried about. You're doing fine."

I appreciated his comfort and support – I really did. But it made me feel so… strange…

"I'll just be glad when there's a real doctor here," I said shortly, pulling another piece of tape up and wrapping that one around the next set of ribs. Wufei's skin was pale, and the bruises stood out all-too-obviously on the creamy skin. I tried to ignore them.

"You're doing the right thing," Quatre said; I looked up at him again, surprised. How had he known –?

He smiled. "I'm sorry, but I know you were –"

"You always know what I'm thinking," I put in softly.

"I guess. Are you all right?"

"I'm fine."

The lameness of my assertion was obvious; Quatre, however, did not push it.

I finished taping Wufei's ribs and nodded to Quatre; he gently lowered the boy back to the floor, then turned around to begin cleaning up the med kits. When he was done he helped me move the unconscious pilot over to the pile of sheets that Duo had laid out for him, and I covered Wufei with one of the blankets as carefully as I could.

Quatre sat back and looked at me, and I figured I owed him the courtesy of looking up at him. I saw something in his eyes that looked like sadness, or grief, and I didn't know why it was there. I was too afraid to ask.

"Are you going to stay with him?" he asked.

I nodded. I didn't want to just leave him here alone for the next ten hours – any number of things could go wrong, and I wasn't about to let them go wrong if there wasn't someone here to fix them.

He smiled, a small smile. "I thought so. I'll leave these here, then," he said, indicating the med kits as he pushed himself up off the floor. "I'm going to go keep an eye on Trowa," he said softly. "Do you want me to send Heero down?"

I nodded. "Yeah, I want to check him over and make sure he's not glossing over some serious injury," I managed to say with a smile.

Quatre nodded. "Good night, then."

"Night."

He turned and climbed up the ladder, his footsteps echoing up the stairs toward the house, and the bay was left in silence once more.

I sat and stared at the med kits, hugging my knees to my chest. It wasn't exactly warm down here, and my sweatshirt wasn't wearable anymore. I focused on the boy sleeping just before me, watching his chest rise and fall slowly in the dim mobile suit bay.

I didn't know how much time had passed before I heard steps clanging down the stairs, and I looked up to see a rather reluctant-looking Heero Yuy climbing down the ladder. He was carrying one of my clean sweatshirts in his hand.

I blinked as he hopped off the last rung, landing nimbly on the floor and tossing the sweatshirt at me.

"…Thank you," I managed to get out, unable to hide the surprise from my voice.

He came over and sat down before me; I could see that his hair was still wet – he had indeed taken a shower, and the blood and sweat had been washed away. He smelled faintly of soap.

"You sound surprised," his matter-of-fact tone rang through the bay.

"I… I just didn't expect… thank you," I repeated, softer, looking away from his cool blue eyes. I put the sweatshirt on, pulling it over my tank top and hiding my arms once more. I took a breath, then looked back up at him to see him still looking at me, face placid and calm. "So. Are you really all right?"

"Yes," he replied. "There's nothing serious."

I peered at his face, eyeing the small cuts here and there; he did seem to be telling the truth. Nothing looked serious.

"Good. How's that?" I asked, pointing to what seemed to be the worst of his injuries, an inch-long cut on his left arm. It was fresh and pink on his pale, newly-washed skin.

He glanced down. "Fine."

I sighed. "All right. I believe you. No broken ribs?"

"No."

"Okay. You can go."

There was a beat of silence.

"You're staying down here?"

Yeah." I looked away again.

"Quatre said it would take ten hours to get Sally here."

"Yeah," I repeated.

Silence again.

"I'm going to come back in a few hours, and you're going to get some sleep then," he said, his voice still calm and even, and then I heard him stand up and climb back up the ladder, his footsteps fading.

I looked back at Wufei, still sleeping on the floor. He looked so peaceful.

"Thank you, Heero," I whispered.

Silence. Wufei's breathing was shallow but even, and I watched him for a few moments more, content that he would at least stay that way – stay alive – for the time being. I hoped it would be longer than that.

He really did look peaceful. I didn't think I had ever seen him look so calm or relaxed since I'd known him. Or at least since I could remember knowing him. He always looked so angry; a stark contrast to the serenity that I could see in his face now.

His hair was still matted about his face, however, making him look like an unkempt little boy who had spent too long playing outside in the mud.

Before I knew what I was doing, I had gingerly reached over, smoothing the black hair away from his face, untangling it as gently as possibly. There was this uneasy, almost nervous feeling in my stomach as I pulled the ebony strands away from his face, and I didn't really know why.

Well, I mused with a half-smile, sure I knew why. I knew that if he were to wake up right now, those limp hands of his would be in a death grip around my throat in less than two seconds. This was taboo. If he caught me touching his hair – touching *him* –

But he wasn't going to wake up, something inside my head whispered, and with it came a new surge of fear.

"Hey, you," I whispered to the still form on the floor before me. "Don't go doing anything else stupid, okay? Or you're gonna be hearing from me."

I sighed. "What am I going to do with you?"

I pulled my knees back up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them, and sat in the silence of the bay, trying to ignore whatever it was in my stomach that was making me act this way.

* * *

Three hours. It had already been three hours. It hadn't felt that way, but I couldn't even say if it felt like longer or shorter. Perhaps shorter – time seemed frozen down here, sitting and watching the still form of the Chinese boy lying at my feet, watching the heart monitor that I had rigged up flash steadily with each heartbeat.

About an hour ago – or maybe longer, maybe shorter, who knew? – I had needed to do *something*. So I had thrown together the crude instrument before me: 2 wires that served as the anode and cathode, sensors taped to his wrists, the wires connecting back into the oscilloscope I'd pilfered for my workbench a few weeks ago. There was no sound, only the steady beam tracing across the blue screen, and I alternated between watching the light run across the readout and watching his chest rise and fall beneath the blanket.

I closed my eyes for a moment, cutting out the oscilloscope light, cutting out the body on the floor, but I was unable to escape the trail of blood that always seemed to follow in my wake.

Blood. It was always blood. Somehow the people around me always seemed to get hurt. It was better when I got hurt. I hated it when other people got hurt.

Duo, Quatre, now Trowa and Wufei. I was sure I had hurt Heero somehow, somewhere along the way. Duo had certainly hurt him over me. How pointless this all was.

Duo, Quatre, and Heero. And now Trowa and Wufei.

I sighed, opening my eyes, fixing my gaze on the oscilloscope once more. I wanted this war to end. Wufei had been wrong – I wasn't deluding myself. I knew there was a war. I knew very well there was a war. I knew that I was consciously shoving that knowledge down and hiding the fact that it was there beneath the scarred layers of thought that were all that was left of my mind. I knew there was a war. And I hated it.

I hated it, hated this war, because look at what it was doing to these boys, to these people. These *boys* did not deserve this. They did not deserve to carry guns and pilot machines that could only bring death. They did not deserve to have to *call* themselves Death, or Justice, or Perfect Soldier or any such thing. And not one of them deserved to be lying here, hooked up to a thrown-together EKG, torn and broken and unconscious.

They did not deserve the sadness that I saw in Quatre's eyes. And they did not deserve the sadness that I could see – albeit hidden so well that I didn't think that even *he* knew it was there – in Wufei's face.

I could see it there now, when the mask of anger had fallen away and left only a scared little boy, and I was only a scared little girl sitting here and trying to keep him alive by watching him breathe alone.

Where was the point?

And why did it come down to this, I reprimanded myself, blinking and focusing on the oscilloscope beam as it faded to a wide line and then back to the thin light running across the display. I was losing my focus. Focus.

Don't focus on Wufei, because I didn't understand him and I didn't understand myself. I didn't understand why I was so worried about him, because when had he shown me anything even resembling kindness? And when he had, he had made it painfully obvious that it was against his better judgment.

*I* was against his better judgment.

"Why did you take me out of there?" I found myself whispering to the unconscious boy before me. "Why didn't you leave me? Why didn't you kill me?"

His still form offered me no answers, and so I stopped asking questions. I shut out the doubt until all that was left was the quiet bay, the steady flicker of the oscilloscope, and the silence in my head.