Disclaimer: sigh Not mine. Not making any money from 'em, either. Oh, and I stole the Esca song, that's Yoko Kanno's. ::bows::

Watching You

Part 3

"Win dain a lotica, en val tu ri si lo ta. Fin dein a loluca, en dragu a sei lain. Vi fa-ru les shutai am, en riga-lint…"

Heero stopped on the stairs leading down to the bay, briefly surprised at the voice that washed over him. It was soft, and scared, but still enchanting in a way he couldn't explain.

He also couldn't explain why he crept down, as silently as possible, to the platform above the bay and stood, leaning against the railing, watching her.

She was singing to him.

Or maybe she was singing to herself; Wufei was still unconscious after all. But somehow Heero got the distinct feeling…

She was singing to him.

"Win chent a lotica, en val tu ri si lo ta. Fin dein a loluca, si katigura neuver. Floreria for chesti, si entina…"

He couldn't recognize the words, didn't know where she had gotten the song from. But even more than that, he couldn't figure out why she was –

He knew how Wufei treated her. Hell, he knew how *he* treated her. And it hadn't exactly always been with much kindness. Even Duo's hand had not always been kind to her; the scars visible on her face and the ones hidden beneath the sleeves her sweatshirt were evidence of that. The fact that she could no longer live with Duo, no longer let him touch her was better evidence.

And here she was, staring at an oscilloscope… No, it was an EKG, he realized, seeing the wires running beneath the blanket and the beam running periodically across the screen. An EKG – she had rigged it up and was watching it, watching Wufei in the middle of the night, and she was *singing* to him like she was his mother.

He didn't understand.

She was not without her faults. She was too timid sometimes, too volatile at others. Too unpredictable in general, and she had been an OZ spy. She had betrayed them to OZ more than once, and only after Quatre had begged and pleaded for days had they been able to agree to let her stay, perhaps as a prisoner, less likely as an ally, but stay nonetheless and not, as Wufei had so desperately wanted, to "serve justice" and see her killed.

Wufei had wanted to see her killed. He had wanted to do it himself. Heero himself had nearly killed the girl at least twice. And each time she had looked up at him with those clouded green eyes, and he had wondered why he couldn't do it. Why the hell he had brought her to Relena's instead of pulling the trigger. Why the hell he had asked her questions instead of letting Wufei beat her senseless.

Why the hell he'd let himself slip carelessly into the mindset he lived with now, of almost trusting her judgment if he wasn't fast enough to catch himself.

She had been his friend, at first. Or as close as anyone got – as close as Duo had gotten, probably. That had been before any of this, after that day she followed him back from the school and proved that she knew how to service a mobile suit. He had let her work on his suit – on *his* suit – and she had betrayed them all. And they had let her return.

He could understand why she got along with Quatre. They had the same mindset – he'd seen her after she'd killed three of OZ's soldiers and she had been ready to break down and lose it. There she had been, broken at the inadvertent loss of three lives by her hand, when he had taken so many without a thought –

He shook his head slightly, trying to clear it. The singing had stopped, and she had set her chin on her knees, content to watch the oscilloscope in silence once more.

He moved then, brushing the thoughts fully away and coating the world with ice once more, descending the ladder into the bay. When he turned to face her, feet on the ground, she was looking up at him, eyes wide, and he could see her fear. He wondered if she was afraid that he had heard her.

He made no mention of it. "I'm here to watch him."

She blinked; she looked as if she recalled his saying so, but hadn't actually believed that he would come back. She looked at her watch. "But it's only been 6 hours – Duo won't be back with Sally for – "

"That's why I said I was here to watch him. I told you before; you are going to bed," he informed her, looking down at her from his standing position, fixing cool Prussian blue eyes on her.

"I – I can't just –"

"Yes you can," he said, unwilling to hear her illogical arguments. She needed sleep – she had been awake hours before they had left on this mission over 24 hours ago, and he knew she hadn't slept since. If nothing else, he could see it in her face; her fatigue was clear in the dark circles beneath her eyes, and even her gaze was clouded with the effects of having gone too long without sleep. And they couldn't afford to loose Wufei – a valuable pilot – because the person they had appointed to watch him had fallen asleep. That's all there was to it. He would leave no room for the possibility of concern for her welfare. He refused to believe that he cared about anything other than the resource that Wufei was to them.

He refused to believe that, because it was all he knew how to do.

He sat down beside her, eyes still locked on hers. "Get up," he commanded, leaving no room for argument in his voice. "Go to bed. I won't carry you up."

She looked at him a moment more, silently begging, but he did not change his expression.

She sighed. "*Fine*." She pushed herself slowly off the floor; his gaze followed her as she stood above him now.

Silence.

"Go," he repeated.

"I… Heero… Thank you," she said softly, and turned towards the ladder.

He nodded to her back, and fixed his eyes on the oscilloscope for the next four hours.

* * *

"You."

She only looked at him, his single word hanging like ice in the cold space between them.

She was standing there, arms crossed like she knew everything in the whole world, like she knew and she wasn't going to tell him, not even if he begged. Her hair was in the same two pigtails, eyes black as coal fixing him with that sharp yet amused look that he remembered her as having.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded.

"I think you know." She smiled smugly.

"I don't."

"Then you're just being stupid, like you always were."

"Why are you here? " he repeated. Then, "Stop haunting me."

"I'm not haunting you," she said matter-of-factly. Her eyes narrowed. "Have you ever thought that perhaps you are the one haunting me?"

He was incredulous. "Don't be a baka. I'm not the one who's dead."

She smiled; an unreadable smile, sad and happy and knowing all at the same time. It hurt him.

"Are you so sure about that?"

"Yes!" How could she even be asking him such stupid questions?

"Then maybe," she said, "you need to pay a little more attention." She sighed, as if he were too difficult for her to deal with right now. "Didn't she tell you that?"
He blinked. "She has nothing to do with this."

"You're thicker than I thought. You're hopeless. No wonder they think what they do."

"Nani? And what do they think?"

"She told you that too."

"Leave her out of this!" he insisted, hands balling into fists, as if he could do something with them.

"I can't."

"You won't," he accused sharply.

"*You* won't," she replied.

He would have turned away, if he could have. "She doesn't matter."

"She doesn't?"
"No."

"Baka."

"*Baka*."

She laughed, a peal of bells and gunshots. That hurt him too.

"You need to wake up, Wufei."

His eyes snapped open; harsh white halogen light stared him back in the face, and he cringed at the pain.

His entire body was in pain.

But he could overcome that. Physical pain meant nothing to him. It couldn't. He wouldn't let it.

He was lying on the floor of the mobile suit hangar; he could just see the ladder off to the side – the one that led up to the platform, then up towards the stairs.

There was something cool on his wrists, and his midsection was stiff with bandages.

He turned his head the slightest bit, trying to discern what was going on. He remembered the battle, remembered how they had been overwhelmed and remembered being hit with a missile. He remembered the red warning lights flashing on and off, remembered the alarms and buzzers wailing in his ears.

He didn't remember anything after that.

He was surprised to see Yuy sitting next to him, looking at him with a cool blue gaze and an expressionless face.

"What…?" Wufei asked, his voice coming with some difficulty.

"You took a bad hit and passed out. Duo's on his way back with Sally."

Wufei could feel his brow furrow. But from the feel of it… hadn't he already been bandaged?

"But I've already been bandaged," he said, unable to keep the confusion from his voice.

Something unreadable passed through Heero's eyes. "That was Koji."

Wufei's eyes narrowed. *Koji*.

"Just stay put and don't move," Yuy commanded.

"Hai," Wufei agreed; he didn't really feel like moving, anyway.

Heero's gaze slid off to the side, to something he'd been watching. "Hn. Don't need this anymore." He reached over and turned the device off, before lifting the blanket Wufei was beneath.

Wufei glanced down and saw that he had indeed been bandaged; he also saw that two wires had been taped to his wrists. That was what felt so cool. What were they for?
Heero deftly yanked the wires off his wrists, then covered him with the blanket.

"What were those?" Wufei demanded as Heero placed the wires on top of the device.

The cool gaze swung back to him again. "EKG."

EKG? They didn't have an… Well, it looked like it had been jerry-rigged at the last moment anyway. How touching, he thought, not without sarcasm. Had they really thought he was going to die?

Damn. Maybe he had been trying to die, anyway. That's all that seemed worth doing anymore, sometimes, trapped in this endless war with these people who could not possibly understand what it was like for him. He could barely remember a time before this damned war, and he knew quite well that it hadn't been all that long since the thing had started in the first place.

All he could remember now was that dream – Meiran looking at him with that gaze of hers, Meiran telling him he was a baka and that he was being stubborn. Well, he had the right to be stubborn. He had the right to be pissed-off. This wasn't his damned war, after all. If she hadn't gone and gotten herself killed –

He closed his eyes. It was no use getting angry over it now. He was here, and he was alive, and he would have to deal with those two truths right now.

The pain was beginning to inch back into his mind now, and he realized that he must have broken some ribs. His back also felt strange – numb but still stinging; he must have gotten injured there as well. His right cheek felt the same way.

Well then. He would just wait for the doctor to come. And try not to think in the meantime.

Especially not about that damned baka onna, who seemed bent on being kind to every single one of them, even when she knew how much most of them had – and perhaps still – wanted to kill her. She was as bad as Winner, probably worse. That damned baka onna, who'd bandaged him and left him like this, under Yuy's icy glare, who'd stolen him away from the darkness that he was beginning to convince himself in this haze of pain that he had truly wanted.

She had stolen his end from him. She had stolen more than that – she had stolen his conviction, his honor, more than once. Damnit. He was going to make her pay.

One of these days.