Pet Peeve
by
Nin Tendo
Chapter 1 - The White Room
~ Disclaimer ~ I don't own Gundam Wing, I'm just a crazy little teenage girl! Mwahahahaha...
Heero, lying down on a perfectly white bed in a perfectly white room, simply stared at the perfectly white ceiling, unblinking, unmoving, unseeing. One would think he was dead, but his chest rose and fell beneath the perfectly white sheet.
Trowa was almost blinded by the untainted white. It was simply unnatural for him, a hardened, bloodstained killer, to be in such a room.
Heero would agree, he thought. Heero wouldn't want to be here, where the innocent gathered after being pulled in over their heads. Heero wouldn't want to be here, where his dark soul would be reflected by the merciless white...
"E-excuse me," he whispered, then bolted from the room to empty his stomach in the public bathroom down the hall. He didn't dare use the ajoining bathroom, for fear that he would drown in perfection.
Quatre moved to follow him, but Catherine held him back.
"Trowa's your friend, but so is Heero. I'm Trowa's sister, I can take care of him. You should stay here and concentrate on Heero. You know him much better than I do."
Nodding, Quatre sidestepped to let the older girl pass, then turned to look at the rest of the room's occupants. Wufei was standing near the bed, arms crossed, simply staring at his fallen comrade. Sally, who was standing beside her partner, leaned over and brushed a stray hair out of Heero's eyes. Hesitating a little, she reached out again and closed his eyelids for him.
"His eyes must have been drying out," she explained, weakly.
On the other side of the bed stood Duo and Hilde. Duo was just standing there, a shell of his former personality, long bangs hiding his eyes from view. He hadn't said a single word since he'd found his best friend lying on the floor in the middle of Relena's bloodstained room. Hilde looked at her companion, unsure. Her eyes were red and bloodshot from mourning her friend's death. She wasn't sure what to make out of Duo's drastic shift in character--the only explaination that occured to her was violently forced from her mind the moment it entered.
Dorothy had been there earlier, Quatre realized. She had left a golden picture frame on the table behind Duo. Stepping forward and picking it up, Quatre found that it contained one of Heero and Relena's unguarded moments. If he remembered correctly, the two of them had been leaving yet another meeting concerning the progress of the Mars Terra-Forming Project when Relena's three-inch heel had met a loose rock.
The photo had captured the image of Heero catching her before she fell, relief in his eyes, gratitude in her's.
Quatre remembered how Dorothy had suddenly appeared beside him in a sudden burst of light--the camera's flash combined with her long shiny locks had temporarily given her the aura of an angel. "Golden memories," she had said, smirking, knowing that he had been the only person in the crowd to notice her presence.
He knew that Dorothy had been here, because, at the bottom of the picture, in golden handwriting, were the words, "Golden Memories."
Quatre put the picture down, fearing that he would drop it. His heart clenched in his chest and tears came to his eyes. "It hurts..." he whispered. Then, a little louder, said, "I'm sorry...I have to go..."
Wufei, Sally, and Hilde turned to him and nodded. Duo, however, continued to stare at the unresponding form of his best friend.
Quatre left the room, taking deep breaths to calm himself. The pain had come so suddenly...so unexpectedly. Was the true horror of the situation finally seeping into his heart?
While he had been inside, he had almost expected Relena to burst in through the door, shouting Heero's name in concern...
But she didn't.
Because it was true.
Relena was dead.
Relena was...dead...
"Excuse me, but do you know where I can find Mr. Quatre Raberba Winner?"
Shaking himself back into reality, Quatre replied, "I'm Quatre. What do you need me for?"
The doctor looked at the blond young man a little skeptically. "Aren't you a little young to be head of the Winner corporation?"
Oh, good grief. Quatre knew that he looked a little young for his age, but this was ridiculous. Didn't the man watch television? "I am eighteen years old, sir. Miss Relena was younger than I am. Did you find her to be lacking in leadership skills?"
The doctor backed down. "Forgive me. It's just that--"
"You are forgiven," Quatre interrupted, not wanting to hear any excuses. The man standing before him had underestimated him because of his appearance. Hopefully, after this conversation, he would walk the world a little wiser.
Assumptions could be fatal.
Quatre threw that thought out of his head immediately. Since when...
Since when did he start to think like a hardened killer?
Swallowing against the bile rising in his throat, Quatre asked, "What did you want to tell me?"
The doctor quickly composed himself. "Your friend, Heero Yuy, is in perfect physical condition, and we cannot help him here any further. As this hospital is very busy at this time, we must keep as many rooms free as possible."
"So, you're asking me if I can...take him off your hands?"
"Ah...I wouldn't quite use those exact words, but, yes, that is what I'm asking."
Quatre ran a mental check of the estates he owned. If he wasn't mistaken, he owned a mansion nearby a refined mental institution.
"Yes, sir. I believe that I can make the necessary arrangements," Quatre replied.
"Thank you, Mr. Winner. If you could pick him up tomorrow around noon, it would be perfect."
Quatre shook the older man's hand. "I'll be sure to be here, then."
=================================================================================================
Sally Po looked upon Heero's still form with a medical eye. He seemed a little pale and he needed a shave. He needed a bath, too, considering the state of his hair.
Otherwise, he was in perfect physical condition.
Perfect physical condition, and that bothered her.
Maybe if he was a little bruised and battered she would find the situation a little easier to believe.
She was so much better at mending a broken bone than a broken mind.
But it is possible, she reasoned, looking at her partner. It IS possible to heal someone's mind. I did fix up Wufei pretty well, after all.
Now that she thought of it, what did Wufei think about all this?
Sally nudged Wufei with her elbow. "A penny for your thoughts, Wufei. Some people would think that you would have called him a weakling by now."
Wufei sniffed in annoyance. "I really wish that 'some people' would give me the benefit of the doubt."
A small smile appeared on Sally's face, but it evaporated as soon as it appeared.
"Please tell me what is on your mind."
Wufei remained silent for a few moments, then, after gathering his thoughts, said, "Heero was always a soldier. A weapon. During the war, that is. Over time, however, he changed. He was still a weapon, but Relena, whether she knew it or not, was the one who aimed and pulled the trigger. She was his strength. Now that his strength is gone, Heero isn't sure if he can live without it."
Sally blinked. "Wufei, I... Why do you think that?"
Wufei looked away from Sally's searching eyes. "Let's just say that I know what he's going through."
"Wufei...?"
Turning his back on her, Wufei started for the door.
"Bottling up your feelings won't help at all, Wufei!" Sally shouted after him. But Wufei only paused slightly before continuing out the door.
Sally sighed. "Wufei..." she whispered softly to herself. He was such a loner. She wished that he would confide in her for once, but hell would freeze over before that happened.
She might as well just leave him alone to mull over his thoughts. Her presence wouldn't make much of a difference.
Silence decended upon the room.
And then a bark of a laugh caused Hilde and Sally to jump.
"D-D-D-Duo...?" Hilde squeaked.
Chuckling, Duo closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. "Heh," he said, "what an actor he is."
Sally narrowed her eyes. "And just what the hell are you talking about, Duo?!" she snapped.
Duo's eyes snapped open, capturing Sally's gaze and causing the breath to catch in her throat.
Those were the eyes of a madman.
He laughed again, but it was hollow and empty to Sally's ears. "Don't you see?" he demanded. "Can't you see him there? That actor--he's fooling everyone! EVERYONE! Everyone except me!"
Sally swallowed in a vain attempt to rehydrate her rapidly drying throat. Turning to Hilde and realizing that the shell-shocked girl wouldn't be able to help her much, Sally slowly worked her way around the hospital bed as she said, "Duo, Heero isn't fooling anyone. He's catatonic."
Duo backed away and shook his head, beginning to sweat bullets as she advanced. "No!" he replied. "He's pretending--faking! A little--a little blood wouldn't do this! Not to him--not to HIM!"
Passing the pale form of Hilde, Sally noticed that Duo's retreat had been stopped by the edge of the bed. "It was Relena's blood, Duo," she said, softly, hoping she wouldn't panic the cornered soldier. "He cared for her, maybe he even loved her. Either way, it was a great shock to him."
The gundam pilot seemed to have found something humorous in her words, because his lips twitched into a smile that made Sally's blood run cold.
"'A great shock'?" he repeated. "No, I'm pretty sure that he knew what was going on." Turning toward Heero, he simply said, "Get up."
"He's not going to get up, Duo," Sally said as she edged ever closer.
Completely ignoring her, Duo started to shake his best friend. "Come on, Heero," he said, "get up and tell the girls your little secret."
Sally froze in her tracks as something clicked in her head.
Duo's eyes darkened and he closed his hands around Heero's throat, squeezing tight as he growled, "Tell the girls just how you killed Relena, old buddy!"
With a sharp cry, Hilde ran forward and tackled her roomate, freeing Heero from his grip and knocking over the bedside table. There was a crash as a golden framed picture hit the floor.
Sally was shaken out of her shock by the sound and she screamed, "DOCTOR! HELP!" even as she ran over to aid Hilde in wrestling Duo to the ground.
Just as she arrived, Duo's elbow snapped back, catching Hilde in the eye. The girl gasped and backed away, holding a hand to her face, providing Sally with more room to pin Duo to the bed.
Not quite giving up, Duo struggled without pause to free himself. However, Sally's grip held long enough for help to arrive.
The doctors managed, with their combined strength, to strap Duo down onto a stretcher.
However, the sedative wasn't very fast-acting and screams of, "HE KILLED HER!!! HE KILLED HER!!!" could be plainly heard by the two females remaining in Heero Yuy's room.
Sally took in a shaky breath and walked over to the trembling Hilde to check out her injuries.
The broken glass had given them both minor wounds, but Sally was more concerned about the already developing black eye. "You're going to have your work cut out for you when you try to cover this up," Sally whispered, attempting to bring out any semblance of humor in an otherwise humorless situation.
But it had quite the negative effect, Sally realized, as Hilde burst into tears.
The older woman encircled her troubled friend in her arms. She didn't need to ask what the matter was, so only whispered reassurances of 'it's going to be alright' left her lips, even as she wondered if things would ever be alright again.
"I knew..." Hilde sobbed, "I knew that he was going to beak down like this one day. I knew it ever since he started to open up to me. But I was a coward, and pretended that it was just my imagination, and now..."
Sally continued to hold the crying girl, losing track of time as she listened to her heartaches. When she finally calmed down, Sally carefully led her from the room. Broken glass was virtually everywhere.
Looking back one last time, Sally was chilled to the bone when she saw Heero's glazed, vacant eyes solemly staring up at the ceiling. Then she left the room, with only a slightly faster pace.
Author's Notes:
1. If you noticed a little 'plothole', I assure you, it was meant to be there! (please don't mention it in a review or something--don't want to give the rest of the readers a head start, do you? n_n)
2. I'm sorry if I offended Duo-lovers! After all, I am a Duo-lover as well! I only do this because I luv him! (cough)
3. I also apologize for the so-called 'action scene'. It never was, and never shall be my genre. Oh, well. This is supposed to be a dramatic ficcie, anyway. n_n
by
Nin Tendo
Chapter 1 - The White Room
~ Disclaimer ~ I don't own Gundam Wing, I'm just a crazy little teenage girl! Mwahahahaha...
Heero, lying down on a perfectly white bed in a perfectly white room, simply stared at the perfectly white ceiling, unblinking, unmoving, unseeing. One would think he was dead, but his chest rose and fell beneath the perfectly white sheet.
Trowa was almost blinded by the untainted white. It was simply unnatural for him, a hardened, bloodstained killer, to be in such a room.
Heero would agree, he thought. Heero wouldn't want to be here, where the innocent gathered after being pulled in over their heads. Heero wouldn't want to be here, where his dark soul would be reflected by the merciless white...
"E-excuse me," he whispered, then bolted from the room to empty his stomach in the public bathroom down the hall. He didn't dare use the ajoining bathroom, for fear that he would drown in perfection.
Quatre moved to follow him, but Catherine held him back.
"Trowa's your friend, but so is Heero. I'm Trowa's sister, I can take care of him. You should stay here and concentrate on Heero. You know him much better than I do."
Nodding, Quatre sidestepped to let the older girl pass, then turned to look at the rest of the room's occupants. Wufei was standing near the bed, arms crossed, simply staring at his fallen comrade. Sally, who was standing beside her partner, leaned over and brushed a stray hair out of Heero's eyes. Hesitating a little, she reached out again and closed his eyelids for him.
"His eyes must have been drying out," she explained, weakly.
On the other side of the bed stood Duo and Hilde. Duo was just standing there, a shell of his former personality, long bangs hiding his eyes from view. He hadn't said a single word since he'd found his best friend lying on the floor in the middle of Relena's bloodstained room. Hilde looked at her companion, unsure. Her eyes were red and bloodshot from mourning her friend's death. She wasn't sure what to make out of Duo's drastic shift in character--the only explaination that occured to her was violently forced from her mind the moment it entered.
Dorothy had been there earlier, Quatre realized. She had left a golden picture frame on the table behind Duo. Stepping forward and picking it up, Quatre found that it contained one of Heero and Relena's unguarded moments. If he remembered correctly, the two of them had been leaving yet another meeting concerning the progress of the Mars Terra-Forming Project when Relena's three-inch heel had met a loose rock.
The photo had captured the image of Heero catching her before she fell, relief in his eyes, gratitude in her's.
Quatre remembered how Dorothy had suddenly appeared beside him in a sudden burst of light--the camera's flash combined with her long shiny locks had temporarily given her the aura of an angel. "Golden memories," she had said, smirking, knowing that he had been the only person in the crowd to notice her presence.
He knew that Dorothy had been here, because, at the bottom of the picture, in golden handwriting, were the words, "Golden Memories."
Quatre put the picture down, fearing that he would drop it. His heart clenched in his chest and tears came to his eyes. "It hurts..." he whispered. Then, a little louder, said, "I'm sorry...I have to go..."
Wufei, Sally, and Hilde turned to him and nodded. Duo, however, continued to stare at the unresponding form of his best friend.
Quatre left the room, taking deep breaths to calm himself. The pain had come so suddenly...so unexpectedly. Was the true horror of the situation finally seeping into his heart?
While he had been inside, he had almost expected Relena to burst in through the door, shouting Heero's name in concern...
But she didn't.
Because it was true.
Relena was dead.
Relena was...dead...
"Excuse me, but do you know where I can find Mr. Quatre Raberba Winner?"
Shaking himself back into reality, Quatre replied, "I'm Quatre. What do you need me for?"
The doctor looked at the blond young man a little skeptically. "Aren't you a little young to be head of the Winner corporation?"
Oh, good grief. Quatre knew that he looked a little young for his age, but this was ridiculous. Didn't the man watch television? "I am eighteen years old, sir. Miss Relena was younger than I am. Did you find her to be lacking in leadership skills?"
The doctor backed down. "Forgive me. It's just that--"
"You are forgiven," Quatre interrupted, not wanting to hear any excuses. The man standing before him had underestimated him because of his appearance. Hopefully, after this conversation, he would walk the world a little wiser.
Assumptions could be fatal.
Quatre threw that thought out of his head immediately. Since when...
Since when did he start to think like a hardened killer?
Swallowing against the bile rising in his throat, Quatre asked, "What did you want to tell me?"
The doctor quickly composed himself. "Your friend, Heero Yuy, is in perfect physical condition, and we cannot help him here any further. As this hospital is very busy at this time, we must keep as many rooms free as possible."
"So, you're asking me if I can...take him off your hands?"
"Ah...I wouldn't quite use those exact words, but, yes, that is what I'm asking."
Quatre ran a mental check of the estates he owned. If he wasn't mistaken, he owned a mansion nearby a refined mental institution.
"Yes, sir. I believe that I can make the necessary arrangements," Quatre replied.
"Thank you, Mr. Winner. If you could pick him up tomorrow around noon, it would be perfect."
Quatre shook the older man's hand. "I'll be sure to be here, then."
=================================================================================================
Sally Po looked upon Heero's still form with a medical eye. He seemed a little pale and he needed a shave. He needed a bath, too, considering the state of his hair.
Otherwise, he was in perfect physical condition.
Perfect physical condition, and that bothered her.
Maybe if he was a little bruised and battered she would find the situation a little easier to believe.
She was so much better at mending a broken bone than a broken mind.
But it is possible, she reasoned, looking at her partner. It IS possible to heal someone's mind. I did fix up Wufei pretty well, after all.
Now that she thought of it, what did Wufei think about all this?
Sally nudged Wufei with her elbow. "A penny for your thoughts, Wufei. Some people would think that you would have called him a weakling by now."
Wufei sniffed in annoyance. "I really wish that 'some people' would give me the benefit of the doubt."
A small smile appeared on Sally's face, but it evaporated as soon as it appeared.
"Please tell me what is on your mind."
Wufei remained silent for a few moments, then, after gathering his thoughts, said, "Heero was always a soldier. A weapon. During the war, that is. Over time, however, he changed. He was still a weapon, but Relena, whether she knew it or not, was the one who aimed and pulled the trigger. She was his strength. Now that his strength is gone, Heero isn't sure if he can live without it."
Sally blinked. "Wufei, I... Why do you think that?"
Wufei looked away from Sally's searching eyes. "Let's just say that I know what he's going through."
"Wufei...?"
Turning his back on her, Wufei started for the door.
"Bottling up your feelings won't help at all, Wufei!" Sally shouted after him. But Wufei only paused slightly before continuing out the door.
Sally sighed. "Wufei..." she whispered softly to herself. He was such a loner. She wished that he would confide in her for once, but hell would freeze over before that happened.
She might as well just leave him alone to mull over his thoughts. Her presence wouldn't make much of a difference.
Silence decended upon the room.
And then a bark of a laugh caused Hilde and Sally to jump.
"D-D-D-Duo...?" Hilde squeaked.
Chuckling, Duo closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. "Heh," he said, "what an actor he is."
Sally narrowed her eyes. "And just what the hell are you talking about, Duo?!" she snapped.
Duo's eyes snapped open, capturing Sally's gaze and causing the breath to catch in her throat.
Those were the eyes of a madman.
He laughed again, but it was hollow and empty to Sally's ears. "Don't you see?" he demanded. "Can't you see him there? That actor--he's fooling everyone! EVERYONE! Everyone except me!"
Sally swallowed in a vain attempt to rehydrate her rapidly drying throat. Turning to Hilde and realizing that the shell-shocked girl wouldn't be able to help her much, Sally slowly worked her way around the hospital bed as she said, "Duo, Heero isn't fooling anyone. He's catatonic."
Duo backed away and shook his head, beginning to sweat bullets as she advanced. "No!" he replied. "He's pretending--faking! A little--a little blood wouldn't do this! Not to him--not to HIM!"
Passing the pale form of Hilde, Sally noticed that Duo's retreat had been stopped by the edge of the bed. "It was Relena's blood, Duo," she said, softly, hoping she wouldn't panic the cornered soldier. "He cared for her, maybe he even loved her. Either way, it was a great shock to him."
The gundam pilot seemed to have found something humorous in her words, because his lips twitched into a smile that made Sally's blood run cold.
"'A great shock'?" he repeated. "No, I'm pretty sure that he knew what was going on." Turning toward Heero, he simply said, "Get up."
"He's not going to get up, Duo," Sally said as she edged ever closer.
Completely ignoring her, Duo started to shake his best friend. "Come on, Heero," he said, "get up and tell the girls your little secret."
Sally froze in her tracks as something clicked in her head.
Duo's eyes darkened and he closed his hands around Heero's throat, squeezing tight as he growled, "Tell the girls just how you killed Relena, old buddy!"
With a sharp cry, Hilde ran forward and tackled her roomate, freeing Heero from his grip and knocking over the bedside table. There was a crash as a golden framed picture hit the floor.
Sally was shaken out of her shock by the sound and she screamed, "DOCTOR! HELP!" even as she ran over to aid Hilde in wrestling Duo to the ground.
Just as she arrived, Duo's elbow snapped back, catching Hilde in the eye. The girl gasped and backed away, holding a hand to her face, providing Sally with more room to pin Duo to the bed.
Not quite giving up, Duo struggled without pause to free himself. However, Sally's grip held long enough for help to arrive.
The doctors managed, with their combined strength, to strap Duo down onto a stretcher.
However, the sedative wasn't very fast-acting and screams of, "HE KILLED HER!!! HE KILLED HER!!!" could be plainly heard by the two females remaining in Heero Yuy's room.
Sally took in a shaky breath and walked over to the trembling Hilde to check out her injuries.
The broken glass had given them both minor wounds, but Sally was more concerned about the already developing black eye. "You're going to have your work cut out for you when you try to cover this up," Sally whispered, attempting to bring out any semblance of humor in an otherwise humorless situation.
But it had quite the negative effect, Sally realized, as Hilde burst into tears.
The older woman encircled her troubled friend in her arms. She didn't need to ask what the matter was, so only whispered reassurances of 'it's going to be alright' left her lips, even as she wondered if things would ever be alright again.
"I knew..." Hilde sobbed, "I knew that he was going to beak down like this one day. I knew it ever since he started to open up to me. But I was a coward, and pretended that it was just my imagination, and now..."
Sally continued to hold the crying girl, losing track of time as she listened to her heartaches. When she finally calmed down, Sally carefully led her from the room. Broken glass was virtually everywhere.
Looking back one last time, Sally was chilled to the bone when she saw Heero's glazed, vacant eyes solemly staring up at the ceiling. Then she left the room, with only a slightly faster pace.
Author's Notes:
1. If you noticed a little 'plothole', I assure you, it was meant to be there! (please don't mention it in a review or something--don't want to give the rest of the readers a head start, do you? n_n)
2. I'm sorry if I offended Duo-lovers! After all, I am a Duo-lover as well! I only do this because I luv him! (cough)
3. I also apologize for the so-called 'action scene'. It never was, and never shall be my genre. Oh, well. This is supposed to be a dramatic ficcie, anyway. n_n