Acherontia Atropos Chapter 3

The next several days were a blur. I suppose that I must've been

more badly hurt than Heero had said, because normally injuries

won't keep me down that long. It was all fevered flashes of pain

followed by dreamy, floaty periods that meant someone had taken

pity on me and given me one of the pills out of those happy little

medicine bottles Wufei had been kind enough to steal.

I didn't know if it was the happy pills, the head injury, or the

fact that my first vampire had attacked me, but I had some majorly

weird dreams. Memories of the attack were the most prominent, but

that was to be expected. Older memories of fights weren't all that

abnormal either. What got me, though, were the other dreams, the

ones I'd never had before; Trowa and Quatre in each other's arms,

both of them looking through me. Wufei caught in the coils of a

five-clawed dragon.

The one that got me the most, though, was the dream that I had of

Heero. He was sitting at one of the table in the school cafeteria

all by himself, eating a bowl of rice. He looked up at me for a

long moment without saying anything, and the rice started smoking,

then burst into flame. Not cheerful orange log-fire flame, but

deceptively cold looking blue flame, the sort that's so hot you

almost get burned just by looking. And Heero kept eating the rice

with no expression on his face.

Because I had a concussion, the guys had to wake me up every hour

for the first day, which wasn't fun for any of us. I didn't wake

up happily on a good day, and when I was injured, I was even worse.

I yelled, I shouted, I threw things, I whined, and was unpleasant

in general. Heero bore the brunt of it, but he didn't seem to care.

The other guys took their turns, though, I guess when Heero was in

class, and I know for a fact that I managed to hit Trowa in the

head with a paper cup once. I was a sucky patient. So sue me.

I knew one of the guys was always with me. I thought I felt

Heero's hand lightly touching my forehead a couple of times,

though I could have been imagining it. Once, I half woke to the

aromatic smell of tea with lemon, and a gentle voice telling me to

sleep. Another time, it was someone reading to me in Chinese -

Wufei.

When I finally woke up for good it was late afternoon and I felt

surprisingly peppy considering how crappy I'd been doing right

before things got incoherent. I sat up, and even though my head

hurt, it was just the kind of dull ache that bruises get after

you've had them for a couple of days. My stomach also stayed

firmly in place. All in all a major improvement.

"How are you feeling?"

I looked over. The room stayed level. Hot damn. Wufei was sitting

on Heero's bed with a book open in his lap, his tie loosened, and

his jacket off. For Wufei, that was a sloppy as it got. "I'm

feeling pretty good," I said. My mouth was kind of dry, but there

was a glass of water on the chair next to my bed. How convenient.

"How long have I been out?"

"Three days. I decided that we should keep you out that long so

you could have some down time," the corner of Wufei's mouth

quirked. "I remember how difficult it is to make you rest. Besides,

that way we didn't have to you whine as much."

I stuck my tongue out at him. My face felt stiff, so I reached up

and felt around. The roughness of scabs covered my cheeks and

forehead. I grimaced, fascinated by how weird it felt. "Oh man, my

face?" I moaned.

"You look like you got hit by a car," Wufei said, helpful guy that

he is, "It shouldn't scar, though."

"Well, there's some food news," I sighed, "Three days, huh? What

am I going to do about class?"

Wufei shrugged. "Heero covered for you, don't ask me how. I think

the story is that you went off to visit some relatives. How you're

going to explain why you look like you were on the losing end of a

fight is your own problem."

"Not a problem at all," I grinned. "I'm good at that kind of

stuff." Me, bend the truth? Just a little. I preferred to call it

an exercise in creativity. It sounded better that way.

"I noticed."

"You're so nice," I crossed my arms. Someone had been kind enough

to put me in a pair of pajamas. They were soft and so big that I'd

had to roll up the legs and the sleeves. Constant washing had

turned them from black to a kind of fuzzy grey. The thought of

anyone undressing me while I was unconscious, even if it was for

the benign purpose of changing me out of my ripped, bloody clothes

made me kind of nervous, though. Scratch that, very nervous. I

eyed Wufei for a moment, wondering if he was the one who'd done

the deed. He was probably the best friend I had and everything,

but still?

He always could read me like a book. "Not me. Heero."

Great. That made me feel a whole lot better. Sure. The man of my

dreams finally undressed me, and I wasn't even awake to enjoy it.

Life sucked.

Wufei coughed, and I realized that I'd been glaring at him like it

was his fault. I stopped and shrugged. "Anything else interesting

happen?"

"What, since the Vampire Hunter pulled her disappearing act?"

Wufei raised one eloquent eyebrow. I had to admit, I was with him

on that one. I didn't think anything could beat that. "Another

student has disappeared. That brings the body count up to five, if

he and the others we've discovered were indeed taken by them."

"Damn," I rubbed my face with my hands, carefully. "Anyone seen

anything?"

"No."

"Great. How the hell are we supposed to kill something when we

have no idea how to find it, when it's going to attack, or who

it's going to kill?" I sighed.

Wufei shrugged. He knew a rhetorical question when he heard one.

"Heero's going to be back soon," he commented. "He'll be happy to

know that you're awake now."

"Really?" Shit, I was starting to sound like a love-struck

schoolgirl. Well, except for the girl part?

"I believe so. The only time he let one of us take over watching

you was when he had class."

I couldn't help myself. I grinned. "Is he going to be back soon?"

Wufei glanced over at the cheap little clock radio that I'd put on

the desk. "Yes."

I bounced out of bed and stood a little too fast. The room spun

for a moment, and only clutching at the chair saved me from

falling on my nose. Wufei was suddenly on his feet, and he grabbed

my arms. As soon as everything was stabilized, I flashed him a

little grin. "No worries. Just stood up too fast."

"Fine," he let go of my arm, a small smile quirking his lips.

"I'm going to take a shower now, before Heero gets back," I said,

then bounded off toward the bathroom.

Wufei sat back down and picked up his book. "Just don't fall down

when you're in the shower."

* * *

It felt good to be up and about, but it felt even better to get

clean. Someone had done a half-assed job of cleaning me up when I

was unconscious, but really, for as much of a mess as I'd been an

actual shower was the only way to go.

Especially for my poor hair. I almost wailed when I saw how bad it

looked in the mirror. My braid was crusty with dried blood, and my

bangs stuck out in weird angles.

I've always liked showers, which was a good thing considering how

long this one took. I used up the last little bit in the bottom of

my shampoo bottle, which was nice red stuff I'd stolen. It smelled

of raspberries. My hair still wasn't clean, so I moved on to

Heero's bottle. I didn't know where he got it, but it was even

nicer than mine. It smelled kind of like Oreo centers and a little

bit like strawberries, but not in a girly way.

Or maybe I just liked it because it smelled like Heero. I closed

my eyes and basked in the scent and warm water for a moment. Sappy?

Me? Naw.

After I got my hair clean, I worked on the rest of me. I still had

little flecks of dried blood on my shoulders, and my back too, the

way the skin was pulling. The one nice thing about dried blood,

though, was that you didn't even really have to scrub at it. A

couple minutes under the hot, pounding spray of the water and it

came right off. Even after I was clean, I just stood in the spray

and let it beat my sore muscles into a semblance of normalcy,

luxuriating in the nice, warm feeling of being clean.

I got out only when the hot water ran out and my skin was starting

to prune anyway. The pajamas I'd been wearing were dirty, so I

wrapped a towel around myself instead. It was one of the towels

that I'd acquired from a hotel. Hey, they hadn't locked their

doors, and one of the maids had left her little cart sitting out

in the middle of the hall. It was like an invitation. That

particular expedition had kept me supplied with soap and shampoo

for quite some time, as well as providing all my towels.

The one thing about hotel towels, though, was that they're plenty

thick, but always too small. Towels for midgets. The towel barely

wrapped around my waist, and whenever I walked, one of my legs

flashed. The hula girl look. Yeah.

So I wandered out into my room, with my damp hair handing around

my face. The room was filled with the familiar, swift clacking of

that damn laptop keyboard. Wufei wasn't on Heero's bed any more,

and the covers had been straightened so there wasn't even an

indentation where he'd been sitting. Heero himself was at the desk

with perfect posture.

Damn if it didn't look like the setup for a porno movie or

something. I only wished.

"Glad to see you too, Heero," I muttered when he didn't even

glance back.

"Wufei said you were feeling better."

"Yeah," I dug around in the drawers under my bed until I found a

pair of black pants and one of my shirts.

"That's good."

I couldn't think of anything else to say, so I said, "Yeah," again.

Next thing I knew, Heero was out of his chair and standing behind

me. He grabbed me, his hands very cold on my water-warmed upper

arms. I wasn't think about that, though. What kept running around

my lobes was the fact that Heero was holding on pretty tight, and

I remembered how pissed he'd looked about three days ago. Maybe

the look had been directed my way after all, and he was going to

finally follow up on years worth of threats and kill me.

So I started babbling, "Heero, I'm sorry! Don't kill me, I'm

really sorry about whatever I did?" and on and on.

Heero let me go for a few minutes, and then he shook me sharply,

just once. "Quiet," he said.

I did the smart thing and shut up.

There was a long pause, and Heero abruptly let go, then walked

away. "I'm glad you're feeling better. I was?worried."

For once, I didn't know what to say. I just stood there with water

dripping out of my hair. The feeling of Heero's hands was still

burning into my arms, and my brain was running in an endless,

happy little circle that kept repeating, /Heero was worried Heero

was worried Heero was worried?/ over and over again.

Heero, of course, couldn't leave well enough alone. "We have a

mission tomorrow. We need Deathscythe," he said.

My thoughts ground to a screeching half. Shit. "I see," I said.

Shit, shit, shit, shit, and shit. I sighed quietly, anything to

keep from attempting to kill him, and got dressed.

* * *

"You bastard! You scratched my paint! You're going to DIE!" I

shrieked at the top of my lungs, right before I sliced the

offending Leo and one of its buddies in half with a single slash

of my thermal scythe.

Okay, so maybe I had a little hostility that still needed to be

worked out of my system.

What better to take it out on than some hapless Leos, though. They

were like the red shirts from the old show?Star Trek, I think it

was. Completely expendable, or else Oz would've come up with

something a little better to send against us. Their mediocrity

just begged to be destroyed, and I was more than happy to oblige.

Maniacal laughter bubbled up between my lips and I reversed the

course of the scythe, cutting a Leo that had been trying to shoot

me in the back off at the knees. It hit the ground and exploded in

a most satisfying manner. I could almost feel waves of disapproval

coming through my comlink to Heero.

Like I gave a rat's golden anus. After giving me the brush-off

that night before, Heero had proceeded to ignore me until it was

time to go to bed. I would have liked to stay up and pursue the

other problem, but missions took precedence over playing with

vampires. I really needed to find someone more helpful than Tamlin

anyway.

"Three behind you, Duo," Heero said.

"Gotcha!" I caroled, engaging my thrusters for a high jump, then

crashing down on the enemy. One of them was completely crushed

under me, and the other two fell quickly to the heat of my scythe.

It had been a VERY frustrating day.

I was trapped in a truck with Heero all the way to the staging

area. He ignored me the entire time, so I'd been forced to talk

non-stop to keep the absolute silence at bay. The one time I'd

turned the radio on, he'd turned it off and yanked the knob off.

We'd met with Quatre and Trowa, and I must have had that maniacal

gleam in my eye, because Quatre looked worried when he saw me. We,

or rather Heero, decided that the two of them would take the main

job, which was to blow up the military base, while we would run

interference and act as a diversion. Wufei was off on a mission of

his own; he'd left before us and said he wouldn't be back for a

few days.

A sudden blast rocked Deathscythe, and I started concentrating on

the fight again. I could save my resentment for a safer time.

There was a heavy cannon behind me, probably dropped in while I

was dwelling on what a jerk that bastard Heero was?

/Stop that,/ I told myself.

Abruptly, Wing was between the cannon and I, just as it fired

again. Heero's Gundam was enveloped in the blast, and for one

heart-stopping moment, I thought?but no. A glance at the comlink

showed that Heero was still there, if a bit staticky. Of course. I

wasn't sure he even knew how to die?though he had made a good

impression of it, once.

There was a second blast as the cannon blew up. Obviously,

getting show with depleted uranium rounds didn't agree with it.

I half turned and reduced the Leo that had been trying to shoot me

with its pathetic excuse for a gattling into a small pile of slag.

"Hey, Heero, how many left?"

"As many as there are until Trowa and Quatre blow the base."

Unhelpful jerk.

I went back to destroying the Leos and a few isolated Tauruses

until the entire eastern part of the sky lit up. It wasn't time

for dawn yet, so that was our signal. Heero took to the air and

grabbed Deathscythe as I continued to yell at the few remaining

mobile suits on the field.

It was immature, I know, but God it felt good.

* * *

When we got back to the room it was still nicely dark, promising

at least a few hours of sleep before I had to haul my sorry,

dragging ass out of bed for school. I couldn't wait to hear what

all the girls would have to say about the state of my face. The

hot shower and being slammed around in the cockpit hadn't helped

things. I had crusty scabs all over my face, and I was a mass of

bruises that were a nasty yellow-green.

Someone had picked the lock to our room, which upset Heero quite a

bit. He made me sit outside while he swept the room for bugs,

explosives, banana splits (okay, maybe not that) and the like. All

the work turned up nothing.

Well, almost. Whoever it was had left me a little present; a plain

white box like the sort you get long stemmed roses in. After

taking one look in the box, I got the feeling it was a present

from Tamlin. There was a sawed-off shotgun like the one she'd had,

and a smaller box with ammunition that appeared to be silver.

There were also three handguns, a Beretta 9mm and two Browning Hi-

Power Vs, with silver ammo to go with. Nice stuff. Heero

immediately took the guns apart and put them back together, just

to make sure they were ordinary guns. They were.

A couple of rather excited conversations later, we divided the

weapons up. One of the Brownings for me, the Beretta for Heero,

and the other Browning for Quatre. The shotgun we squirreled away

with the other guns we had cached around the dorm.

The Browning fit nicely between my bed and the wall, right at hand

even when I was asleep. I should've felt thrilled, I guess.

Christmas came early, right?

The mysterious shit was really starting to get on my nerves,

though.