Follow Your Heart:
chapter two
By YamiHikari

Disclaimer- Don't own Gundam Wing or its characters, but Tajima Ryuka is my original character, so don't make me chase you around with Mace if I find out you stole her without my permission.

Author's Note- I should probably just change Author to Authoress or something. Author is so... sexist... very sad news. I got my SAT scores in, and they're lower than what they were last year, so no laptop... boohoo... I'm using Dad's though, so that's just as good! ^__^ it was only down by thirty. Stinking. Points. It was the verbal. I got the exact same score on math. Now that I've bored you all with my trivial little bit of news, here's the next chapter. Yay!

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It was like a dream, but so cold. You shouldn't feel anything in your dreams...

'That's right. You shouldn't.' One gentle hand caressed her face, lovingly, carefully.

'Aiden...'

But he got up and left.

'Why?'

'You know why. But I still love you.' He smiled, and walked away.

She wandered a place without color, only gray. He had taken all the color away with him. It was still cold. She hurt.

A monster descended upon her, breathed its rank breath on her, then suddenly, viciously swatted her away. She hit a wall, and coughed up gray blood.

And then she fell through the wall. A cage formed around her, patches of lighter shades showing through some.

-What's this made of?- she thought. Her eyes blurred the picture; it fuzzed in and out again.

-What's it made of?- she cried. Then she saw.

-God, no!-

Just one long shrill scream in the silence of the gray. Denial. Denial. Denial.

Blood covered her whole body.

Somewhere in the forest, a bear sniffed curiously at what seemed a free meal.

The snow still fell.

Heero still walked, still searched, and still wondered. Who did she remind him of and why? Above all, why was it now so important to him to find her?

A deeper sense of urgency pulled at him, drew him deeper into the dark trees.

White bone, ragged flesh, red blood, pleading eyes. No. No. No! The foul stench of carrion. The gruesome swarms of maggots. -NO! IT'S NOT TRUE! IT'S NOT TRUE!-

The communication device buzzed. "Haven't found anything yet," Duo's voice crackled.

"Ditto."

"Same."

"Keep looking."

He still heard them, though they were silent. It was insane to do this. Just leave her. Don't risk your life for someone else that you don't know. Yet...

His hand went to the pewter bracelet[1] on his right wrist. 'COMMUNICATE' it proclaimed in engraved letters, a cross taking the place of the 'T'. He kept walking and looking.

One white hand reached in, touched her cheek. She grabbed it. –It's not true! You're not dead!-

It jerked her chin up, another hand reached in, yanked her head back by mid-neck length hair, and it whispered, -But, love, it is[2].- And laughed as she screamed louder.

It crackled again. "Hey, we're heading back. You'd better too. The news said something about a blizzard."

"Yeah, okay." He didn't really hear him, just kept looking. And looking. Then frowned. Something was moving.

Fighting it. –KILLER! MURDERER! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU!- Biting, scratching, clawing. Her weapons were gone. She kicked him. –GET AWAY FROM ME! I'LL KILL YOU!-

It still just laughed, pale as the bones around her.

It was a bear.

'Of all the things...' Heero groaned mentally. Bears were not easy to get rid of. Worse, it was probably hungry, and wouldn't be scared off easily. He drew his gun, just in case.

It froze. Then it swiveled down to hiss poisonous words in her face, for them to fill her ears. –Treachery, love, treachery! You were why they're dead, love. You were why.-

-No. No. I still am. I'm not a was. I didn't kill them. Liar.-

-But love, you are the liar.-

-NO!-

A sudden blast shattered the gray landscape and she fell. It took wing and flew away, still hissing, -Lies, love! Treachery, love!-

Still falling, she wanted to cry out for someone to help her. But she would not. Not while that thing was still there.

"GET OUT OF HERE! BEFORE I SHOOT YOU, YOU STUPID ANIMAL!"

The bear eyed him, then returned to hunting in the snow.

"HEY! MOVE!" He fired into the air again.

This time, it ignored him completely.

'You're not giving me much choice in this, are you?' he thought grimly. 'I didn't want to do this...'

He brought the gun down and aimed it directly at the bear's head. "One last chance. That's all you get."

It raised its head and sniffed at him, still unalarmed. He fired once, twice, thrice, and it dropped, red blood staining the new snow.

A new shape. It was chased away by the new winged creature, and she shouted at last. –Save me! Please save me!-

The winged one paused, then dove down, plummeting towards her. She smelled blood again, but fainter. –Save me as well - it replied. –Save me, and I will save you.-

Its wings were strange, one blacker than a starless night and that of a dragon, and the other the pure white wing like that of a angel, but the tips of the feathers were drenched with blood.

So that's where I smelled it...

-Yes. Yes. Just don't let me fall.-

Tears. Whose? She knew something was waiting down there. Something bad. –Don't let me fall.-

He caught her hand. She fell no further and was drawn back up with each beat of his mismatched wings.

Heero brushed aside the snow where the bear had been investigating. There. Pale face, lips starting to turn blue, but she was there. Trying to gently pull her up by the arm, he suddenly stopped as he saw the angle the limb was bent at and how part of her rib cage looked dented. If there were any other injuries, he didn't want to see them.

He couldn't set her arm because of the armor, and rib cages weren't something that you could fix with bare hands. Instead, the former pilot put one arm around her back, grimaced slightly when he felt the warm stickiness there, and another underneath her legs, below the knee. Heero tried to position her so that as much of her body was protected by his open coat as possible, then turned around and started to walk back.

He prayed she wouldn't die as he tried to save her.

The three remaining former pilots watched out the window, straining to see past the driven snow, staring to see some form of movement that wasn't the wind or the soft flakes as they whirled by.

"Did someone cover that window?"

"The butler."

"Yeah, but they're probably going to have to wait until the glass can get replaced."

"Yeah."

Desperate small talk. Anything to break the silence and keep their minds off what could happen, what might happen, what might had already happened. It failed miserably.

Five minutes passed. Five long, agonizing minutes where each second was an hour and the minutes themselves were days.

"Hey... did you see that?"

"It's probably just the snow again."

"Mayb- wait... Wait! It's there again!"

"You're hallucinating."

"No! It's there! I see him! I see him!"

Wufei frowned as he tried to see out the window. "Dammit, Maxwell, I told you, you're-"

"There! Right there!" the self-proclaimed "Shinigami" yelled. He ran, and threw open the door. "HEEY! HEEEY!!"

The figure in the blizzard looked up.

Duo ran out to give Heero what he believed a well-deserved punch. "You idiot! What the hell were you thinking?!"

"Get back in the house. You don't have a coat on," the Japanese replied, shielding his burden and taking the punch in the side.

Studying his friend a little closer as he walked alongside him, Duo suddenly noticed something. "You're bleeding!? How did that happen?!?!"

"I'm not the one bleeding."

They finally reached the door.

"You found her?"

"Yeah."

Heero gently passed her body to Duo to hold, then took off his coat and shut the door.

The American had a vague look on his face as he stared at the girl's own. "Y'know, it's almost funny."

"What?"

"Some of the most dangerous people... they look so innocent when they're sleeping. You could never tell that they had killed others, and had convinced themselves it was for a greater cause."

"... And she's one of them?"

"Probably..."

Trowa was examining the gashes on her back. "This isn't so bad... we can handle this here."

"Look at the arm, then the side."

Motioning for Duo to put her down, the tall brunette noticed immediately the problems with the areas that Heero had told him to check. Brilliant emerald green eyes glanced almost emotionlessly out the window. "An ambulance won't make it out here..."

"Besides, she hasn't woken up yet. Concussion? Coma? Or just she's already dead, but her heart and lungs are still working?"

"We can try... but the ambulance could crash, with or without her in it..."

"Causing more death."

All four's eyes met. There was an unspoken agreement in them. Green, black, Prussian blue, and violet all knew that they would do anything to prevent more death. They had already caused so much. There would be no more.

"So..."

"What are we going to do?"

- - - - - - - - - -

[1] The bracelet is one that I bought at a retreat with my youth group. The directions were that once you had led someone to Christ, you gave them the bracelet and they would go to the website on the back. They would go on the website, and register themselves as the new owner of the bracelet, and you could track where it went by going on the website and looking it up. Unfortunately, I lost it... ;_;. *crycry*

[2] This is derived from something in The Pearl of the Soul of the World by Meredith Ann Pierce. Cheesy name, I know, but it is a good book, and an awesome series. The lorelei, which is trying to destroy the world, has made 7 darkangel "sons", or vampires, to overthrow the guardians of the cities. The last one is incomplete, however, and a girl saves him from his fate. Scars from the lorelei's training do remain, and one of the scenes is a flashback in which the lorelei pulls the young Irrylath's head back, and whispers, "Yes, love. You will." Anyway, I don't own that.

Author's Note- My notes seem to be spreading themselves out amongst the footnotes. I'm just very happy that I got so much done. I finished three chapters in one day! One chapter is for Assassin's Silver, though, so I'm not sure it that really counts... o.O;;... oh well! ^__^ Ja!