1Follow Your Heart:

chapter 5

by YamiHikari

Disclaimer- Again, yet AGAIN, I do not own Gundam Wing nor its characters. Now get the lawyers away from me!

YamiHikari's Note- Bit of insignificant news. I ate two spoons of sweet and sour sauce at a Chinese restaurant for $20, which I promptly spent at the mall on the 5th volume of Jing and the 6th volume of Demon Diary, which I still have yet to get the 5th of... --;;

It didn't taste very good... And I have, like, twenty different injuries on my hands. (More like four, but still, two of'em are deep. One was friggin' spewin' blood all over the place!) Oh, the pain... Again, anyone and everyone who reads this, thank you SO much for actually paying attention... not that very many people do... sigh

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The next few weeks seemed to have a monotone to them. It seemed to always be the same, and the hopelessness of the situation was taking its toll. Violet eyes no longer gleamed with laughter. Appearances by Trowa at the dinner table grew rarer, and rarer, and eventually stopped altogether. Wufei and his practice swords haunted large empty rooms where only a few chosen cleaners trod. And a wall over one lost one's feelings which had been coming down came back up again with startling speed and force.

On one of those days, Heero stopped after having seen a passing glimpse of himself in the mirror, and took another look. "So that's where..." he said softly, the barrier crumbling again just a tiny bit.

The near emotionless blue eyes looking back at him gave him the answer to the question, which had kept him up for many long, sleepless nights. The girl's eyes were his own. Different color, yes, but the expressions were the same. The coldness, the mask, the burden carried deep within where no one else could see, yes, that was all the same.

He finally closed his eyes, turned away, and then wondered if anyone else had noticed.

"Dammit... it's still not closing up," one man in a white coat muttered.

"We've already tried everything, haven't we? Oh God... at least it isn't bleeding as badly as it was before."

Sally Po rested her chin on her entwined hands. "Notice also that our mystery patient's broken arm is also not healing. No doubt it's mere coincidence, but it's still interesting. And it's the same side as well. Could there be a connection?"

A few murmurs circulated at this remark, most of which denounced the idea as just an overactive imagination, and was Dr. Po feeling all right? Was she absolutely sure she was fine?

The conference over this medical conundrum went on, without any more mention of ridiculous ideas like some "magical" connection between two completely different people. Ha! Ha ha ha! Just coincidence.

"Close your eyes... they'll go away, I..." Tajima paused for a moment while sheltering Quatre from the grasp of the rotting and already rotted corpses around them. "I promise."

She jerked forward, then regained her balance as the blond dropped suddenly to his knees, still holding onto her bare arm. Doubling over, he was suddenly, violently sick. Rising shakily to his feet and wiping his mouth, Quatre attempted a feeble grin.

"I d... I didn't know we could do that in dreams... ...this IS a dream, right?"

The clacking of jaws, the grind of vertebrae against vertebrae, the faint shred of remnants of flesh and skin, the hollow exhalations of those still with lungs, it filled their ears, coated their souls in lead, and they had to stop more than once. Empty eye sockets gaping, bare teeth grinning, gray hands or bones reaching, the dead haunted them and their numbers stretched from horizon to horizon.

After a while, Quatre managed, "'s my fault. Most of'em are. I... killed'em all...1 Entire colonies..."

Catching the glimpse of bared fangs, elongated canines, Tajima grimaced slightly. "A lot of these are mine."

One of these reached out to her and nearly contacted until her foot snapped out and kicked it back. "Goddammit, you're DEAD! STAY THAT WAY!" she shouted, voice almost, not quite, riding above the sounds of the moving dead.

They drew back, silence spreading through the noise of the rustle and crunch of their decaying bodies, the empty, soulless shells. Beside her, Quatre started to say something, then stopped, and said nothing for a while. They walked on, two tiny, minuscule specks of life in that gruesome ocean of death.

"Why the hell do we even bother to come anyway? It just gets depressing to be in a hospital day after day after day after day." Duo sighed. He glanced around him at the blandly white walls of the room. "God. I can't even tell if I'm in a hospital or an insane asylum. Then again, WHAT'S THE FRICKIN' DIFFERENCE?!" he demanded of the world at large.

"Maxwell, shut the hell up." Wufei was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, eyes closed. "You're giving me a headache."

The long weeks of hope slowly being worn away to close to nothing had had a profound effect on the usually cheerful, happy-go-lucky pilot. Duo's nerves finally snapped. "YOU have a headache!? ME shut the hell up?! HELL NO! I'LL SHOW YOU SHUT THE HELL UP, YOU F- AAGH!"

Hand clenched tightly around the American's fist, Heero said softly, "Get a grip." He released the fist, which was promptly drawn back to be inspected to make sure nothing was broken.

Massaging his abused hand, Duo glared. "Bastard."

"Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Oh shit." Quatre repeated the words as he tightly shut his eyes and tried to pretend that nothing was happening. His hands were slipping.

Tajima said nothing, only slipping her feet into better holds and letting those support her weight rather than the flimsy branch protruding, against all laws of probability, from the rock. After making their way through the seemingly endless mass of the dead, their efforts had been now marked off as a complete and total waste of time and energy. The ground itself had turned against them. All that was left now was for them to give up and fall, and then the crevasse would close and the earth would reclaim them as its own.

Her gray eyes focused on some point beyond the rock directly in front of them, and she simply focused on holding on. It shifted, and became an all-too familiar face. Eyes widened as pupils contracted in hatred.

"YOU FUCKER!"

She had completed Duo's unfinished oath that had been almost said just minutes before.

Quatre's blond head snapped up and turned to look back at Tajima as a bare hand slammed into the sandstone surface she had previously been gazing past. She swore again as it instantly redrew and she was forced to use one arm to do the work of two.

"Who..." he trailed off. Face contorted in hatred, rage, and the faintest hint of, surprising as it was, fear, Tajima was still glowering at the rock wall. Her lips curled back from her teeth in an expression reminiscent of some feral being.

She quickly regained control and the emotionless, impenetrable mask slipped back on. Looking down at the fourth pilot, she said blandly, "Try to find something that can support your weight. If you can do that and hang on for long enough without me, I might be able to find a way out of here."

Mute, Quatre nodded, then cautiously probed at the surface of the rock for any possible handholds. As soon as they had been found, he gripped them as if his life depended on it, which, for all they knew, it did.

"Do they feel loose at all?"

"No."

"Then stay there." Clenching and unclenching her right hand to be sure it still worked, Tajima shifted her weight and placed one foot on a hold at about knee level before reaching up with another hand to grasp a spur of hopefully solid rock. The process was repeated and began to achieve some sort of rhythm as she navigated the wall.

Partway up, so close to the top, and yet just far away enough that she could not simply haul herself up, her hands began to slip. The distance might as well have been in miles, and she didn't dare loose one hand to wipe it off for the fear and near certainty that the other would quickly lose its grip. A lose-lose situation.

Tajima's mind raced. Unbidden came the memory of the cloying smell of blood and the rush of misplaced air by mismatched wings.

"-Save me.-

-Save me and I will save you.-"

The reply had been a promise as much as it was a plea. But if she died right here and now, could the being than be saved? Did it not have to save her to be rescued itself?

She threw her head back and screamed out, "Liar!" to the uncaring clouded sky above her and let go.

In the car, Heero winced.

"Eh, what's your problem?" Duo still hadn't quite forgiven him.

"Turn around."

"Say what?!"

"I said turn around."

"Look, we know you're concerned, bu-"

"NOW." The tone held little to no room for argument.

Wonder of wonders, Duo had been allowed to drive. He stalled briefly, apparently debating whether to keep going out of spite or to yield and return to the hospital. After a moment, he shrugged. "You're the boss."

He began to turn, not bothering to slow down from the 50 mph clip that he'd been going along the nearly deserted at.

"Maxwell, you idiot, look out for th-"

There was the squeal of an emergency brake on the pavement and the sickening crunch and screech of shattering metal and the scraping of jagged edges against the painted surfaces of the vehicles. A body slammed into the windshield and bare milliseconds later, a fine, white network of cracks materialized on the surfaces before they burst away in a formation of glittering shards.

The last thought of the victim before darkness claimed him, after most of his life being trained for warfare and success, was very nearly automatic, though he would have wished it otherwise, was one word. 'Mission...'

As the shadows swallowed him, the thought remained incomplete. The chaos that would follow the head-on collision would be unknown to him until he regained consciousness.

If he ever did.

"No, NO!" Batting away the doctors swarming around him, trying to pull him away, Duo continued running along the side of the gurney that was bearing Heero away. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I was just kidding! Really!

I know you're faking! C'mon, man, open your eyes! Not even a death threat? 'Omae o korosu'? Please?!" The former pilot's voice cracked and he tripped, just barely managing to avoid landing face-first on the clean linoleum tiles. The doctors rushed past.

Slowly getting to his feet, Duo yelled, "YOU HEARTLESS BASTARD! YOU'D BETTER FUCKING DIE, OR I'M GONNA KILL YOU MYSELF, MR. I'M-TOO-FUCKING-GOOD-TO-WEAR-A-FUCKING-SEATBELT!"

A nurse in the hallway looked pained. "Please, sir, we have patients trying to sleep."

"I'm very sorry. I'll take care of this." Trowa stepped forward; he had to bend down slightly to meet Duo's eyes.

They gleamed malevolently back as he whispered, "What do you want, you fucker? Come to preach at me about screaming in hospitals and wishing people dead?"

"Am I the one who does things like that nowadays?"

"No. H- ..." The American stopped short, gazing at Trowa through narrowed violet eyes. He smiled.

Then he punched the taller colonist square in the jaw. Straightening, he cracked his knuckles."Nice try."

He got no response for that statement. Instead, a fleeting smile passed over Trowa's normally staid features, there and gone so quickly that almost one thought that it had never been. When he next spoke, his voice was soft, convincing, believable.

"If you really wanted him dead, you'd find a way, wouldn't you, pilot? Really, we're assassins, now aren't we? Trained to sneak in and kill as many as we can, and maybe even go down killing more? Sure the war's over; but it doesn't mean you have to stop killing, now does it?"

Duo visibly recoiled; he recovered quickly, however, and Trowa found himself pinned against the hallway wall as the shorter male hissed, "If you even so much as think about giving him a papercut, I swear that I will tear your throat out and leave you for the wolves."

The European gazed mildly back at him for a moment, then heaved a sigh, removing Duo's hands from the front of his shirt. "That's good. I was beginning to worry that you really did want him to die."

Momentarily struck dumb by this statement, Duo gaped. Reaching up, Trowa lightly inspected the already forming bruise on his jaw line.

"I seem to have missed my true calling as a punching bag," he commented dryly, ignoring the alarms that had gone off for no apparent reason sometime before. "What do we do now?"

Dropping headfirst into the chasm, Tajima thought she heard Quatre shouting something as she fell past. She didn't listen. Shutting her eyes, she did not see the blond releasing his hold and following.

Seconds dragged by, and she never saw the approaching light. Instead she heard a startled cry that was cut off, and then felt the radiance approaching. Now, the sensation of being lifted and held. Opening her eyes, she found that she was being cradled against the chest of the being who had delivered her before.

-Please...-

The voice was no more than a whisper as the light claimed her.

Tajima jerked upwards into a sitting position in an unfamiliar room. There was a mask over her face and a needle in her arm, and she didn't know what else arrayed on various points upon her arm. Irritably, she yanked them off and the needle out, kicking the machine that went ballistic when she had done so. From the corner of her eye, she noticed Quatre do the same, except he didn't try to break the metal box that instantly began emitting the high-pitched, unending beep when something was removed.

Covering the distance towards the door on unsteady legs that hadn't been used for weeks, she cursed, stretched them out slightly, then yanked the door open and darted down the hallway. Occasionally she had to dodge some people in the hallway, but that was fine. What was not fine was the fact that instead of annoying metal boxes, it was now lights in the hallway flashing and shrieking.

Clearing the last set of stairs by simply vaulting over the railing - and nearly falling over when she landed, a rather unwelcome development - Tajima slowed, then glanced around. There was some shouting in another direction; a male's voice, but neither very old nor very tall.

She strode over and arrived just as the tallest one had finished speaking. The two others - the braided one and the arrogant one - noticed her before he did. One was missing.

"Where is the other?" she demanded.

The tallest finally turned. His tone instantly became icy. "I could ask the same of you."

"No! Really! I'm fine! Let go! I need to do something!"

Without glancing back, Tajima asked, "Good enough for you? Where?"

"Quatre?!" His face flickered to surprise from hostility. He stepped around her as she resisted the urge to trip him out of vexation.

"Where?" she said again, for the third and what she hoped would be the last time.

"Why would you want to know?" This time, it was the braided one. "You could just want to get rid of him."

Now thoroughly annoyed, Tajima snarled back, "Does it look like I could kill someone right now?!" With the one-handed gesture, she managed to take in the whole of her situation: weaponless, still somewhat unused to being up and about, and with a broken right arm contained in a sling.

Never mind then. If they were here, then the other should be somewhere up ahead. She shoved past them and through the doors that led into ER. Doctors and surgeons appeared to try and keep her out, but she managed to get by, slipping under the arm of one, tripping another to create a Domino effect where a couple fell one after the other.

"... You know, I think she could, actually," Duo remarked.

Wufei said nothing, quite possibly still smarting from the fact that she'd made him helpless so quickly and easily before. He found himself being dragged along down the hall at a rather fast pace.

"If she can still bring down a buncha them people in their surgical dresses or whatevers, I don't want to think of what she can do to one invalid, okay? Okay. Hurry up!"

Duo started running. Wufei started protesting.

Leaden limbs1 refusing to obey, darkness he felt rather than saw surrounded him, and free-fall was the only sensation he really comprehended. The rest remained nameless, though he had known them before; a veil obscured the rest of his senses.

The last thing he remembered was a pang of regret. He'd had so much he'd wanted to do...

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1- this was actually derived from a line of a poem I wrote once. It was a villanelle, to be specific. I still have it somewhere, but I don't especially feel like looking...

YamiHikari's Note- Gah, that took a while. I mean, I started this one sometime in... March, February even! The cuts I got are long healed over and I'm now starting on the second series of Jing, not to mention I'm now in a different grade. Then again, that's rather obvious? --;; oh yeah, I got an account on deviantART. Here's a link if'n anyone's interested: