Author: Sparkle Itamashii
Title: Stay With Me
Warnings: Respect the rating. See profile for details.
Disclaimer: Gundam Wing AC is NOT MINE.
"I believe in love surviving death into eternity…"
Chapter Six
I left the phone where it lay and hauled myself to my feet. There was no time to waste- Jenkinson hospital was almost an hour away in good traffic. Even if I drove like a maniac (which was the plan), there was still no guarantee that I would make it there in time. It was a long shot but I had to do something.
I had to try.
"Quatre?" I poked my head into his room, knowing he probably wouldn't wake for anything. I felt I owed him at least a quick goodbye before I disappeared or he would make himself sick with worry. "I'm going to the hospital. Jenkinson County, the one on Forty Eighth."
Surprisingly, he stirred and looked blearily at me. "Hospital?" He mumbled nearly incoherently as he sat, platinum hair sticking up at odd angles. It made me wonder how he ever got it to stay down during the day… "Why?"
"I need to see someone there. I'll have my cell with me."
"Can it wait an hour? I'm going there today anyhow so it'd be easier if we went together." He reasoned, yawning.
I'd forgotten- one of Quatre's friends had been admitted to the hospital not very long ago and he'd been going to see him almost every day since. "This can't wait. I'll see you when you get there."
"I hope it turns out okay for your friend." He sighed, flopping back onto the bed. "Drive safe."
I knew he probably wouldn't remember any of that when he woke or if he did it would only feel like a dream. I shoved my feet hastily into my shoes, stamping them as I walked to make them fit better. Leaving the door unlocked because I didn't have a key, I shot off for the parking lot behind the apartment building.
The drive seemed to take forever. I saw a grand total of maybe twenty vehicles the entire car ride, including the long police cruiser monitoring the opposite side of the freeway. Her headlights were stealthily off but her internal lights were not-so-stealthily shining brightly, making it very easy for me to spot and avoid her.
The nurse at the hospital, however, was a little trickier to bypass.
"Sir?" Came the polite inquiry the second I tried to sidle past the front desk. "Can I help you?"
"Uh…" I stared at her like a deer caught in headlights until I managed to come up with something sensible to say. "Yes." I tried to look as though I hadn't just been trying to sneak into the patient wing. "Actually, I just got into town and I thought I would stop by to get my friend's room number. He had an accident and this is the first time I've been able to make it over since I heard."
"Visiting hours are not until after noon, sir." She replied patiently.
"I know," I assured her, glancing to the door and trying to come up with a way around this lady. I could always make a break for it… "I just need the number so that I don't have to wait when I come back, you know?"
She studied me for a second and then her fingers flickered over the keys as she looked at me expectantly. "What's his name?"
Surprised, it took me a second of pause before I could say it. "Heero Yuy." I put as much feeling into it as was humanly possible. It worked- she gave me a pained, sympathetic look.
"He's in room 214. Doctors didn't think he was going to make it and he's been in and out of consciousness all week. Everyone's been talking about him. So young…"
I glanced nervously to the door again. Bolting to see him as fast as I could was definitely sounding like a good idea right then, consequences be damned. "You're sure there's no way… I mean… I'd hate to come back tomorrow only to find out I was too late."
She rose to glance behind me at the parking lot and turned an uncertain gaze to me. Biting her lip, she sighed in resignation. "You won't be long?"
"I just want to see him," I pleaded, glancing to her nametag, "Sally. Please." I could feel the same desperation I had felt at Quatre's loft creeping over me.
"I can give you fifteen minutes. It'll take you a few to get there from here. If security stops you, just tell them you left something in a room and have them call me." While she had been talking she ferreted out a cheap plastic badge and passed it over the counter. The door buzzed to unlock.
"Just Sally?" I questioned dubiously as I clipped on the tag and reached for the handle of the door.
"Sally Po. They know who I am. I'll tell them I let you in for a few."
I gave her a grateful look as I opened the door. "Thank you, so much."
His room wasn't hard to find once I made it to the second floor. There were signs everywhere, directions even a total idiot could follow blind. I spotted four of the nurses in time and managed to cajole my way past the fifth. There must have been only a skeleton crew working in this area, making the halls seem deathly quiet. It felt deserted- like I was moving through a cheap horror film and any moment something nasty would pop out of one of the silent rooms.
However, there was nothing but sickly blue walls and clean white tile.
I rounded the corner and almost walked past his room in my hasty search. Backtracking a pace, I entered, practically holding my breath. It was a small room with a curtain for a wall on the right side. There was a load of muted equipment monitoring the long form bundled on the blocky, white hospital bed. I watched the pulse monitor for a minute, trying to bring together my thoughts and steel myself for whatever came next.
Taking a deep breath, I at last turned my attention to Heero.
My heart caught in my throat at the sight of him. All of his beautifully bronzed skin had turned a pasty, sickly olive. The hair on one side of his head had been completely shaved, jagged black stitches marring the scalp in criss-crossed patterns. The same side of his face was scratched and scabbed over already, as if he'd been drug along on pavement. His left arm was broken, sealed in a gaudy, off-white cast from his wrist to his shoulder. The pulse reader was attached to his thumb and there were tubes running from his nose and mouth to some sort of ventilator machine. My eyes flickered up the saline drip and back down again, settling for a final time upon his face.
"Oh god…" I murmured, taking a few halting steps toward the bed. "Heero…"
I brushed the tips of my fingers across the back of his hand, never taking my eyes off of his. What I wouldn't have given to see him open those eyes and look at me. He wasn't just a memory any more. Everything that we'd been through in our past lives, every trial, every separation, every everything was at the fore of my mind as I gently took his limp hand in mine. He looked as helpless as I felt as I knelt and lay my chin on the edge of the bed, watching him.
"I'm here, Heero. I made it." I choked, swallowing against the lump in my throat. "I came to you now come to me." I whispered, closing my eyes. "Please… open your eyes. I remember, Heero; I remember everything. You can't leave me now. I don't think I can survive losing you again. I just… please…"
I curled my fingers more tightly into his and rested my forehead on the cold metal frame of the bed. This was so unfair. None of this should have to happen. We shouldn't have had to of kept getting ripped away from one another, life after life. If he would just open his eyes and hold my hand, smile and let me know that it would be all right… if we could just…
I don't know when I started crying.
Some time after I had regressed into murmuring incoherently to Heero's prone form, I was able to pull myself together enough to raise my head. Nothing had changed. Heero was still unconscious. I was still in the hospital. The world was still a waking nightmare.
"He wanted you to be here," came a gentle, sorrowful voice from the entrance of the little room, "but you shouldn't have come."
Fortunately I was too drained to be startled enough to jump. My head merely lolled to the side and I looked to the darkened doorframe. Heero stood there, well and whole as I remembered him, not the broken shell that lay in front of me. I couldn't even bring myself to move; my legs felt like lead weights and I don't think they could have surgically removed my hand from Heero's if they'd tried.
"I'm sorry, Heero." I whispered, eyes prickling again with tears as I shook my head against the bed sheets. "I am so…. Sorry…" As much as I wanted to say a million things I couldn't get a single one past my lips.
"It's okay. You remember now? You remember… us?"
"I don't know how I could have ever forgotten." I tamped down on a sob, only allowing myself a shudder. "I was so… I don't know what to do anymore. I can't fix it. I can't make it better this time, Heero. I don't… I don't want to lose you." My voice cracked and I buried my face in my folded arms, unable to control the sob this time.
Cold penetrated my shoulder and I felt him near me once more. "Duo…"
"It's not fair." I managed weakly, trembling. "It hurts… so much."
"I have to go now. He's here." He said gently. Icy cold enveloped me in a brief embrace and then began to fade.
When he rose and backed away, I came with him. Fighting the way my body protested against the movement, I clambered to my feet and looked at him one last time. He smiled gently, head tilted just a little to the side as he considered me. I must have looked a wreck- an hour of sleep, face a mess from crying, rumpled clothes because I hadn't even bothered to change after getting to Quatre's. But all I saw reflected in his eyes was love. The memory of everything that had been our pasts was wrapped up in that cobalt gaze, staring back at me as if it had been just yesterday.
My control crumpled again at that look.
"I will find you." I swore in a tone that broke on every resolutely spoken word. "No matter what, I will find you next time."
"I wish it were that easy." He said, dropping his eyes from mine. "But it's not this time. Our deaths will be out of synch. I won't-" His words caught and his mask slipped. Everything he was feeling shone through; all the pain it caused him to even think about what he wished to say was clear as day on his features.
But I knew.
God, did I know…
So I said it for him, to spare him the torment.
"So you won't… be seeing me again." I wanted to look away as he had done but I could not tear my gaze away. It was all for nothing. Everything we'd done, everything we'd fought for was about to be stripped from us like it had never happened. In all the lives I was bound to lead, I might never come across him again…
"I have to go." He whispered thickly. "He's here."
The room shifted, for lack of a better word, and I was suddenly aware that we were not alone. There was another here with us, something greater than any human, than any mortal life. I felt terrified and ill at the thought of it. Death had arrived in the most literal of senses and it was here to take the one thing I cared about most.
I had never hated anything so thoroughly as I hated in that single moment.
"He can't have you." I ground out through clenched teeth before anything could change. "I won't let him."
Honestly, I don't know what I was doing or what I thought I was going to do. It wasn't like I really had the power to bloody stop him if he wanted to take Heero. What was I going to do- throw myself at him? Scream for help? Chuck a tantrum and hope he paid enough attention to me that he forgot what he was here for? Somehow none of that seemed terribly likely to work.
I shivered at the sensation thrilling through my body after I spoke. I heard no voice aloud but somehow I knew. I was being laughed at. Mocked. I suppose it must have seemed pretty silly, an insignificant mortal like me challenging a god. A knot of defensive anger settled in my gut. My fists clenched so tightly my nails bit into my palms.
"Maybe I can't stop you," I whispered, not taking my eyes from Heero's, "But he's not leaving without me."
Heero made a concerned noise and took a step toward me only to be halted, as though held back by his shoulder. Giving me a pained look, he shook his head and stepped back to where he had been standing. "Don't do this. I have to go- alone. You can't just decide otherwise."
"Make it my decision." I snapped angrily. "Didn't god give humans free will? What's the point if we can't use it? I just want to follow you, Heero, where-ever you go. What-ever the price."
"It's not that simple, Duo." Heero said gently.
"It's not that simple or he's not going to let it be that simple?"
"Life is never simple." Heero repeated as he turned from me. "You know that."
"Every raindrop creates a ripple. Every brush stroke changes the painting. Every death changes life," Howard's voice echoed in my memory. "Life is not a simple thing, Duo. It never was."
"No! Please don't go!" I cried, stumbling forward as I felt their presences withdrawing; as I watched Heero's form waver and begin to fade. "You can't just leave me here!" I shouted, ignoring the way my heart seized painfully in my chest and my eyes prickled with tears.
The heart monitor behind me flat-lined, ringing with a single, drawn out tone.
"No!" I whirled to face the machines, furiously grabbing hold of the bar at the foot of the hospital bed. That horrible, droning noise filled the room as a monitor in the second half of the room, the part behind the curtain, sounded as well. I clenched my jaw, knuckles turning white with pressure where I clutched the bar as I stared at the broken body Heero had left behind.
Was that supposed to be it? Was I supposed to accept fate and let go of the only thing in all the cosmos that truly mattered to me?
Was I just supposed to let him die?
"No." I refused to give in. "This is not how this ends. Not for us."
/End Chapter Six, Stay With Me/
