Heero POV

I think I must have fainted, for my next recollection is of being carried on the back of a large wolf. Thinking on it later, I realized that I must have been on Trowa's back, but at the time I thought I might have been dreaming. It made sense though; Trowa and I were both tired from having run over a mile, and there was probably two miles to get us back to the castle. In his wolf form, Trowa was better able to bear my weight, though it made my ride a bit more bumpy.

The next time I awakened we were already in Sally's hospital. Trowa was standing in his human form with fresh clothes on, so I assumed I had been there for a time while Trowa went to get clothes. Sally was moving around the room, but didn't seem overly concerned with me so I assumed she hadn't been able to find what was wrong with me while I was unconscious. I was surprised to find that the other med in the room was occupied, and even more surprised to find that Dorothy was occupying it, with Relena sitting by her side.

There was a commotion in the hall and Duo suddenly burst in the door, panting like he had run all the way from the surface, clinging to the wall for support as he tried to get his breath back.

"What," he panted, "the hell is going on!" he yelled, his eyes directly on me, warring between anger and worry.

"Duo! You shouldn't be running around like that in your condition!" I scolded, "Sit down!"

"Don't you dare say a word to me! I can't believe you wouldn't tell me your back was that bad! And I thought you said you saw Sally! What the hell did you think you were doing, running around like that! You could have been killed!"

"It wasn't that bad..."

"Not that bad! Quatre said you fainted! And with a prisoner! What would have happened if he had turned on you? You bastard!"

"Duo, clam down. I didn't think it was that bad. I'm fine now."

Duo looked about to break down, but he made it over to the table where I was lying. I sat up as Duo approached me and I was able to catch him in my arms as he fell into my lap.

"Can't believe... I almost lost you... again," he whispered, his voice filled with pain.

"That's not true," I told him softly. "I'm fine. You can't protect me from everything, you know, you have to trust me to be alright sometimes." He sniffled a bit, then smiled at me.

"I know. But sometimes I wish I could."

"If you two are finished, I'd like to make a diagnosis," Sally interjected. Duo laughed, a sound more of relief than humor, and rose, stepping away from the bed. Sally stepped forward and I could tell from her pose that she meant business.

"Alright, now I need to know everything. When did this pain start?"

"Shortly after Duo was wounded."

"How shortly?"

"Three days."

"Has it gotten worse since then?"

"Yes."

"How much worse?"

"About thirty times worse."

"Where exactly is the pain."

"From shoulder blades to tail bone."

"Is it a burning sensation, a tearing sensation, or a pulling sensation?"

"A pulling sensation."

"This sounds strangely similar to what Dorothy was complaining about not an hour ago. Turn around and take off your shirt."

I did as she asked, removing my shirt and turning around. I heard Duo gasp in surprise and wondered what he saw. Sally moved for a closer inspection, her hand then reached out to touch my back. I jumped and winced as she touched a sore spot.

"What was that?" I asked, unsure of what could have caused such a strong pain from such a little touch.

"You can't see it, but there are two large bruises over your shoulder blades all the way down your back," she said, then circled two long, oval shapes with her fingers on my back to show me where they were. "It's odd," she continued, "They're the exact same marks that are on Dorothy's back. It's strange..."

"To hell with strange," Duo interjected, a frown on his face, "what are you going to do about it?"

"Nothing. I can't do anything about the bruises and I still don't feel anything wrong with the bones. The only thing I think it could be is a pulled muscle, though I don't think a muscle could cause a reaction like this. I'm going to keep Heero and Dorothy here and keep an eye on them for the time being. All we can really do is wait and hope they get better."

"Well that sucks!" Duo spats, sitting down hotly.

"It will be alright, love. I'll be better soon, you'll see."

"You shut up! I can't believe you would lie to me!"

"I didn't lie..."

"You said you had Sally check your back!"

"No, I said I saw Sally, I didn't say anything about my back."

"You- You- You! Argh!" he growled. I laughed, though I was suddenly feeling strangely tired.

"I'm sorry," I apologized, "I just didn't want you to worry while you were supposed to be getting better." Duo seemed to deflate, his anger draining out of him.

"How can I stay mad when you say shit like that?" he asked. "Get some sleep," he told me as he pulled up a chair beside my bed. I wanted to protest that he should get some sleep too, but I was suddenly just too tired.

Except for the soreness, there was nothing severely wrong with my back the next morning. I woke to find Dorothy and Relena speaking in low tones together. Duo was sleeping quietly beside me and I wondered how he had gotten in the bed without waking me. Dorothy nodded at me, telling me she knew I was awake without words, then glanced down at Relena. Carefully, as not to wake Duo, I climbed out of bed. The floor was cold under my bare feet and I was astounded to find that I was in my sleeping clothes.

I stepped toward Relena and Dorothy, my back giving me a painful jab in protest, and sat down on the side of Dorothy's bed. Relena, in a chair on the other side, nodded in greeting to me.

"I see you've noticed your change of clothes," Relena said, a small smile on her face.

"You passed out last night. Duo had a cow, but Sally told him you were alright, your body was just trying to escape the pain. He finally calmed down and said that as long as we weren't sure how long you'd be out you should at least be comfortable," Dorothy said. "He made everyone leave and even made Sally put up a screen around the bed until he was finished. He's a bit of a jealous lover, isn't he?"

"You have no idea."

"I resent that," Duo said huskily from the bed, stretching his arms over his head. I noticed that he, also, was in his sleeping clothes. "Just because you're so sexy no one can keep their hands off you doesn't make me jealous, it makes me territorial. There's a difference."

We all laughed, including Relena, which surprised me. She hadn't shown much emotion in the time I had known her, I was beginning to wonder if she was nervous around me or something.

"Anyway," Dorothy continued, "You two had better get dressed. Wufei is coming down to make sure there aren't any spells on us that could be causing this. I keep telling them it's... Ah!" Dorothy gasped, arching her back in pain. Her entire body tensed like she was being shocked and she toppled to the side and onto the floor. Both Duo and I moved to help her, but at that moment my back began to hurt and in a minute I was also on the floor thrashing in pain.

The pain managed to block out almost everything. My sight faded to red and all I could see was the color of blood. My heartbeat echoed in my ears, drowning out all other sounds. The cold floor stung against my skin and I felt Duo kneel beside me, but I could neither see his face nor hear his voice. The only thing left to me was the pain.

It faded abruptly and I found myself sweating and shivering in Duo's lap on the floor. Duo was murmuring incoherent reassurances in my ear and holding me with such strength that the muscles in his arms stood out, yet his grip was only feather light, like he might break me. Wufei was kneeling beside us and I wondered how I could have missed him before. He seemed to see that I was finished with whatever attack I was having and had turned his attention to Duo, trying to get him to calm down. I knew that I should try to help him, but I was just so tired that all I could do was lie there in Duo's arms.

I glanced around and found that Dorothy was in a similar position on Relena's lap, with Sally kneeling in front of them. It seemed from the way the glaze was disappearing from Dorothy's eyes that she was coming back also.

Duo insisted, once he had returned to coherency, on putting me to bed and giving me at least and hour to sleep. Since there was really no use in doing any tests with Dorothy and me at the brink of exhaustion, Sally allowed our lovers to put us into bed. We were soon fast asleep, the attack far from our minds as we slumbered peacefully in our lovers' arms.

But Duo and Relena couldn't, and wouldn't, put Sally off forever. They were just as anxious, maybe more so, as the doctor to find out what was wrong with us. So in only a short hour we were awakened and given over to Sally and Wufei for testing. The next few hours brought a series of tests so bazaar that I doubt any doctor had ever tried them before. While we would be doing one odd test for one of them, the other would start us on another test, making it so we were doing these weird, mutant combinations of both.

But the biggest disappointment by far was the test results. All tests came back negative, meaning there wasn't anything physically affecting us and no magic was causing our pain.

"I just don't get it," Wufei grumbled, tossing down yet another book of healing spells. "All the clues point to magic, but there just isn't any magic on them. There are traces of several spells, but nothing that's in effect. I don't know what to do," he admitted.

"There has to be something we can do!" Duo jumped in, a horrified look on his face.

"We're doing all we can, Duo," Sally interjected, "but we can't be rash about this. We don't know what's wrong, so it's very difficult to cure it. I won't even put the two of them on painkillers or sedatives without knowing what I'm dealing with."

"So you'll just let them die?" Duo yelled, his anger causing him to stand, ready to fight. I hooked an arm around his waist and pulled him into the bed beside me.

"They're doing all they can. You know this hurts them too. It's not their fault, you know that."

Duo's face was hidden from my by his bangs, so I couldn't see the expression on his face, but I did hear his murmured, "It was my fault!" before he raced out of the room. After a moment of shocked hesitation, I moved to follow him.

"Stay there, Heero!" Sally ordered, "You can't go running around in your condition." That proved to severely piss me off. I was having back trouble, not a heart attack.

"I will get him" Wufei said, then rushed out of the room before I could protest.

I spent fifteen minutes glaring icily at Sally's back, attempting to run for the door every time she left the room, which she stopped doing after the fifth attempt and three threats of sedation I knew she wouldn't carry out.

Wufei finally returned with Duo, who was looking spent and emotionally exhausted. Wufei was half leading him half carrying him as he pulled Duo over to me and helped him into bed.

"Thanks," Duo mumbled as he laid beside me. In his condition I was afraid that all that running might have aggravate his wound, but it seemed that it had only exhausted him.

"Hush. It was nothing more than you did for me during my first days here, when I believed my world would fall apart."

I didn't like knowing that Duo had taken comfort, even cried with, someone other than me, but I realized that I wasn't the only person in Duo's like. Though I couldn't help the pang of jealousy that ran through me, I realized it was petty and unfounded. Still, the balm on my soul that night was when everyone left, allowing me to curl tight against my love and let his even breathing lull me to sleep.

It did not last, however. I woke in the middle of the night that night screaming in pain, scaring the wits out of Duo and falling out of bed in the process. The rest of the night was like that; I would get to sleep just in time to wake with an attack. In the end Duo stayed up in a paranoid frenzy of adrenalin and woke me every time my back muscles tensed in preparation for an attack. It was the same for Dorothy and Relena, who had moved to an adjoining room for privacy. Sally and Wufei came to help, but there was little they could do.

By dawn I thought I would not see the sunset, the pain was so bad. I was certain that I died several times, only Duo's voice called me back to the land of the living. He made the pain almost bearable, no matter how much it hurt. I knew how much my pain was hurting Duo and for him I tried to hold on in those dark hours of dawn, but the pain was sapping my strength and my resolve. To make matters worse, the pain along with my condition was getting progressively worse. Both Dorothy and I began throwing up blood, first in tiny amounts, then by the mouthful. It signaled internal bleeding, though there was no cause. It was like our bodies had decided to cut themselves inside.

I was lying on my back when the final wave of pain hit. I found that lying on my back, oddly, helped the pain just a bit. I had to turn over when the pain hit, otherwise I would thrash for lack of something to hold onto. I was on a small bunk instead of my bed with Duo; Sally and Wufei wanted to be able to keep an eye on both Dorothy and I, though I couldn't see why since they could do nothing for both of us. Sally had stopped trying to strap me down when she realized that I was just as still and much more calm when allowed to hold myself down; it was the same with Dorothy. The ovals on my back had gone from their original blue color to a blood red that looked like I had been cut, though no incision had been made to my back.

The wave of pain that hit was so strong that I screamed, something hadn't done in hours. My alto blended with Dorothy's soprano and we belted out an agonizing harmony as the pain consumed us. The pain faded and I sagged to the bed, but I could already feel my muscles contracting for another spasm. They had been getting stronger and lasting longer. I wasn't sure how long I could take having them so close together, I was exhausted already. I glanced at Duo, who had long since given up trying to hide the tears that coursed freely down his face as he held my hand as though he could keep my soul with him by the force of his grip.

"Look," Wufei said to Sally, "Why is it like that?" he asked as he motioned at my back. "What could cause the skin to rise like that?" he questioned. I knew already from feeling the two lumps in my back that I had two long protruding lumps on my back. I wondered if they were growing and if they were going to explode open. My thoughts went to Duo's reaction to that and I quickly shut them off. Thinking of the reverse, I knew that I would not be able to handle it either.

"It's like there's something inside there, trying to come out," Sally said just as another wave of pain hit me. I didn't get to hear anymore, but I saw a look of understanding come across Duo's face. Without warning, Duo lunged out of his seat by my bed and out of my line of sight. The pain all but consumed me in those moments that I couldn't focus on him, but he returned just a quickly.

There was a knife in his hands. I guess I should have been afraid, or at least surprised, but at that time I would have been glad if he had killed me. At least the pain would have been over. I could see worry in Duo's eyes, and pain, and fear, but also courage and confidence. I trusted him to know what he was doing. I trusted him completely.

Duo raised his knife and brought it down along my back. I could feel the skin ripping as he tore a long scratch down the left side of it. I could Wufei and Sally yelling in the background, but something kept them at bay. The pain in creased and my vision danced as the extra pain attached itself to my current pain...

...and then there was this odd feeling, like stretching a limb that had gone to sleep. The pain vanished from that side, multiplied as Duo cut my right side the same way, then disappeared almost completely as that strange feeling happened once again. Sally and Wufei were quiet and, though Dorothy was still screaming, the rom seemed dead silent. Wufei took the knife from Duo and rushed toward Dorothy. There was the sound of a knife through skin, then her screams stopped too. I smiled at Duo, my first painless smile in days. He was covered in blood and I wondered how I had managed to get so much blood on him, but he returned my smile, relief clear on his face. His eyes seemed pulled away from me, though, and he turned to look at something over my head. Something wet splashed my cheek and I turned to look behind me.

Sprouting from my back was two white wings, covered in deep red blood.