Chapter Twenty One

I

"Mission accepted."

He leapt over the side of the boat onto the shore, not bothering to restrain or anchor it. The tide was rather low this evening, nowhere near strong enough to carry it back out to sea, and even if it did, it wouldn't matter. He wouldn't be needing it anymore.

Odin had told him he would be needed in Vólos by the end of the week and he would have arrived in Greece sooner than tonight, but all air travel on the south of the European continent had been restricted. To the public this had seemed an attempt at limiting civilian casualties, which it was on some level, but it was also a method of preventing more soldiers from reaching the battleground, with more mobile suits. It was a good attempt, Heero supposed, but it had come too late. All the necessary weapons had been transported to their respective areas prior to the invasion of the Sanq Kingdom.

The simplest solution for him, at the time, had been to travel by sea, and the counteroffensive's Spain base was conveniently located for such an endeavor. The owners of the boat he had taken had many others. It wasn't likely they would miss this one.

He left the shore and crossed the harbor, passing a dozen other empty boats on the way. If need arose while he was still in the vicinity, any one of them would provide sufficient means of escape.

He would have to proceed to his destination on foot. This would be more time-consuming, of course, but at the same time it would make it easier for him to discern whether or not he was being followed.

When he had gone only a mile from the marina, it became apparent to him that he was being followed. He gave no sign that he noticed, no sign other than the quiet cocking of his gun. Out of the corners of his eyes he surveyed the land around him as he walked, and twice since he drew the gun he saw something move that could be nothing other than another person.

A few miles further, the road he followed joined with a larger one, and across the wide intersection lay a vast hospital complex, like a great brick fortress. Such places had never held any pleasant associations for him, but if he wanted to lose his pursuer, this certainly provided the opportunity.

He crossed the intersection and entered the hospital's parking lot, which he crossed just as hastily. There were too many lights there, coming both from the security lamps and the windows of the complex itself. It would be nothing less than idiotic if he were to be gunned down in a lighted parking lot like a complete fool with an unfired gun in his hand.

He crept along the complex's walls, trying to remain in the shadows as much as possible. Just as he was about to round a corner the adjacent doors opened and a group of people, a large family it seemed, walked out, chattering quickly and happily as though they hadn't just been inside a morgue-in-waiting. He stopped and lowered his gun, and waited for them to leave.

He was about to resume when the payphone on the opposite wall rang, crying shrilly like a wraith in the night. He merely stared at its as though it were a hissing serpent for a moment, then, looking back cautiously over his shoulder, he went to it. He answered it mid-ring with a simple "Hn."

"You never mentioned stopping at the peninsula, Takeru," Odin's voice said. "On your way to Thessaloníki, I presume."

"How did you know where I was."

"One of my associates works in the hospital you're standing outside of at the moment. I believe you met him once, for he was once stationed at the Spain base and he remembers your face quite well. He caught a glimpse of you on the security monitor and called to inform me of it."

"Hn."

"Look up and to your left, Takeru."

Heero did, and in the shadows he saw the barest gleam of the lens of a security camera.

"You were standing in front of that the entire time," Odin informed him. "You would have done quite better if you had interrupted that quaint family gathering."

"What do you want."

Odin gave a short laugh. "Only to warn you, Takeru."

"To warn me against what."

"There are still some matters being taken care of in Thessaloníki," Odin said. "Do not interfere with them. They do not involve you."'

"What are you talking about."

"As I said, it would defeat the entire point."

Heero didn't reply.

"Will you be coming here to visit your friend tonight?"

"Wing Zero, you mean."

"Of course. It arrived yesterday."

The Wing Zero too had been transported to Greece by boat, and taken immediately and discreetly to Vólos.

"No," Heero replied, and unconsciously looked over his shoulder. "I'm being followed."

"So soon? I trust you are able to handle the situation without assistance."

"Yeah."

"But I will advise you to exercise caution. Yuan-Chen isn't expected to arrive until tomorrow."

He grunted and repressed a scowl.

"Do not interfere, Takeru," Odin said, and hung up.

Heero dropped the phone back onto its cradle. The night was again quiet, saved from complete silence by the sounds from the nearby road and from within the building. The sounds of dying men, perhaps.

He tucked his gun back into the waist of his pants and turned the corner of the complex's main building. There was still no visible sign of his pursuer, but he could sense that they had gotten closer to him while he was distracted by Odin, much closer than they should have been allowed.

If he merely went around the complex and changed course from there, he would undoubtedly be seen. That left him with no other choice than to cut through the hospital.

He ducked through the main entrance. Immediately he was assaulted by the very essence of a medical facility: the scent of death and of antiseptics, the ringing of telephones, the incoherent murmur of doctors' voices, the shrill whish of gurneys being rolled past him and the groans of the weak and the diseased and the dying. A war zone contained completely within brick walls. It was a concept he thought Relena might enjoy.

He stepped out of view of the doorway, waited to see if his pursuer intended on following him into the facility. When enough time had passed and no one else entered, he proceeded onward.

He was not entirely too conspicuous. His favorite attire had been cast off for a white button-up shirt and a pair of black pants, which looked far more suitable of a visitor in a hospital than what he usually wore. At first he received no look from the doctors he passed, and for that time he was actually foolish enough to believe he might be able to pass through the hospital unnoticed and without any trouble.

He made the first mistake while passing a hallway that led out from the building's cafeteria. A small girl skipped out in front of him, nearly tripping him. He halted and almost committed the error of instinctively reaching for his gun.

The girl looked up at him with wide, bright eyes and smiled. Looking down at her he saw that there was an embroidered picture of small dog on her shirt.

"Are you lost?" she asked suddenly, and before he could stop himself he jumped back, feeling an expression of something like fear mixed with astonishment on his face.

"You look like you're lost," she continued when he did not respond. She pointed back over her shoulder. "The cafeteria is that way. The food's all right, but my mommy makes it better. My mommy's here. I'm visiting her. She had a baby today. I have a baby brother now. Do you have a baby brother?"

No, he thought, but I have a dead mother who was killed for her own meaningless idealism. "No," he told the girl, "I don't."

"Maybe you'll get one someday. My brother doesn't have a name yet, but my mommy is thinking about calling him Milliardo. I know a lot of people named Milliardo. Do you know why?"

He didn't respond.

"It's because Milliardo is the name of the"—she thought for a moment—"the Crown Prince of Sanq. I don't know what's supposed to be so special about that."

A man — her father, presumably — found her then, coming from paying for their dinner, and swept her up into his arms. "I hope she wasn't bothering you," he told Heero. Heero merely shook his head and walked away before anything more could be said.

A nurses' station came into view up head. He tried to slink past it without drawing any attention to himself, and for a moment he thought he would be successful. A very brief moment.

"May I help you, sir?"

He glanced at the nurse who had spoken to him and kept going as though he hadn't heard her.

"Excuse me, sir," she said, louder this time. "May I help you?"

He kept walking.

She repeated the question in Greek. When he failed to respond, she told a nearby nurse to phone security and went after him.

Heero broke into a run. Physicians and civilians alike stared at him as he rushed past them. He no longer cared. He had already screwed up.

The sound of footsteps behind him increased as the one nurse was joined by others, perhaps doctors or security guards. He did not look back to see.

There was a stairwell ahead on his right. He threw open the door and bounded up the stairs, pursued now by a medical team as well as a faceless adversary. On the fourth floor he stopped his ascent and flew through the doors, into an empty hallway. There was another door directly across from the one behind him and he rushed to it, throwing it open and running into the room without a thought to what it might be. He locked it immediately behind him.

The room, he saw when he turned around, was a lobby, not one designed for visitors but rather one for the physicians. It was utterly spotless, immaculately clean, comfortably furnished. It was utterly silent inside and utterly empty save for Heero himself and the woman who stared up at him calmly from her seat a few feet from the doorway.

She was young, older than Heero but young still, and undeniably of Asian descent. Her face was undeniably benevolent, warm and generous while her eyes seemed to hold some kind of dark knowledge that added to her age.

When he learned her name, he would find all this entirely too convenient.

"May I help you?" she asked, bestowing upon him a sweet smile.

He only looked at her.

"Do you speak English?"

Still he could not find the words to reply.

She repeated the question in Greek.

"Hn" was all he could manage.

She studied his own Oriental countenance and rephrased her question in Mandarin Chinese.

Again nothing.

"Nihonjin desu ka?"

"Hai," he was finally able to say.

Her gracious smile widened. "Watashi wa Moudo desu," she said, then added, "Moudo Sakura."

The name froze him. He stared at her with perplexed eyes while she merely smiled at him, then the sound of a phalanx running through the halls outside pulled his mind back to the task at hand.

"You never saw me," he said quickly in Japanese, then turned to unlock the door. He left as quickly and silently as he had entered, now behind the frantic nurse and the security personnel. He proceeded stealthily down the corridor, wondering what else was sure to go wrong before he was able to return to his current mission, which had been appointed by none other than himself.

At last he located a large storage closet. He slipped inside and discovered rows of green surgical uniforms. He allowed himself one moment to think of how Odin would laugh to see him like this, then began pulling the scrubs over his clothes. It was certainly not the greatest disguise he had ever donned, but it would suffice.

Covered now in the clothes of one who worked to preserve life rather than destroy it, he went back out into the corridor. It was still quiet on this end, but farther away he could hear the low hum of conversation, and no doubt that conversation was about him. He couldn't afford to waste any more time.

He walked on in search of an elevator. He was almost to the elevator alcove when a nurse, pale and frenzied, ran at him. He thought that perhaps she had seen through his disguise and prepared to disable her, when she called out urgently, "Doctor, you're needed on floor eleven!"

She darted around him and pushed the button marked '11.' Before Heero realized what she was doing, she shoved him, knocking him off his balance and into the elevator. The doors closed immediately behind him.

He cursed calmly under his breath and waited.

He bolted from the elevator the instant that the doors opened. This floor was much more active than the one he had just been on, bustling with the news of an intruder slipping through security and some kind of relapse in room 1147. He started down the hall at a jog, which was certainly no longer out of place, and broke into another run when he spotted the next elevator alcove. His increase in speed wasn't timely enough, however, for one nurse who apparently had been on the ground floor when he had first drawn suspicion, caught enough of a glimpse of his face to recognize him.

"It's him!" she shouted, pointing violently, and in less than an instant another party assembled itself and gave chase. "Shit," he mumbled, and made for the alcove.

An empty steel cart stood in the alcove as though waiting solely for his purposes. One of the elevators was being called down, but its outer doors had yet to close. There was no time to wait for another. Heero saw immediately what he had to do.

He grabbed the cart and pushed it between the elevator's outer doors as they closed. With a stifled grunt he jumped on top of the cart and leapt into the elevator shaft.

He landed on his knees on the roof of the still-descending elevator. The pain was sharp and hot but brief, and he gained his footing quickly.

The elevator descended to the fourth floor. Several people entered it and these were beyond a doubt security guards, for as he stood there motionless and silent, Heero could hear the shuffling of their hard-soled shoes and the battering of their nightsticks against their legs, and as the doors again closed he heard one of them cock his gun.

He only wished he could move to do the same.

The elevator went up only one level and stopped. The unit of guards all exited it, and after a few minutes all became still again.

Heero looked down at the roof. It was now or never.

He kicked at the roof, loudly, violently, but there was no time to be discreet. His foot went through on the second kick, and luckily the roof was made of a more plastic material rather than glass, for it gave him no more than a minor scrape through his clothes.

He withdrew his foot and tore away the remains of the panel, tossing them into the shaft behind him. The noise had not been enough to attract attention, for he saw no one staring in at the elevator from the hallway. He leapt through the hole that had once been the roof of the elevator and darted out into the corridor. It was still empty, but he sensed it would not be for much longer.

He crept through the labyrinth of hallways silently but swiftly. The unnatural quiet of this wing disturbed him, almost as much as the little girl and the woman who bore his mother's name had. He realized the reason for the unsettling lull, though, when at last a sign hanging from the ceiling caught his eye, informing him that he had inadvertently sought refuge and escape on the children's ward.

It was too late to turn back. If he did that now, he was sure to encounter the guards who were searching for him.

He came, after some immeasurable amount of time had elapsed, to the end of a hallway, and none branched off from it. He could simply have retraced his steps and taken a different path in the disturbingly vast ward, but strangely, he did not. Rather, he found himself walking toward the door on his right. He tried the knob and found it unlocked.

The room was not dark as it should have been at this hour on this ward. A single lamp burned in the corner, illuminating one side of the room while bathing the other side in shadow.

The only bed lay on the edge of the light. A small child lay atop it, resting against the mound of pillows. It was another young girl, he saw, somewhat older but nowhere near as healthy or happy as the one he had encountered earlier in the evening. She was too thin, this girl, bony and starved-looking. Her skin was not the healthy, expected pink but was instead sallow and gray, even bruised in places. The girl's blue eyes were sunken and ringed, looking as close to death as had many men whom Heero had seen on the battlefields of the past.

The child's affliction was evident immediately. Her head was smooth and uncovered, and there was not a single hair upon it.

He had seen so many die, so many tortured by the devices of war; he had seen so many tears and heard so many screams, but this halted him like nothing he had seen in war had been able to do.

"Hi," the girl said. She studied him for a moment, then asked, "Are you one of my doctors?"

He could only shake his head. Was this never going to end tonight?

"Then who are you?"

"I'm not even sure of that myself sometimes."

The girl gave him a confused look. "Do you have a name?"

He nodded solemnly. If it had been even one of the other gundam pilots he would not have hesitated to go to the window and finally escape one pursuit only to return to another one, but under this child's gaze he was powerless.

"My name is–"

Don't say 'Mary.'

"Galandri," she finished. "What's yours?"

"Takeru," he answered, though he had not intended to. The name slipped from his tongue before he could realize what he was saying.

The girl smiled. "That's a nice name. Are you new here? I haven't seen you before." Her glistening eyes – still so alive despite the death that raged and spread within her — traveled down to his feet and she smiled. He followed her gaze and realized he had neglected to put anything on over his shoes.

"You're not really a doctor at all, are you?"

"No, I'm not." At this he removed the loose uniform. If the girl noticed his gun and recognized what it was, she said nothing of it.

"Are you an angel, then?"

He stopped and looked at her.

"Mommy said that I wasn't to be scared because if it ever hurts too bad, an angel would come take me away. Are you an angel?"

He realized what she was saying and somehow it stung him. Men were fighting and killing one another all for one man's ideal that would come soon enough while this child waited through a kind of suffering most of them could never imagine for something as simple and taken-on-faith as this. Wars were waged and countless otherwise innocent were soldiers killed while young children such as this one waged a battle all of their own, one they could not understand and were often certain to lose, as the rest of the world went on with its own concerns. Was there really no meaning to it all, no absolution? Was this girl's soul really worth no more, ultimately, than Dekim Barton's?

He decided then that this entire evening was an overdue punishment for what he had done to that girl on the colony, the one who had given him the flower and then run after her dear puppy, completely unknowing, completely innocent–

"Stop it," he whispered to himself.

The girl looked up at him expectantly.

"I'm not an angel," he said finally.

"Would you like to be one?"

Would this night never end!

"I can't."

The girl pressed on. "Why not? Mommy says that I might be one someday."

"Because murderers don't become angels."

Her brow furrowed. "You mean like in killing people?" She did not seem scared in the least by him. "There were angels who had to kill people. One of the priests told me that one time. He said it was their mission, just like it's a soldier's mission to do it too sometimes. We're Greek Orthodox. Are you?"

He shook his head. "I don't believe in those things."

Again the expression on her face changed, but still it was not to fear or anger. Rather, it seemed piteous, as though he were the one calmly dying inside instead of she. "Are you a soldier?" she asked.

"Yeah."

She seemed content with this. Her large blue eyes went to the door, beyond which could be heard an army of heavy footsteps. "You'd better go now," she said. "They're still looking for you."

He did not question how she knew this. He merely nodded and stifled a great sigh when he realized that whatever force had been holding him to that spot was now gone.

The girl laughed when she saw that he was going to leave by way of the window. He stopped on its ledge and looked at her.

"I knew you were an angel," she said. "You're going to fly away, aren't you?"

He supposed she could say that. "Yeah."

"Even if you're not my angel, can I tell you something?" Her face sobered as she spoke these words, and her eyes seemed to brim with tears.

"What?"

"Sometimes it hurts really bad." One tear spilled over her eyelid and streaked down her pale face, glistening in the lamplight.

He tried to soften his expression. "Pain is only temporary," he told her, and when again she looked confused, he explained, "It can only last for so long before it starts to get better."

The girl smiled. "Goodbye, angel," she said, and lifted one small hand to wave.

He ducked through the window and stepped out onto the ledge. After a moment of consideration he turned as far as the ledge would allow and pushed the girl's window shut.

The night had become windier since he had entered the hospital, and the concrete ledge was much narrower than he had anticipated. He would have to keep his back pressed to the wall as he crossed it.

Quickly, with a feline grace that came more as instinct than a learned skill, Heero moved to the corner of the ledge, where it protruded over the entrance to the parking garage. If he jumped now he would undoubtedly be spotted by one of the parking attendants if not by a handful of security cameras as well. But if he were to go on further, where the cement ended and the lawn began, his chances of accomplishing what he had intended to do were increased. Not by much, but they would have to suffice.

He proceeded along the ledge. Sirens could now be heard in the distance, apparently summoned to the hospital to aid in the search for and the apprehension of the intruder. There were several squadrons of them by the sound of it, too many for him to fight off and disable at once. Unless he wanted to spend the night in a heavily guarded prison and listen to Odin's sardonic laughter at him after he was liberated by his 'father,' he had to get out of here now.

He hadn't disagreed with the girl when she had asked if he really were going to fly from the hospital. If he were still near her window she would have been able to see her angel take to the air, but she would also have seen him fall to the ground, wingless, perhaps only to be cornered by another group of the search party below.

He inched away from the wall, placing himself on the tip of the ledge. The cold night wind whipped through his hair and the white shirt he wore, creating a sound not at all unlike the fluttering of wings.
His last thought before jumping was that Trowa was much better suited for this kind of thing.

Heero sprang from the ledge, gripping his gun to prevent it from being lost in the fall. The air that rushed around him was like a lover's caress and a hard slap at the same time, and in the sensation of falling he could almost grasp something that felt like the emptiness he so desired.

He went completely limp the moment before he hit the ground. He rolled the rest of the way down the steep hill this side of the complex had been set on, coming to a stop finally more than one hundred feet below the ledge from which he had leapt and a good seventy yards from the hospital grounds. Nothing seemed injured too badly, and he wasted no time before he leapt to his feet and ran on. It was only slightly more than a mile to the base from here, and if he drew no more attention to himself he could accomplish his mission before daybreak, and with any luck this final encounter would yield much better results than had the one in Spain.

Of course, he thought, as he moved quickly through the chilled night, only barely aware of the dull pain in his leg from his angelic fall, if these circumstances worked better to her advantage than those of that previous encounter, she would make that next to impossible.

II

Marguerite St. Domingue was called into the base's subterranean medical ward two hours after night had fallen, informed by Odin that Rhyn had at last regained consciousness. It was Odin who had, the previous night, gone to her after hearing of her reaction to learning of Rhyn's inclusion in the list of casualties and informed her that this had been an error. She had listened, crying quietly, as he explained the cause of this error had been how badly damaged Rhyn's mobile suit had been, and while by all rights he should have been dead considering what he had endured in battle, he was merely unconscious and was expected to awaken within the next twenty-four hours. She ran to the ward as swiftly as she had run to their room the day before, and when one of the physicians escorted her to Rhyn's private room she was greeted by Rhyn at the door, who, though he was not supposed to be moving excessively yet, had forcibly pushed the doctor out of the doorway and pulled Marguerite in, locking the door behind them.

It was believed that in spite of his injuries, his recovery would be quick and full. He would no longer be able to fight, however, but this ruling was hardly considered unfair by those involved.

The counteroffensive, it seemed, now waited upon the arrival of the boy calling himself Heero Yuy.

Author's Notes: This chapter was rather difficult to write. It seems to be a favorite scene of many, but I (as were several others very close to me) was going through a very hard time when I wrote it. I wanted it to be a poetically surreal chapter, in which events almost seem to occur without real reason, as if almost every character in it were in a daze of some kind. I'm not really sure how successful I was in this, but the next chapter (which is, inconsequentially, my favorite of the entire story) is much more abstract and emotional. Both of these chapters, and the one following them, I believe, also provided another opportunity to torture Heero, and everyone knows that I'm always up for that.

I feel I should explain this: Heero answers the phone so readily due to past experiences while working with Odin in which similar has occurred. He's completely accustomed to Odin's seeming omnipresence; thus, it ceases to faze him. As for how Heero jumps from such a great height and receives no major injuries, it must be kept in mind that in the GW series, he does blow himself up and survives without so much as a scar.

On a more humorous note, my friend also did a doujinshi of this chapter, in which Heero breaks his leg after jumping out the window and is caught by the police. Odin and Yuan-Chen set out to free him, but are distracted by a doughnut shop on the way.