Xtine: As always, thank you for everything, you royal pain in the ass. I wouldn't have it any other way. Hee hee! As for the hospital? I don't know. That's just what I want to do. I never really could tell you why, remember? I hate doctors too! Oops. And how could I ever forget any of Novak's classes? They were oh so interesting… Guh.
Black Angel: Thank you so much. That makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Charlie00: Glad I didn't disappoint!
Yaeko: Yes, I did say that I have the rest of this story written. The problem is finding the time to type it up and edit it. Blechy.
Part 3: The Trip
The small room was sparsely furnished, holding a bed and a small table next to it, besides the expected life-monitoring machinery and IVs. The only other things in the room were four chairs – not all of them empty. The blinds had been drawn closed, casting thick bars of shadow amidst the thinner strips of sunlight.
Duo didn't see any of this, his eyes immediately drawn to the figure on the bed, its coffee coloured hair looking darker than he remembered against the white hospital sheets.
"Maxwell." Duo pulled his gaze away from Heero's slightly pale face and looked at the speaker.
"Hey Wufei! How're you doing?" Duo shifted into happy gear, the mood everyone always expected him to be in, the way he definitely did not feel at the moment. He wanted nothing more than to just sit by Heero, hold his hand, beg the Wing pilot to come back, to not leave him, because he didn't think he could bear to live without him. But he didn't. Couldn't, not with the others here. The mask he now wore out of habit may not have been as palpable as Trowa's circus mask, but that didn't make it hide any less, didn't make it any less real. He had lived most of his life during a war, and during a war, concealing his emotions had gotten him out of a lot of tough situations. Even now, with the war over, the mask seemed to automatically slip into place. 'Old habits die hard,' Duo thought to himself.
He glanced sideways to where Trowa was leaning against the wall. The Heavyarms pilot caught his eye, nodded, and went back to staring through the shadows and out the window.
"It took you long enough to get here, Maxwell," Wufei was nagging, drawing Duo's gaze back to him. "And you look horrible."
Duo laughed as he let his bag drop to the floor. "Well, excuuuuse me, Mr. High and Mighty." Then he looked down at himself and wrinkled his nose.
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When he had raced to the spaceport and asked for the soonest shuttle off Earth and to L2, he was told that he had six hours to wait before the next one with seats available departed. After booking one ticket, Duo wandered aimlessly about the spaceport for a while. The adrenaline rush that had accompanied the news of Heero and his own nervous and impulsive need to do something – anything – had faded and left him feeling utterly exhausted and empty. Some obscure voice in his head broke through the curtain of haze that covered the rest of his mind to tell him that he was doing no good just walking around in his worried state, bumping into people without realizing it.
With this thought still in mind, Duo went back to his and Hilde's place. He packed a backpack with a few things he knew he would be needing: some clothes, a toothbrush, a snack or two (or three or four), and his hairbrush, of course. After filling Hilde in and grabbing some cash, Duo was out the door again and rushing back to the spaceport, even though he still had over two hours of waiting left ahead of him.
Passing through the automatic sliding doors of the spaceport, Duo cast around at length for an empty seat before finding one. He walked over to it, dropped his bag on the floor and flopped down into the hard plastic seat, emitting a long sigh and causing the old woman next to him to frown disapprovingly and the young girl with her to giggle. The girl fell silent as the old woman – probably her grandmother – grabbed her hand and led her away.
After the two places next to him were vacated no one came to replace the little girl and her grandmother. Maybe it was because of the anxious look on his face. Maybe it was because of the tired old man who seemed to peer out of the boy's eyes. It might even have just been pure coincidence. But whatever it was, Duo was thankful to just be left alone. In order to keep his thoughts off of Heero and because he had nothing else to do, he people-watched.
He saw an old man with tufts of white hair over his ears join the woman and the little girl. The three of them laughed at something the old man said. A group of five teenaged girls walked by, giggling and chatting loudly, two of them very obviously looking at Duo. As they passed him they giggled even louder. An overweight businessman in a tacky suit sat on a bench across the room, talking on a cell phone. He was clearly yelling at someone and his hands convulsively clutched the handle of his briefcase. A couple pushed a stroller and laced fingers, smiling at each other and their baby. A mother chased after her toddler, who had run away with her purse. A middle-aged woman looked up at the shuttle schedule board, looked down at her boarding pass, scratched her head, her confusion fully evident on her face, then looked back up at the board again. A little boy peeked into an animal carrier and pushed his fingers through the grating to pet his dog goodbye as his parents checked the canine in.
Duo watched all this with an impassive eye. Then he smirked, the action slightly twisting his features. How quickly they had all gone back to their normal lives. How easily they had all forgotten. About the war. About the sacrifices the soldiers had made. Duo sighed again, just as a woman's bored voice came over the loudspeaker, telling him his shuttle was going to leave soon.
Once on the shuttle, it was harder to find something to occupy his mind. Much harder. There wasn't anything much to look at. To his right sat the businessman he had seen before, the one who would probably have a heart attack any minute. He was not allowed to use his cell phone on the shuttle, much to Duo's relief. Besides staring at the seatback in front of him, Duo's only option was out the window on his left. He watched as buildings gradually got smaller and smaller, watched until fields and forests and cities made up big coloured patches of a giant quilt. The sparkle of the setting sun off the ocean caught his eye as the shuttle ascended through wisps of cloud.
He couldn't sleep and he was too worried to eat. He passed the time looking out the small oval plexiglass window, idly flipping through a magazine he had absolutely no interest in, and enviously glancing around at the passengers who, unlike him, had actually fallen asleep. He had never been so relieved to get off a shuttle before.
He took a taxi straight to the hospital as soon as he was out of the spaceport.
-----
No wonder he looked so bad! He had been traveling for close to a full day, during which he had neither slept nor had anything to eat, but had instead almost worried himself to death. Wisps of hair had come loose from his braid, the result of hours of being nervously fidgeted with and the ungodly amount of static those damn shuttle seats created. To complete the look, his clothes were rumpled from continuous wear.
He shrugged and turned to Quatre. "So, what happened?"
The blonde smiled gently and laid his hand on his friend's shoulder. "Why don't you go clean up a bit and then we can tell you about it over lunch. We'll meet you in the cafeteria."
'Uh oh.' That didn't sound good. But Duo nodded and shouldered his bag anyway.
End Part 3
Just a quick little footnote about when I will be posting. Tomorrow is not going to happen, unfortunately. I have my physics midterm on Friday afternoon, so I will definitely try to do something about getting Part 4 up right afterwards. But my brain will probably be a little bit numb…