Author: Sparkle Itamashii
Title: Inheritance
Warnings: Respect the rating. Please see my profile.
Disclaimer: Gundam Wing A/C is NOT MINE.
Chapter Twenty Seven
By the time Trowa met up with us again the colony's lights were dimming for its regularly scheduled false evening. After he'd taken everything that was a danger to leave at the hospital, he'd disappeared, saying he would be back when he'd destroyed the evidence properly. Heero had stayed just long enough to give him directions to someplace I didn't catch, some sort of trash incinerator, and then we were off as well, as fast as we could travel without drawing attention to ourselves.
Now we were stashed away in one of those quiet little study alcoves at the spaceport while Heero and Trowa worked out a plan.
"They've all got to be destroyed," Heero said. The way he said 'destroyed' left a very bitter taste in my mouth. "I understand that the doctors did a lot of very helpful research that had nothing to do with the virus, but I can't risk it. Neither can you."
"You said it yourself, Heero. They've already been in- someone knows already. Destroying the starting point isn't going to stop the racers from getting to the end."
"So what do you want to do? Leave it there for more people to find?" Heero shook his head, a gesture that clearly said how insane he thought Trowa was being. I stifled a smile behind my hand and kept myself from laughing; the drugs the doctors had dosed me with were really strong and they were making me a little loopy. "I can't, Trowa."
Trowa sighed, leaning back in the funny looking, curvy alcove chair. "I got to the other labs first, before anyone had touched anything. I searched. I don't think there's anything there but harmless or helpful research."
"Then they can go last, after we've done the central lab, but they have got to go," Heero replied. "You were just saying you hadn't finished looking into the L1 lab- what if there is something there?"
I think I tried to say something just then because both of them looked at me but either what I said wasn't important… or it wasn't coherent. I'd put money on the latter, despite that I could already feel the effects of the drugs waning. Trowa sighed and turned his attention back to Heero. "Fine. Where do you want to start?"
"The L1 labs- Central and J's," Heero said without hesitation. "If it's true and the other places didn't have information and hadn't been touched, that's where it's all going to be."
Unless they have it with them, I thought, head tilting back so I could stare at the oddly patterned ceiling. The doctors were horrible like that, hiding things and making sure no one but themselves had the right information at the right times.
Trowa shifted uncomfortably next to me. "What about…?"
I didn't have to look to know he'd motioned to me. I would have asked the same question. I was good at taking hits, normally, but there was no way that bullet had missed my femoral artery. I'd lost a lot of blood and the doctors had put a lot of something in me that was messing up my functioning. It was probably meant to knock me on my ass entirely so I would be out cold for whatever they did, but it hadn't been quite strong enough. I wish I'd had the sense to tell them no before they did it, but I'm not sure how well I could have explained that they couldn't give me drugs because I had to go save the world by blowing up colony-based medical and mechanical workspaces.
Sighing, Heero turned to me. I tore my gaze from the ceiling and offered him a weak smile. "I can come along," I said, though I'm sure the words slurred.
He shook his head. "That's not a good idea. Central is going to be surrounded by the media and those hacks looking to discover more about the gundams. If we've got to move fast, you can't."
Indignation rose within me. "I'm not going to sit and be useless," I told him seriously. The world tilted as I sat up to look at him more directly.
"I know," he said before I could continue. "And we don't have the time to let you be useless, either."
"What about the other labs?" Trowa suggested quietly. "They're safer."
Heero made a noise that spoke of how he didn't really approve of that idea, but it was better than nothing and we all knew it. "If I get you a flight, can you destroy the lab in the L3 cluster?" he asked me. "The means are already inside and if Trowa really did check it for information all you'd have to do is set it up and get out."
My world spun a little bit as I nodded. "Yeah, no problem."
He made the sort of frown that said he knew I was off my rocker. "Duo, this is serious. There is a lot we still have to get done but I don't want to see you hurt again. If you think you can handle it then I have to ask you to try but if you get there, and you can't handle it… I need to know that you'll keep yourself safe first."
"If Trowa says it's locked and no one's in it then it's locked and no one's in it. I can watch and make sure no one's out of it before I do anything." I felt a little nauseas and spacey still but I wasn't about to mention it with the way Heero was looking at me. He didn't believe me. "I can do it."
He obviously didn't want to trust me with the job but there was precious little we could do about it right then. There were five labs – six if you counted the lab none of us had gotten into because of the heavy publicity surrounding it – and three of us. If I backed out it would take almost twice as long, which was time we didn't have to spend. Regardless of how up to it I felt, I was going to do it.
"Fine." He rose and shuffled around to the edge of the alcove. "Keep an eye on him," he told Trowa as he exited. "I'll get us moving."
He disappeared and an awkward silence settled between Trowa and me almost immediately. I shifted my gaze back to the ceiling. I hated being alone with him, most of the time. Like Heero he was quiet but it was a different sort of quiet- a worse sort. With Heero I could sometimes follow along with what he was thinking, could see where his mind was going. I could even sometimes start a conversation along his vein of thought and he would talk back. With Trowa, it was like watching a brick wall think. Everything or nothing could have been going on inside his mind and I would never be able to tell the difference.
So instead of speaking up to break the silence, I fidgeted. I closed my eyes and leaned back in my chair as best I could and I put my mind to working the drug out of my system. I would have to be thinking past it soon anyway. Across the alcove I could hear Trowa doing the same, relaxing into the silence. The clock on the wall made a tiny, tiny ticking noise as its second hand revolved, the gears grinding smoothly behind the face. One minute, two, three…
A hand touched my shoulder and I jolted awake, groping forward in surprise. Trowa's rare laugh filtered into my sleep-fogged brain and I blinked tiredly at him and Heero as a ticket was pressed into my hand. "Did you already get tickets?"
"Already?" Trowa said quietly, accepting his own ticket. "You've been asleep half an hour."
I stifled a yawn. "Oh…" Looking down, I read my ticket and then looked to Heero. "That's as soon as you could get?"
"That's the next shuttle for L3. It's only an hour."
Trowa was already getting to his feet and shuffling around to the exit of the alcove. "Good luck," he soothed as he passed me. "I'm off in about fifteen minutes." He looked to Heero. "I'll take L4 after this and meet you in the L5 cluster. Try not to get yourself killed."
He winced a little at the jab. "I won't. You either."
"I won't," Trowa agreed as he turned and began to walk away from us. "I have it on good authority that it hurts like hell."
Heero smiled at me in a way that said I wouldn't understand what was just said, but I let it go. "When do you leave?"
"After you," he said simply, taking over the seat Trowa had just vacated.
Giving him a strange look, I relaxed back into my chair again. My head was beginning to clear a little after sleeping but the pain was returning as the painkillers in the drug wore thin. I shoved my hand into my pocket and pulled out the little bottle of pills Heero had pilfered for me- zedal-codine. It was the strongest painkiller that was readily available in hospitals. They were small pills so I didn't bother with water or anything, though I couldn't help the face I made as I downed one.
"There really weren't any sooner?" I asked when I'd sat back once more.
Watching me shove the little container back into my pocket, he shook his head. "There… no."
He closed his eyes, leaning back in his own chair and it was then that I realized how awful he looked and sounded. He hadn't slept since we'd left the house however many days ago and it was really beginning to show. Sure he could go days without sleep just like the rest of us but that didn't mean it was any better for him than it was for any other person on the planet or off it.
"Okay," I said quietly. I didn't believe him but it wasn't worth arguing about right then. "Do you want me to meet you in the L5 cluster too?"
He shook his head without lifting it. "I'll come get you." The ghost a smile touched his lips. "Then we can go home."
I smiled as well, eyes sliding closed. "I wonder how Artemis is doing," I murmured. "She hasn't been by herself this long in quite a while."
Though his shoulder shook a little in a silent chuckle, he didn't voice a response. I think he was hitting that point where he was so tired that he was sleeping and aware at the same time. That was fine, I thought. There wasn't anything to do for a little while and he needed the rest. I'd slept a little on the flight to this colony but I don't think he had. He deserved a bit of a nap. I pried my eyes open long enough to watch him for a few minutes but they slid closed again against my will.
"Duo?" Heero asked quietly, as though he thought I might have fallen asleep. I mumbled something and he took a deep breath. "Sorry. It's nothing."
Forcing my eyes open, I gave him a confused look. He never apologized. "No, what is it?"
Silence. And then: "I love you."
I blinked, sitting up a little straighter. He didn't talk like that. "What's wrong?"
He shook his head and his eyes opened but he didn't look at me. My stomach tightened and I felt sick again, though not from the medication this time. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you. Things might have been different."
"It's okay," I said dully, relaxing a little. The drugs were starting to take effect and it was becoming hard to care. "I suppose if there was something to keep from someone, the fact that they're carrying a world-killing disease…" I trailed off, figuring he got the drift.
Again, silence stretched before his brow wrinkled and he sighed. "I mean… about Mara," he said, barely a whisper. "I knew."
My heart did a strange little flip in my chest in the most painful way at those words, like he'd just gotten a hand in there and squeezed a bit too tightly. "What?"
He winced a little and still refused to look at me. "She… Relena called to tell me she was going to have a child. I told her what I told you about the virus and she didn't-" His voice finally caught on his closed throat. "I told her not to do it. Not to have it."
My own throat closed and I looked away from him, forcing myself to take a few deep breaths. "But she did."
In the back of his throat he made a noise I've never heard him make before, a noise of suppressed hurt. "She shouldn't have… She shouldn't…" he trailed off, eyes closing again, his voice dropping to scratchy exhaustion. "I said such horrible things to her. I told her to kill her own child. Our child."
"You lied to me," I said quietly. "You said you didn't know."
"I didn't," he replied. "I didn't know she'd had her… I- she told me she'd taken care of the problem and I just…"
"You assumed she hadn't had the child," I finished flatly.
"I never looked back, Duo." His lips tightened briefly. "I never wanted to look back. I wanted to forget the past and have it be just you and me. I didn't know…"
I let the tension between us settle and begin to thicken. I didn't even know how to dignify any of that with a response. I'm glad you chose me, but it's too bad Relena had a kid she never told you about, because now the whole world is in danger? I pulled my legs up onto the chair and rested my elbows on their tops, scrubbing at my eyes with the heels of my hands. It was too much.
"They killed her to try and stop this," he said quietly. The fatigue in his voice didn't help me to feel any less tired or delirious. "But they didn't know either. If they had known about Mara…"
I felt like I'd just plummeted a few feet downward at the thought. If the people after us had known about Mara to begin with, we wouldn't have had any warning. They could have killed Relena and taken Mara and they would have come for me. We wouldn't have had to wait for them to break into the workshops or find Relena's will. We wouldn't have had time to run. Relena's fear of being found out had probably saved our lives.
Not that it mattered now. We were on the run, fighting for our lives again. We'd all been shot at, I'd been shot, we'd been separated from the kid and we were miles and miles from Home. I wanted it to be over, done. It would have been so much simpler if Relena hadn't done those things to protect us or if Heero had just killed me when we met. If one link in the chain had been broken before now, none of this would be happening.
But, I thought tiredly to myself, none of our past together would have happened either and that was a worse thought. The idea of not even having the precious few years I'd had with Heero sent a heavy, cold feeling across my skin. To never have kissed him, never have held him… to never see him smile in the grey dawn hours or to watch him learn to adapt to a life where not everything was a mission or a threat… If I died now then my life would have some worth but back then, before all of that? I was a street rat orphan before that. Without the past few years that's all I would have died as.
I shoved the thought out of my mind and sat up in my seat, startling Heero a little as I did so. "Duo?"
"I have to catch my flight," I said dully.
My flight actually wasn't for a while yet but I didn't think I wanted to sit in that alcove with him anymore. I needed to be alone. I needed to put myself into the proper mindset. While Heero had survived several shots in the past, he was made for it. He was made for taking a leap out the window of a skyscraper building without a parachute and surviving. I wasn't. If I took another hit, especially an arterial one, I probably wouldn't make it through it.
For a second it looked like he was going to protest, but he simply laid his head back against the headrest of the chair and sighed. "If it's too much or there are too many, book it out of there. I'll be over there as fast as I can, either way."
"I can handle it," I said, sounding much more confident than I thought I could. "It's just one building. They've probably moved on by now."
"Promise me."
I made an irritated noise in the back of my throat. "I promise that if I cannot handle it, I'll walk away." I gave him a flat look. "Happy?"
"No," he said. "But it will have to do."
We stared at one another for a minute, not quite sure what to say or do. In the end I turned and walked away, leaving silently. It felt strange to just walk away from him like that- like we were back in the war. We never said goodbye or farewell. We never jinxed ourselves like that. It had been years since I'd had a chance to say goodbye and a chance to think that I might never get to say hello again. This time the feeling was heavy in my chest and grew heavier with every step because this time if I didn't come back… it wasn't just my own life lost.
/End Chapter Twenty Seven, Inheritance/
Notes:
Oh come on guys I know you can do better than that…Five people reviewing? Speak up a bit, drop me a line, let me know what you're thinking, what you think is going to happen! I don't bite and it really brightens my day to hear from you guys, even if it's a simple 'I'm still reading.' I LOVE hearing speculation.
A public thank you to Keiichi Sei and Saramoon for reading this before I posted and fixing a few things with me. Much appreciated!
CrimsonAnjel is coming to visit me for a week in real life so I dunno when the next chapter will be posted and… and writing the epilogue is like pulling teeth. I CAN'T post the last two chapters until that epilogue is done so yeah. I hope it will be soon. Until then!
