Tourniquet -- Chapter Two
By Jillian Storm
I tried to kill the pain
but only brought more
I lay dying
and I'm pouring crimson regret and betrayal
I'm dying praying bleeding and screaming
am I too lost to be saved
am I too lost?
~Evanescence
***
She dreamed she was in the bottom of a deep boat. The sides curled up and created dark shadows around her, as severe as a coffin. She tried her hands. They were heavy weights. She wondered if she were roped down. Her head, the only part of her that seemed capable of movement, jostled as the boat rocked. Some brilliant white light broke through the sliver of open eyelids and pierced her brain. Her own moaning first assaulted her awakening ears and almost covered the entire conversation taking place around her.
"Where the hell did she come from?"
"Another pilot?"
"Not on the list. But the wounds are consistent."
"She could be the enemy . . . the unidentified shuttle . . . "
"Treat her anyway."
The pause filled with the wheezing of her own lungs, of the circulating air, of the wheels that carried her along.
"It's what Treize-sama wants."
***
He prowled the halls of the Victoria Hospital feeling quite caged. Not that Lieutenant Douglas Nichol had felt free in the path few months. When he wasn't a slave to duty or OZ, he was irreversibly bound to his commanding officer, and, while she slept in a drug-induced coma, he fought a restless lack of direction. He let the hallways direct him then, in endless patrols of right turns, perfectly aligned North to South, East and West.
He had been walking the halls of Barge when the battle began. His first thought had be a reflexive fury that his wings had been clipped. After they discovered Colonel Une bleeding on the floor of the control room on the Moon, Nichol had been told to continue his duties as assigned to him by Une: to stay by her side and out of trouble. Even if to remain with her meant abandoning death with his fellow soldiers and taking the Colonel back to Earth.
A coldness rippled through his thoughts, one that he was becoming quite familiar with, started to work its way up his neck. Stretching the skin on his cheekbones and making his smile feel tight. Of course, he could still smile and more easily than before and at any situation no matter how sad, ironic, or terrible. Powerfully amused.
He was smiling just then, because he'd been asked to stand down from his post at Colonel Une's door. Not that Nichol had been so surprised that Lord Treize was coming to see his Lady. The visits were routine, as regular as Une's heartbeat of late. Her proximity gave Nichol bitter hope. Treize brought with him the relief of failure. Reminded of his shortcomings, reminded of his place, Nichol decided to continue following the only path before him and stretch his legs.
He used to fly. His skills were above par at Victoria and secured him the duty of evaluating, or rather sifting through, new recruits to OZ. Days were spent with the OZ hopefuls, evenings were spent with his fellow officers complaining about the lack of talent, but--now and again--a bright sport would achieve scores beyond his peers. Nichol had to admit it wasn't hard on days like those to point out the good ones. Those same good candidates were all piloting their own crafts, ready to die, at Lord Kushranada's command. Nichol kept up with the bitter smile, it felt appropriate.
"Giving blood again, Lieutenant?"
He recognized the voice of the Chipper Nurse. Rather ordinary, but the sort of woman that got her way both with patients and men. She gave out orders as if they were requests, but most definitely disobedience would not be tolerated. He pitied her husband.
"Not that bored yet, ma'am," Nichol stopped a moment, facing the west where the sun was low enough to make him squint. "Maybe if you put me on salary, I'd feel up to it?"
"Ha. Ha." Her tone was humorless, but her expression didn't make him feel any immediate danger. "Why aren't you with your lady?"
"Pardon?" Nichol grimaced nearly biting his tongue, "She's hardly mine."
"Maybe not, but you're never so sour about her when you think no one's looking." Chipper Nurse looked almost sympathetic, "We need to find you a nice girl, Lieutenant. How old are you? Twenty-five or so?"
"Something like that . . ." Nichol shrugged, refusing to admit he was younger. His mother had always commented on how quickly he grew, and, since she was a very distant relation to unimportant aristocrats, he'd learned the best way to endure any social event was to remain silent and aloof. Indifference became his tool and crutch.
"We've got a cute little pilot on the fourth floor. No one visits her. And, we've given her enough of your blood that she might owe you a favor or two . . ." Chipper Nurse winked in such a way that Nichol felt certain this very conversation had been brewing conspiratorially in her thoughts for quite some time.
He wasn't interested. "I'm not interested."
"You're a good boy, Lieutenant." Chipper Nurse arranged the front of her uniform. She wore white that looked like it had seen a few too many cycles in the wash but starched stiff for another thankless day, "Too many good boys are going to die."
"Not this one." The floor felt so solid under his feet that he might never pick up his feet again. "I'm grounded."
"We're going to need some good boys to survive." She tilted her head to one side, the white streaked blonde of her hair coming loose from the high bun and bobby pins. Nichol wondered if she had any 'good boys' of her own. "Someone's going to have to pick up the pieces. Always pieces left over after something like this. We're on the precipice."
Nichol had to agree, "Regular Humpty Dumpties all of us."
***
Hilde had too much time to think. She thought about all the planning that had gone into infiltrating Libra, and how recklessly her mission had seemed to play out. She remembered that once she'd fallen into the deepest moment of frustration, finally begging for help, she had heard his voice. She reflected on how she'd practically done everything to impress Duo Maxwell.
When she felt her most optimistic, she knew the information on Libra was every bit as valuable as she had hoped. Duo would succeed and then come to find her.
More often, as she stared at the IV hooked up to her left arm and watched it endlessly drip with clear liquid, she figured Duo good as dead. He sent her to earth alone in an unmarked shuttle, from what she could gather from the maternal and frustrating nurse that continually poked her for signs of life. Logic had too much time to circle in on every possible scenario, but her hope faltered as news of the scope of the battle landscape muttered from the tongue of everyone who passed in the hall.
"You're a survivor, sweetie," The nurse had said, while taking another sample of Hilde's blood, measuring Hilde's recovery both in the lab and from shrewd glances. "You'll have to do your bit soon enough. Although, it looks like you're used to that sort of work-put yourself through some such pickle like you did."
Hilde had let her head turn away, blocking the better part of her vision with the colorless white pillow. One eye had a steady view of the orange purple sunset. Earth.
She'd never seen Earth except from space. The sunsets were spectacular, even filtered through the half-closed blinds of her window.
"And you're a brooder. Just like the soldier from upstairs. You're two peas from the same pod," the nurse was uncanny for speaking the truth, and for the first time during her stay, Hilde thought about someone other than Duo Maxwell.
***
He sat by her bed for a while. Feeling oddly like he was in the right place, but the room was different than where he'd spent so many hours sitting before in the same hospital. The table was empty from the vase of constantly-replaced-with-fresh roses. Silence and his own breathing replaced the hiss and pump of the oxygen needed to encourage his Colonel to fill her lungs. And this room faced west. He could watch the day begin with his superior officer, and he could watch it set over the face of the girl.
Hilde.
Curiosity and unsolicited threats from the Chipper Nurse brought him down to this room on the fourth floor, which was regularly on his exiled trek around the facility.
He stood in the doorway, feeling it strangely appropriate for him to find the girl for whose freedom he'd bargained as the same girl who benefited from his blood. Truthfully, he'd spared little thought for her after he had been escorted to Colonel Une and the girl left for her fate off the Moon.
Nichol wouldn't say that he approved of how she'd ended up after her lease on freedom. A relatively healthy color started to stretch across her cheeks, which he observed after stepping closer. She slept with her mouth slightly parted, a comfortable pose free from immediate pain. Small blessings, Nichol supposed, after the injuries she'd sustained according to the chart hooked at the end of her bed.
She'd obviously been engaged in some form of civil disobedience, the sort that gave you whiplash, mobile suit belt burns, shrapnel injuries and concussion.
Like Colonel Une's furniture, Nichol found an identical folding chair, only in Hilde's room he spun it around backward in order to sit and lean his arms against the backrest. He decided, while watching her jaw slowly close, that he didn't care which side she was on: a critical, character defining point that in the past would have signed and sealed his opinion of a person. The "Jane Doe" scrawled where her name belonged, however, was a good sign that when wind of Hilde got around eventually someone with the wrong sort of power and a heavy hand would lock her away. Again.
And if the war went the other way, someone with the wrong sort of power and a heavy hand would lock him away.
His head felt heavy, and, while the streetlights began to fill the corner of the room with light, he knew that his official place was back with the Colonel. Unofficially, his loyalty wavered.
***
She lay silently watching him for some time while he stared at the far wall. He seemed more worn, lines stretched from his eyes and aged him, even from when she saw him last. At first, she wondered if she only saw him because she wanted to and that a good rub at her eyes with her IV-free hand would cast his apparition back into her early morning dreams.
If Duo Maxwell's well being and his mission were foremost in her thoughts, Douglas Nichol endured in a strong second place. Not simply because of the strange connection they seemed to forge on their imprisoned shuttle flight to the Lunar Base, but also because of a certain suspicion that had crossed her mind only too late after they were separated.
She watched him without speaking, hoping to look at Nichol when he was his most unguarded, in order to capture some glimpse of what her father must have looked like.
For a ghost of her imagination, he looked very solid. And alone.
"Tell me." Her voice was thick and she moistened her lips before continuing, "Your father went to the colonies when you were about four."
He stared at her without fully turning his head, as if uncertain if the words were coming from her lips or from someone else. Something about the way connections were zigzagging behind that unabashed stare reminded her of moments she's seen a similar expression reflected back from a mirror.
"Did he ever talk to you about that?" She would have sat up, but found herself so stiff that it was hard to even move her neck to the side in order to see him better.
"My father was killed by the Romafeller Foundation after they learned of his sympathy for the colonies," The statement designed to hide any emotions, "I was nine at the time, and they spared my mother as long as she went into voluntary exile. We did not talk about my father after that."
The dimness of the room only intensified the shroud of unexpected sorrow as Hilde closed her eyes over the feeling. Then she tucked it into under a new concern.
"You don't seem badly hurt, Nichol." She wondered then if keeping his father's name had been a silent rebellion even as disregard for the colonies his father had loved grew in his heart, "Why are you here?"
He leaned forward in the chair so his chin could rest on his crossed arms, the pose served to make him appear significantly younger. "Colonel Une was injured and I was ordered not to leave her side."
"Oh really?" Hilde felt her curiosity piqued, pulling from her memory the few moments she'd shared with Nichol on a prison transport, "Doesn't look like you're following that order very well."
He smirked, then the confidence faltered as the lines of his mouth dropped again, "She's in a coma. I doubt she'll ever wake up. Besides," He added with extra bitterness and sat upright showing the wrinkled disrespect he'd given his uniform recently, "Even if she did, she's got her beloved Treize coming to visit her and he would kick me out again."
Hilde chuckled. "I can understand being rather luckless in that regard." She still smarted over the ease with which Duo Maxwell could abandon her even after giving her levels of intimacy. She would never eat apples again.
His eyes took in the bandages still around her arms and, bashfully demonstrating concern, trailed up to her face, "I must say that you look worse than when I saw you last."
"I found myself on the losing end of a confrontation with the newest mobile dolls ones that . . ."
"Don't tell me." Nichol interrupted, holding up his hands and almost smiling, "I might have to report you." He ran his fingers through his dark hair, pulling at the curls, "Knowing you has created quite a conflict of interest in my life."
His face splintered over questions that she suspected he wanted to ask, and held more than a hint of fear of being broken over them. His lips formed words before he actually spoke them, "So, why are you asking about my father?"
Torn between brashness and insecurity over his reaction, she hesitated. Her only source of information regarding a father she never knew was the soldier sitting by her bed, but at the same time she wondered what cost her truth would take from him.
"Don't tell me." He stumbled over his own words, "I think I can guess . . ." He pinched the bridge of his nose, again betraying some emotion but hiding exactly which way he felt. "I hated the colonies because for a nine year old, they seemed a wretched conflict for him to die defending." He let his shoulders drop into a vulnerable position, "I chose OZ because I wanted to fall in with those people who had the power to stay in control in spite of the colonies."
"Nichol," Hilde started, wanting to reassure him that acting on his emotions hadn't been wrong. That she could understand what he had to have felt. She didn't want to embody his father's betrayal, but she couldn't leave him alone either.
"No, wait." Nichol stopped her, "I know what it is like to love irrationally. Like my father, I can't escape it myself. You must have his insane devotion to those colonies. I suppose, blindness is something that we both have in common."
"I rather think that you've seen to the truth of things," Hilde's heart began to hammer and the monitor matched pace with intonations to publicly betray her reactions, "My mother told me stories, enough that I knew pieces about who my father was, that he had come to the colonies for a only a brief time-but long enough. She never married, you see. She was angry at what life had given her, but resigned to stay strong. Sort of like the colonies."
"She died?" Nichol asked, his politeness masking any judgment.
Hilde nodded, "She was sick, and the medical facilities on most colonies are understaffed and frontier quality at best."
"Hilde, I'm . . . " He reached out then and grabbed her fingers with a fierce squeeze. An unexpected tremble furrowed his brow as he held her hand.
"You don't have to say anything." She wanted to comfort him more than anything, but her energy drained out through her fingers. Colors slipped from her eyesight as the scene settled into degrees of greyness. He turned his chin away over his far shoulder with his jaw so tightly clenched that she could here the bones click. She wondered what her mother would have made of the surly young man, and if Nichol's personality and appearance carried any measure of the man her mother had loved.
"Are you sure?" His comment registered formally, "But the coincidence is uncanny."
"I'll take the coincidences." She wiggled the fingers that he still held, hoping to offer reassurance, "I've always wanted a brother."
The silence that sealed the deliberate change in their relationship lingered until a strange click and static interrupted.
"Lieutenant Nichol, report."
As if in slow motion, he pulled a device free from the straps that held it at his waist and responded as if instinctively, "I'm here. What's the situation?"
"Colonel Une's disappeared from her room."
"What?" Then Hilde heard what real incredulous disbelief sounded like when uttered by her older brother, "How can she be gone?"
"Zero One is missing as well."
The temperature in the room dropped several degrees. Nichol put his hand over Hilde's again and stood, "I'll be back."
"We'll see each other again," Hilde replied, even as he bolted from the room recklessly letting his feet slide all over the polished hospital floors.
***
The oxygen mask had trailed chords and wires over the rumpled bedding. The electronic equipment had beeped and whined of misuse. The vase of roses had been knocked over, except for one long stemmed blossom that had been deliberately replaced on top of the bedside table outlined by the shallow pool of water recently spilled there.
Nichol had taken it all in and knew that Lady Une had been called to space. The disappearance of the Gundam practically sealed the story. He only had to wait to hear the outcome. How she'd saved Treize's life only to lose him in his duel. How she'd surrendered Earth's armies to space. How she'd learned to come to peace on her own.
How he'd been released from his punishment of always staying by her side. How he had never been invited back to serve with her. Lt. Douglas Nichol, in her eyes, was still a traitor.
Neither dismissed nor called to account for himself, and not knowing what else to do, Nichol had stayed at the hospital. He stayed because of Hilde Schbeiker.
When he'd recognized her as she slept in the hospital bed, he'd felt a strange pull of fate's humor. When she'd mentioned his father, the tickle of premonition became stronger. Almost as if their previous interaction had been to prepare them for the truth. To prepare him for addressing issues in his past that had been so far allowed to collect the dust of bitter sentimentality. The indulged sentimentality of a pre-adolescent.
Hilde brought out a different aspect of his personality, one that refreshed and livened him.
"Piss off, if you're going to be that way!" Hilde made to throw the pillow at him, as he wheezed with childish laughter. Her verbal threats continued even as she kept the possible projectile wrapped between her arms, "This is the last time I confide in you, ever."
He felt the emptiness of her threat, but a strange fear of losing the feelings she provided for him made Nichol stop. His insecurity realized the inner strength that made up the ex-rebel pilot. It was a strength he more often imitated by displays of stubbornness.
Her face was flushed, but her health had undeniably returned. With a new peace given to the Earth and the colonies, Hilde and Nichol both had universal if indirect pardons. She was eager to leave and see more of Earth. He wanted to show it to her.
Often, he would tell her where they might start the trip. Going to his childhood home had been a mutually agreed starting point. With persistent badgering and dizzyingly illogical arguments, Hilde had convinced him to take her to the Catalonias, where his mother still lived. Hilde had been appalled that Nichol had not made effort to visit or write his mother after he graduated from the Academy. No matter how dismal a picture he tried to create, Hilde refused to think his mother could be as terrible as Nichol made her out to be.
He remembered a severe sharpness to her features, and long wavy black hair streaked with silver. Nichol remembered the cruel affection as she'd simultaneously embrace her son and in a soft, low-pitched voice recount his every shortcoming and failure.
"I don't know why father loved her," He had admitted, studying the lines in the palm of his hand trusting Hilde to listen without him watching her, "Unless his death changed her as much as it did me."
Hilde had waited while he took a long drink from the glass of water he'd poured for himself from her pitcher, "But if you're willing to go, I would want to be there and act as a buffer, your shield." Her reply, something about his deep-hidden nobility had caused him to blush deeply from his cheekbones and down his neck.
Not unlike the redness that had crossed Hilde's cheeks in her reluctantly pleased frustration. If she were much like her mother, Nichol could understand why his father couldn't resist loving that woman or her home colonies.
He had started to apologize from where he leaned against the wall next to the window which still faced westward onto the setting sun; however, his words were interrupted by an interloper. A young man who barely managed to slide to a stop just outside their room, and, grasping the doorframe, leaned in.
"Hilde! You aren't dead!" A Cheshire grin pressed itself into the folds of his handsome face, and Nichol didn't miss the dazzled response in Hilde's own smile.
"How could I? When you made me promise not to?" Her voice trembled in a manner of pleasure and comfortable delightedness. She curled her arms around the pillow more strongly, as if a touch nervous. As if she were specifically fond of impressing this person.
"I was visiting Quatre when I saw a familiar name on the roster. When Sally described you, I knew it had to be you." He recklessly sat on the side of the bed near to Hilde and with his back to Nichol. An unexpected and long braid twisted down the boy's back until it folded over onto the bed's sheets. "When we sent you away on the shuttle, I didn't know if I would ever see you again."
Nichol couldn't miss the sentiment of those words, like a boy playing at a dangerous game of love. He crossed his arms, waiting for Hilde to remember he was there and listening also.
He had been contemplating the first boy so intently that he didn't realize that another person had entered the room until he hear the release of a safety on a gun.
The accompanying comment was a low threat, "You."
Nichol recognized Heero Yuy; although, the machine-like efficient quality of the Gundam pilot was somewhat muted by the common looking clothes and unruly hair that had been left to grow apparently on its own whim.
He heard Hilde manage to say, "Duo, stop him." and Nichol realized that the other boy had to be the Gundam pilot of Zero Two.
"Why should I?" The first boy, Duo, had come to stand next to Heero Yuy, but turned to Hilde for an explanation, "What is this scummy traitor doing in your room? Is some new covert OZ branch starting trouble again?" Duo chattered and his accusations leaked easily, while Nichol didn't budge from his place against the wall. Heero Yuy had a steady hand, but the gun was still pointed at him. Nichol chose not to take chances in those circumstances.
"No!" Hilde's reply was so aghast Nichol felt a warm comfort that she wasn't going to abandon him. "Duo, he's my brother."
By Jillian Storm
I tried to kill the pain
but only brought more
I lay dying
and I'm pouring crimson regret and betrayal
I'm dying praying bleeding and screaming
am I too lost to be saved
am I too lost?
~Evanescence
***
She dreamed she was in the bottom of a deep boat. The sides curled up and created dark shadows around her, as severe as a coffin. She tried her hands. They were heavy weights. She wondered if she were roped down. Her head, the only part of her that seemed capable of movement, jostled as the boat rocked. Some brilliant white light broke through the sliver of open eyelids and pierced her brain. Her own moaning first assaulted her awakening ears and almost covered the entire conversation taking place around her.
"Where the hell did she come from?"
"Another pilot?"
"Not on the list. But the wounds are consistent."
"She could be the enemy . . . the unidentified shuttle . . . "
"Treat her anyway."
The pause filled with the wheezing of her own lungs, of the circulating air, of the wheels that carried her along.
"It's what Treize-sama wants."
***
He prowled the halls of the Victoria Hospital feeling quite caged. Not that Lieutenant Douglas Nichol had felt free in the path few months. When he wasn't a slave to duty or OZ, he was irreversibly bound to his commanding officer, and, while she slept in a drug-induced coma, he fought a restless lack of direction. He let the hallways direct him then, in endless patrols of right turns, perfectly aligned North to South, East and West.
He had been walking the halls of Barge when the battle began. His first thought had be a reflexive fury that his wings had been clipped. After they discovered Colonel Une bleeding on the floor of the control room on the Moon, Nichol had been told to continue his duties as assigned to him by Une: to stay by her side and out of trouble. Even if to remain with her meant abandoning death with his fellow soldiers and taking the Colonel back to Earth.
A coldness rippled through his thoughts, one that he was becoming quite familiar with, started to work its way up his neck. Stretching the skin on his cheekbones and making his smile feel tight. Of course, he could still smile and more easily than before and at any situation no matter how sad, ironic, or terrible. Powerfully amused.
He was smiling just then, because he'd been asked to stand down from his post at Colonel Une's door. Not that Nichol had been so surprised that Lord Treize was coming to see his Lady. The visits were routine, as regular as Une's heartbeat of late. Her proximity gave Nichol bitter hope. Treize brought with him the relief of failure. Reminded of his shortcomings, reminded of his place, Nichol decided to continue following the only path before him and stretch his legs.
He used to fly. His skills were above par at Victoria and secured him the duty of evaluating, or rather sifting through, new recruits to OZ. Days were spent with the OZ hopefuls, evenings were spent with his fellow officers complaining about the lack of talent, but--now and again--a bright sport would achieve scores beyond his peers. Nichol had to admit it wasn't hard on days like those to point out the good ones. Those same good candidates were all piloting their own crafts, ready to die, at Lord Kushranada's command. Nichol kept up with the bitter smile, it felt appropriate.
"Giving blood again, Lieutenant?"
He recognized the voice of the Chipper Nurse. Rather ordinary, but the sort of woman that got her way both with patients and men. She gave out orders as if they were requests, but most definitely disobedience would not be tolerated. He pitied her husband.
"Not that bored yet, ma'am," Nichol stopped a moment, facing the west where the sun was low enough to make him squint. "Maybe if you put me on salary, I'd feel up to it?"
"Ha. Ha." Her tone was humorless, but her expression didn't make him feel any immediate danger. "Why aren't you with your lady?"
"Pardon?" Nichol grimaced nearly biting his tongue, "She's hardly mine."
"Maybe not, but you're never so sour about her when you think no one's looking." Chipper Nurse looked almost sympathetic, "We need to find you a nice girl, Lieutenant. How old are you? Twenty-five or so?"
"Something like that . . ." Nichol shrugged, refusing to admit he was younger. His mother had always commented on how quickly he grew, and, since she was a very distant relation to unimportant aristocrats, he'd learned the best way to endure any social event was to remain silent and aloof. Indifference became his tool and crutch.
"We've got a cute little pilot on the fourth floor. No one visits her. And, we've given her enough of your blood that she might owe you a favor or two . . ." Chipper Nurse winked in such a way that Nichol felt certain this very conversation had been brewing conspiratorially in her thoughts for quite some time.
He wasn't interested. "I'm not interested."
"You're a good boy, Lieutenant." Chipper Nurse arranged the front of her uniform. She wore white that looked like it had seen a few too many cycles in the wash but starched stiff for another thankless day, "Too many good boys are going to die."
"Not this one." The floor felt so solid under his feet that he might never pick up his feet again. "I'm grounded."
"We're going to need some good boys to survive." She tilted her head to one side, the white streaked blonde of her hair coming loose from the high bun and bobby pins. Nichol wondered if she had any 'good boys' of her own. "Someone's going to have to pick up the pieces. Always pieces left over after something like this. We're on the precipice."
Nichol had to agree, "Regular Humpty Dumpties all of us."
***
Hilde had too much time to think. She thought about all the planning that had gone into infiltrating Libra, and how recklessly her mission had seemed to play out. She remembered that once she'd fallen into the deepest moment of frustration, finally begging for help, she had heard his voice. She reflected on how she'd practically done everything to impress Duo Maxwell.
When she felt her most optimistic, she knew the information on Libra was every bit as valuable as she had hoped. Duo would succeed and then come to find her.
More often, as she stared at the IV hooked up to her left arm and watched it endlessly drip with clear liquid, she figured Duo good as dead. He sent her to earth alone in an unmarked shuttle, from what she could gather from the maternal and frustrating nurse that continually poked her for signs of life. Logic had too much time to circle in on every possible scenario, but her hope faltered as news of the scope of the battle landscape muttered from the tongue of everyone who passed in the hall.
"You're a survivor, sweetie," The nurse had said, while taking another sample of Hilde's blood, measuring Hilde's recovery both in the lab and from shrewd glances. "You'll have to do your bit soon enough. Although, it looks like you're used to that sort of work-put yourself through some such pickle like you did."
Hilde had let her head turn away, blocking the better part of her vision with the colorless white pillow. One eye had a steady view of the orange purple sunset. Earth.
She'd never seen Earth except from space. The sunsets were spectacular, even filtered through the half-closed blinds of her window.
"And you're a brooder. Just like the soldier from upstairs. You're two peas from the same pod," the nurse was uncanny for speaking the truth, and for the first time during her stay, Hilde thought about someone other than Duo Maxwell.
***
He sat by her bed for a while. Feeling oddly like he was in the right place, but the room was different than where he'd spent so many hours sitting before in the same hospital. The table was empty from the vase of constantly-replaced-with-fresh roses. Silence and his own breathing replaced the hiss and pump of the oxygen needed to encourage his Colonel to fill her lungs. And this room faced west. He could watch the day begin with his superior officer, and he could watch it set over the face of the girl.
Hilde.
Curiosity and unsolicited threats from the Chipper Nurse brought him down to this room on the fourth floor, which was regularly on his exiled trek around the facility.
He stood in the doorway, feeling it strangely appropriate for him to find the girl for whose freedom he'd bargained as the same girl who benefited from his blood. Truthfully, he'd spared little thought for her after he had been escorted to Colonel Une and the girl left for her fate off the Moon.
Nichol wouldn't say that he approved of how she'd ended up after her lease on freedom. A relatively healthy color started to stretch across her cheeks, which he observed after stepping closer. She slept with her mouth slightly parted, a comfortable pose free from immediate pain. Small blessings, Nichol supposed, after the injuries she'd sustained according to the chart hooked at the end of her bed.
She'd obviously been engaged in some form of civil disobedience, the sort that gave you whiplash, mobile suit belt burns, shrapnel injuries and concussion.
Like Colonel Une's furniture, Nichol found an identical folding chair, only in Hilde's room he spun it around backward in order to sit and lean his arms against the backrest. He decided, while watching her jaw slowly close, that he didn't care which side she was on: a critical, character defining point that in the past would have signed and sealed his opinion of a person. The "Jane Doe" scrawled where her name belonged, however, was a good sign that when wind of Hilde got around eventually someone with the wrong sort of power and a heavy hand would lock her away. Again.
And if the war went the other way, someone with the wrong sort of power and a heavy hand would lock him away.
His head felt heavy, and, while the streetlights began to fill the corner of the room with light, he knew that his official place was back with the Colonel. Unofficially, his loyalty wavered.
***
She lay silently watching him for some time while he stared at the far wall. He seemed more worn, lines stretched from his eyes and aged him, even from when she saw him last. At first, she wondered if she only saw him because she wanted to and that a good rub at her eyes with her IV-free hand would cast his apparition back into her early morning dreams.
If Duo Maxwell's well being and his mission were foremost in her thoughts, Douglas Nichol endured in a strong second place. Not simply because of the strange connection they seemed to forge on their imprisoned shuttle flight to the Lunar Base, but also because of a certain suspicion that had crossed her mind only too late after they were separated.
She watched him without speaking, hoping to look at Nichol when he was his most unguarded, in order to capture some glimpse of what her father must have looked like.
For a ghost of her imagination, he looked very solid. And alone.
"Tell me." Her voice was thick and she moistened her lips before continuing, "Your father went to the colonies when you were about four."
He stared at her without fully turning his head, as if uncertain if the words were coming from her lips or from someone else. Something about the way connections were zigzagging behind that unabashed stare reminded her of moments she's seen a similar expression reflected back from a mirror.
"Did he ever talk to you about that?" She would have sat up, but found herself so stiff that it was hard to even move her neck to the side in order to see him better.
"My father was killed by the Romafeller Foundation after they learned of his sympathy for the colonies," The statement designed to hide any emotions, "I was nine at the time, and they spared my mother as long as she went into voluntary exile. We did not talk about my father after that."
The dimness of the room only intensified the shroud of unexpected sorrow as Hilde closed her eyes over the feeling. Then she tucked it into under a new concern.
"You don't seem badly hurt, Nichol." She wondered then if keeping his father's name had been a silent rebellion even as disregard for the colonies his father had loved grew in his heart, "Why are you here?"
He leaned forward in the chair so his chin could rest on his crossed arms, the pose served to make him appear significantly younger. "Colonel Une was injured and I was ordered not to leave her side."
"Oh really?" Hilde felt her curiosity piqued, pulling from her memory the few moments she'd shared with Nichol on a prison transport, "Doesn't look like you're following that order very well."
He smirked, then the confidence faltered as the lines of his mouth dropped again, "She's in a coma. I doubt she'll ever wake up. Besides," He added with extra bitterness and sat upright showing the wrinkled disrespect he'd given his uniform recently, "Even if she did, she's got her beloved Treize coming to visit her and he would kick me out again."
Hilde chuckled. "I can understand being rather luckless in that regard." She still smarted over the ease with which Duo Maxwell could abandon her even after giving her levels of intimacy. She would never eat apples again.
His eyes took in the bandages still around her arms and, bashfully demonstrating concern, trailed up to her face, "I must say that you look worse than when I saw you last."
"I found myself on the losing end of a confrontation with the newest mobile dolls ones that . . ."
"Don't tell me." Nichol interrupted, holding up his hands and almost smiling, "I might have to report you." He ran his fingers through his dark hair, pulling at the curls, "Knowing you has created quite a conflict of interest in my life."
His face splintered over questions that she suspected he wanted to ask, and held more than a hint of fear of being broken over them. His lips formed words before he actually spoke them, "So, why are you asking about my father?"
Torn between brashness and insecurity over his reaction, she hesitated. Her only source of information regarding a father she never knew was the soldier sitting by her bed, but at the same time she wondered what cost her truth would take from him.
"Don't tell me." He stumbled over his own words, "I think I can guess . . ." He pinched the bridge of his nose, again betraying some emotion but hiding exactly which way he felt. "I hated the colonies because for a nine year old, they seemed a wretched conflict for him to die defending." He let his shoulders drop into a vulnerable position, "I chose OZ because I wanted to fall in with those people who had the power to stay in control in spite of the colonies."
"Nichol," Hilde started, wanting to reassure him that acting on his emotions hadn't been wrong. That she could understand what he had to have felt. She didn't want to embody his father's betrayal, but she couldn't leave him alone either.
"No, wait." Nichol stopped her, "I know what it is like to love irrationally. Like my father, I can't escape it myself. You must have his insane devotion to those colonies. I suppose, blindness is something that we both have in common."
"I rather think that you've seen to the truth of things," Hilde's heart began to hammer and the monitor matched pace with intonations to publicly betray her reactions, "My mother told me stories, enough that I knew pieces about who my father was, that he had come to the colonies for a only a brief time-but long enough. She never married, you see. She was angry at what life had given her, but resigned to stay strong. Sort of like the colonies."
"She died?" Nichol asked, his politeness masking any judgment.
Hilde nodded, "She was sick, and the medical facilities on most colonies are understaffed and frontier quality at best."
"Hilde, I'm . . . " He reached out then and grabbed her fingers with a fierce squeeze. An unexpected tremble furrowed his brow as he held her hand.
"You don't have to say anything." She wanted to comfort him more than anything, but her energy drained out through her fingers. Colors slipped from her eyesight as the scene settled into degrees of greyness. He turned his chin away over his far shoulder with his jaw so tightly clenched that she could here the bones click. She wondered what her mother would have made of the surly young man, and if Nichol's personality and appearance carried any measure of the man her mother had loved.
"Are you sure?" His comment registered formally, "But the coincidence is uncanny."
"I'll take the coincidences." She wiggled the fingers that he still held, hoping to offer reassurance, "I've always wanted a brother."
The silence that sealed the deliberate change in their relationship lingered until a strange click and static interrupted.
"Lieutenant Nichol, report."
As if in slow motion, he pulled a device free from the straps that held it at his waist and responded as if instinctively, "I'm here. What's the situation?"
"Colonel Une's disappeared from her room."
"What?" Then Hilde heard what real incredulous disbelief sounded like when uttered by her older brother, "How can she be gone?"
"Zero One is missing as well."
The temperature in the room dropped several degrees. Nichol put his hand over Hilde's again and stood, "I'll be back."
"We'll see each other again," Hilde replied, even as he bolted from the room recklessly letting his feet slide all over the polished hospital floors.
***
The oxygen mask had trailed chords and wires over the rumpled bedding. The electronic equipment had beeped and whined of misuse. The vase of roses had been knocked over, except for one long stemmed blossom that had been deliberately replaced on top of the bedside table outlined by the shallow pool of water recently spilled there.
Nichol had taken it all in and knew that Lady Une had been called to space. The disappearance of the Gundam practically sealed the story. He only had to wait to hear the outcome. How she'd saved Treize's life only to lose him in his duel. How she'd surrendered Earth's armies to space. How she'd learned to come to peace on her own.
How he'd been released from his punishment of always staying by her side. How he had never been invited back to serve with her. Lt. Douglas Nichol, in her eyes, was still a traitor.
Neither dismissed nor called to account for himself, and not knowing what else to do, Nichol had stayed at the hospital. He stayed because of Hilde Schbeiker.
When he'd recognized her as she slept in the hospital bed, he'd felt a strange pull of fate's humor. When she'd mentioned his father, the tickle of premonition became stronger. Almost as if their previous interaction had been to prepare them for the truth. To prepare him for addressing issues in his past that had been so far allowed to collect the dust of bitter sentimentality. The indulged sentimentality of a pre-adolescent.
Hilde brought out a different aspect of his personality, one that refreshed and livened him.
"Piss off, if you're going to be that way!" Hilde made to throw the pillow at him, as he wheezed with childish laughter. Her verbal threats continued even as she kept the possible projectile wrapped between her arms, "This is the last time I confide in you, ever."
He felt the emptiness of her threat, but a strange fear of losing the feelings she provided for him made Nichol stop. His insecurity realized the inner strength that made up the ex-rebel pilot. It was a strength he more often imitated by displays of stubbornness.
Her face was flushed, but her health had undeniably returned. With a new peace given to the Earth and the colonies, Hilde and Nichol both had universal if indirect pardons. She was eager to leave and see more of Earth. He wanted to show it to her.
Often, he would tell her where they might start the trip. Going to his childhood home had been a mutually agreed starting point. With persistent badgering and dizzyingly illogical arguments, Hilde had convinced him to take her to the Catalonias, where his mother still lived. Hilde had been appalled that Nichol had not made effort to visit or write his mother after he graduated from the Academy. No matter how dismal a picture he tried to create, Hilde refused to think his mother could be as terrible as Nichol made her out to be.
He remembered a severe sharpness to her features, and long wavy black hair streaked with silver. Nichol remembered the cruel affection as she'd simultaneously embrace her son and in a soft, low-pitched voice recount his every shortcoming and failure.
"I don't know why father loved her," He had admitted, studying the lines in the palm of his hand trusting Hilde to listen without him watching her, "Unless his death changed her as much as it did me."
Hilde had waited while he took a long drink from the glass of water he'd poured for himself from her pitcher, "But if you're willing to go, I would want to be there and act as a buffer, your shield." Her reply, something about his deep-hidden nobility had caused him to blush deeply from his cheekbones and down his neck.
Not unlike the redness that had crossed Hilde's cheeks in her reluctantly pleased frustration. If she were much like her mother, Nichol could understand why his father couldn't resist loving that woman or her home colonies.
He had started to apologize from where he leaned against the wall next to the window which still faced westward onto the setting sun; however, his words were interrupted by an interloper. A young man who barely managed to slide to a stop just outside their room, and, grasping the doorframe, leaned in.
"Hilde! You aren't dead!" A Cheshire grin pressed itself into the folds of his handsome face, and Nichol didn't miss the dazzled response in Hilde's own smile.
"How could I? When you made me promise not to?" Her voice trembled in a manner of pleasure and comfortable delightedness. She curled her arms around the pillow more strongly, as if a touch nervous. As if she were specifically fond of impressing this person.
"I was visiting Quatre when I saw a familiar name on the roster. When Sally described you, I knew it had to be you." He recklessly sat on the side of the bed near to Hilde and with his back to Nichol. An unexpected and long braid twisted down the boy's back until it folded over onto the bed's sheets. "When we sent you away on the shuttle, I didn't know if I would ever see you again."
Nichol couldn't miss the sentiment of those words, like a boy playing at a dangerous game of love. He crossed his arms, waiting for Hilde to remember he was there and listening also.
He had been contemplating the first boy so intently that he didn't realize that another person had entered the room until he hear the release of a safety on a gun.
The accompanying comment was a low threat, "You."
Nichol recognized Heero Yuy; although, the machine-like efficient quality of the Gundam pilot was somewhat muted by the common looking clothes and unruly hair that had been left to grow apparently on its own whim.
He heard Hilde manage to say, "Duo, stop him." and Nichol realized that the other boy had to be the Gundam pilot of Zero Two.
"Why should I?" The first boy, Duo, had come to stand next to Heero Yuy, but turned to Hilde for an explanation, "What is this scummy traitor doing in your room? Is some new covert OZ branch starting trouble again?" Duo chattered and his accusations leaked easily, while Nichol didn't budge from his place against the wall. Heero Yuy had a steady hand, but the gun was still pointed at him. Nichol chose not to take chances in those circumstances.
"No!" Hilde's reply was so aghast Nichol felt a warm comfort that she wasn't going to abandon him. "Duo, he's my brother."
