Hereafter

Chapter 17

March Madness Prompt #12

"Character Says a Signature Line"

Heero's legs felt like rubber, but he rose as soon as the work crews started cheering. His whole body ached, echoing the dull throbbing in his heart. The buzzing feeling in his head had returned and he could feel it ratcheting, making it difficult to think. He knew he was overwhelmed. He knew he needed to sit longer in silence. He also knew he could not.

Something had happened.

Noin grabbed his arm. Strength seemed to flow into him from her grip. Heero met her eyes. The compassion in her gaze caused his insides to tremble, but a warmth seeped into him too, and when it did, he found that he could walk.

They followed the sounds of the cheers. A ring of workers blocked their view, but as they approached, Trowa burst from their midst, a wide smile brightening his face.

That smile almost tore Heero in two. He could not remember ever seeing Trowa smile like that. It was instantly transformative, the way sunlight banished shadow.

"We've got Dorothy and Quatre!" Trowa announced.

Heero's heart fluttered. It wasn't Relena. But even so, the small tendril of warmth in his heart did not abate. His friends were alive.

The thought almost crushed him. For the first time, he realized that it could have been worse, that it should have been worse. He could have been standing on that hill alone. It could so very easily have just been he who survived today. Trowa did not have to come out to see him, intent on giving Heero a jacket for a job he had not wanted. Noin and all the others—even Hilde, whom he did not know well—could have died in that basement together. He could have lost more than just Relena. He could have lost…

The enormity of it almost buckled him, but Trowa clasped his arm, bright smile blazing, and pointed.

Two stretchers were being pulled out of a tunnel. Heero could see Quatre laid out on one, the bright locks of his hair barely visible it was so caked in dust. He seemed to be awake. His face was scrunched with pain.

Dorothy appeared next, also laid out on a stretcher, but in much better shape by appearances. Her body was filthy and bruised, her long blonde hair like the tendrils of a dirty mop, but she had strength. She kept trying to sit up and the workmen kept forcing her back down by placing hands on her shoulders and whispering to her to remain still.

"Is he okay?" Dorothy demanded, ignoring their instructions. "Quatre? Quatre can you hear me? You'd better be okay!"

Heero wondered. Quatre's lower half had been trapped under tons of rock for hours. A sheet covered the stretcher, obscuring the condition of Quatre's body, but Heero did not like the shape his legs made under the sheet.

Trowa raised his voice, projecting toward Dorothy. "Stay still, Dorothy. You're both going to the hospital. Please just cooperate."

"Trowa…" Quatre gasped. "Is that Trowa I hear?"

"Yeah," Trowa said. "Listen, Quatre. Your legs were crushed in the collapse, but the medical crews seem optimistic. The pain you're in is a good sign. You're going to the hospital for orthopedic surgery."

"In that case," Quatre gasped. "I'm going to ask if they can add an inch."

"Don't be stupid!" Dorothy snapped. "If anything, your bones will be shortened." Her voice rose to a triumphant note. "I will be taller!"

"Okay," Quatre said. "Then will you go to lunch with me? I need…" He paused, face seizing in pain, "something to look forward to."

"Fine," Dorothy snapped. "If you live through surgery, I'll eat lunch with you."

Quatre smiled, though his face was still tight, features contracted in a permanent wince. "That's… all I wanted to hear."

An ambulance pulled up on the nearby street. The workers again lifted the stretchers and loaded them into the ambulance. Heero remained on the hill beside Trowa and Noin. There would not be room for them in the ambulance even if they wanted to go, and it sounded like Quatre was going to be in surgery for hours.

"Will he walk again?" Noin asked in a hushed whisper.

"The doctor I talked to said if he could feel anything, it was a good sign," said Trowa. "It might be a long road, but they seemed hopeful that he would make a recovery."

"They'll be eating hospital cafeteria food for lunch," Noin surmised. "Still, I'm glad."

Just before the ambulance doors closed, Heero saw Dorothy reach for Quatre's hand. Her index finger entwined with his pinky and held fast. Medical personnel closed the double doors. The ambulance began to pull away, emergency lights flashing.

Heero turned back to the pile of rubble. The sun had turned the western horizon a dingy reddish gold. The shadows had lengthened, and the air was bitingly cold. Not long from now the first stars would begin to appear in a bruised sky. Lights would have to be set up for the crews to keep digging. But how long—realistically—could the search for the living go on? Was it possible that Relena would never be found, that her body would be permanently entombed in a mass grave? He didn't want to think of it. He hated imagining her corpse. But if there was nothing to grieve over, nothing to bury…

Heero then glanced toward the street. Multiple news vans were parked a short distance from the scene. He could see a half dozen reporters standing with their backs to the disaster zone, speaking solemnly into microphones. He could even see Katie Kline, her ringlets bouncing as she gestured toward the retreating ambulance and then to the mountain of rubble where Relena…

"Someone needs to say something," Noin whispered. "We need to make a statement about Relena… what all of this means for Unification."

"Mission accepted," Heero said.

Trowa and Noin both stared at him in surprise.