There was a thump.
Or Heero thought there had been a thump.
He lay on the bed in a stupor; face down with his head buried in his pillow. He listened carefully, but all he heard was the now light rain, occasional claps of distant thunder, and Relena's quiet but steady breathing beside him. Her hand rested comfortably in the small of his back and she murmured incoherently when he shifted.
He didn't remember when she had come to bed. In fact, he didn't remember getting in bed himself: He certainly hadn't tucked himself beneath the blankets. Last thing he remembered was Milliardo leaving the room what felt like days ago, after a tense conversation about danger and conspiracy theory, and for the briefest moment he considered that it all must have been a strange dream borne of stress and exhaustion.
But the half-inebriated spinning of his head told him that it all had been very real.
It also told him that he needed water.
With a groan, Heero pushed the blankets away, clumsily removed Relena's hand from his back, and began the laborious process of getting to his feet. One foot on the floor. Both feet on the floor. Last time he'd attempted walking he'd been stumbling. He hoped that now might be different.
Determined to be somewhat graceful, Heero made his way slowly to the sink, one hand on his forehead. He managed not to stagger, but his body felt sluggish and unresponsive. Whatever Milliardo had given him had been too strong and too much on an otherwise empty stomach. He would have to make a note to practice more caution in future.
Two full and greedily imbibed glasses of water later, Heero leaned against the sink and sighed, his head clearer. He glanced at Relena and wondered if she'd spoken with Noin about the same things that Milliardo and he had spoken of. He wondered if Relena had begun to put together the seemingly disconnected pieces of this strange and altogether insane puzzle.
And then there came another thump.
Heero was certain of it this time. He was too far away from the window to mistake it for thunder, rain, or outside noise of any kind. He was too awake to believe he had imagined it. He'd been watching Relena: She hadn't moved. It couldn't have been her.
Methodically, he made his way through the suite, one hand always on the wall to steady against leftover dizziness. He checked the fixtures in the bathroom, not that they would have produced such a dense sound, and he opened all of the closet doors, entertaining the thought that something may have fallen down. But the suite remained unchanged, and Heero's stomach gave a sick lurch.
The sound had come from the hallway.
"Mmm," he heard Relena grumble. "Come back to bed..."
And then he found himself before the door, staring, and arguing internally: The fully rational part of his mind insisted that he was in a very public place, that thumps, crashes, and various odd noises were common and even to be expected here, and as a result of Relena's political station there always were and had always been two armed servicemen outside of the door waiting to escort her about. But the slightly drunk part of his brain was still caught up in Milliardo's conspiracy. Something fishy is going on, he'd said.
Nothing seemed inherently out of place about the door. The security lock was fastened, the deadbolt engaged. A thin line of yellow-orange light filtered in from beneath, lighting the gray carpet and the tips of Heero's bare toes. Nothing was obscuring that. Heero peeked briefly out of the eyehole and into the hallway, but reeled at the magnification. He swore at his brain's inability to focus on the fisheye field of view and stumbled slightly backward, groping until his hand found the wall again.
Heero leaned back against the hard and unmoving surface, one hand bracing him while the other rubbed at his forehead and eyes. There had seemed to be nothing amiss, but the calculated part of him couldn't be satisfied by what his presently distorted senses had seen.
Eventually the room stopped spinning, and Heero made his way back to the door, angrier now than he felt cautious. All he truly wanted to do was go lay back down beside his wife and sleep until he had sobered.
With effort, he unfastened the eyebolt and unlocked the deadbolt, and he tentatively opened the door.
Bright light poured over him, and he squinted and raised his arm to shield against it. He wasn't certain what he'd been expecting. He knew that the hallway would be many times brighter than the moonlit suite.
And then his brain caught up to his eyes.
There was a man standing to the right of the door.
It wasn't the guard he'd seen there earlier.
Heero stared at him dumbly, his mind and his body all but unresponsive. He wondered if there had been a shift change, perhaps the guard who'd been there earlier had gone to break.
For the briefest moment the man stared back at Heero as if startled. But then his expression went grave, and in a low, dangerous voice he said, "I'm sorry, sir."
It wasn't until Heero felt a hard punch in his right side, right in the ribs, that his body snapped back to attention. Winded and without conscious thought his instincts and adrenaline kicked in. It took every ounce of coordination he could muster, but Heero managed to grab the side of his assailant's head like a basketball and slam it hard enough into the doorframe that blood remained on the paint. And then Heero staggered breathlessly backward. He stared, dumbfounded by his body's ability to react and terrified by the man now lying unconscious—dead?—on the floor.
"What was that?"
He rounded on Relena at once. His eyes couldn't adjust to the darkness. He felt panicked. His heart was beating so hard in his chest that he felt it might burst. He stammered a response that wouldn't come out.
And then Relena seemed to realize what had happened.
As she rushed toward him, Heero poked his head back out and into the hallway. The two guards who had once been stationed at the door were now on the floor, blood pooling around their heads. They were not moving.
Wide eyed, Heero stared back at the man on the floor, and his panic multiplied. He wore a military uniform. A pistol was holstered on his hip.
"Oh god," Heero uttered breathlessly. "It was an assassination..."
Relena grasped at his arms, terrified. "What's going on? Heero, what happened here? What happened to-"
"We have to go."
And then Heero bent, retrieved the soldier's pistol in one hand and grasped Relena's wrist roughly in the other, and pulled her from the room.
They crept along quietly, partly of panic and partly because Heero still felt as though he might topple over at any minute. He kept his back pressed against the wall, waiting and listening, making slow progress toward the elevator. And then he heard it.
A ding.
"What's going-"
"Shut up, Relena!" Heero growled in a half whisper. He was straining to hear, straining to watch. His eyes locked on the elevator door. A green light appeared.
"Run!" Heero cried. "The stairs!"
Heero yanked Relena's wrist the opposite direction and she bolted ahead of him as if propelled by slingshot. Heero hesitated for a fraction of a second, just long enough for the elevator doors to open an inch. He saw military uniforms. A force of men began pouring out of the doors. They carried guns.
Clutching at his side, Heero dashed the opposite direction. His legs would not move the way he wanted them to. Twice he stumbled and only kept his feet thanks to scrambling from his hands. Relena made the entrance to the stairs and had turned, was watching him advance, her eyes as wide as dinner plates and her face as white as china. She must have seen the men. There was no way she could have missed them.
Heero was nearly there when they began to yell.
And then the pursuit was on in earnest.
Relena jumped out of the way just as Heero barreled through the door leading to the staircase, an old-fashioned split-level with metal railings and plenty of space for an unfortunate fall between flights. Relena followed Heero into the stairwell, but Heero had stopped as soon as he'd entered. He heard people on the stairs below.
He cocked the gun and looked to his terrified wife. "We've got to make it to Howard, or Zechs, or someone, and we've got to do it fast," he whispered purposefully, and his eyes darted back to the staircase below. He could see the figures of the men coming up below their feet. They were moving methodically, checking the doors on each landing before advancing upward. They moved in tight formation. "Where are their rooms?"
"Four floors down," Relena replied in a tremulous whisper. It sounded as if she were about to cry. "Are you okay?"
Heero ignored her. "You follow me as close as you can and if things look ugly you run for it. Don't look back and no matter what happens, don't stop for me."
Heero's words had come out with far more bravado than he felt. He didn't remember ever being so thoroughly winded by such a short sprint before, and was uncertain whether he was out of shape or if there was too much alcohol in his system for such strenuous activity. His hands were trembling. All that seemed to be sustaining him was adrenaline and the desire—the need—to protect Relena. Even with doubts in mind, Heero made his way as quickly as he could down the stairs into imminent danger.
A four-man group was rushing up the flight below them, and though Heero wanted desperately to take aim with the pistol, his hands would not steady enough to allow for it. In a split second, he made the decision to rush them. In one fluid motion he clicked the safety on the gun and jammed it into the back of his pajamas, hoping the elastic would hold. He grasped the upper railing, threw his legs between the descending staircases and toppled, bare feet first, into the fray.
By the way the men reacted, they hadn't seen him coming. He'd caught one man with a flailing and wholly clumsy foot to the face on his way in that sent the soldier barreling down the stairs to land in an unconscious heap at the bottom. Then, Heero punched one of them hard enough to stagger him before the other two realized what was happening. Having gained his balance on the steps, a sloppy kick meant for the chest caught the third soldier in the groin and sent him sprawling. Heero did not stop to consider how sluggish his legs were moving. He'd executed that move a hundred times before. It had never once landed so low.
By the time he'd engaged the fourth soldier, the first two were recovering, and the third was looking as if he might get to his feet. Heero knew that the element of surprise was all that had given him the upper hand. He'd never be able to get it back, considering the shape he was in.
Quite suddenly, Heero jammed his flat palm upward and into the fourth soldier's nose, and watched him stumble disoriented into the wall while clutching his now profusely bleeding face. Then Heero grasped the handle of the pistol and drew it forth.
"Relena!" He roared, and she came rushing down to his side. "Ears!"
It was all he had to say. She clasped her hands over her ears, ducked behind him, and Heero shot. He didn't wait around long enough to determine whether or not he'd hit the mark.
"Down!"
His instinct was to push Relena along before him, keeping her at a quick enough pace to outmatch the pursuers, but Heero found that this wasn't necessary. He, himself, couldn't keep up with her.
The third flight of stairs down and Heero realized that he was panting. His forehead was sweaty. His shirt was sticking to his chest and back. When he reached the landing of the fourth flight he felt very slightly faint. He peeked surreptitiously through the window into that floor's corridor. Men in military uniforms had swarmed the place, were pounding on every door, examining every corner.
"Three more!" Relena shouted.
Heero aimed down the stairwell as best he could and fired blindly into the trio soldiers. He could hear them coming from all sides, above and below. He didn't want to be stuck in the stairwell any more.
It was by Relena's good grace that Heero kept moving. If he was doing the shooting, she was doing the advancing, her hand tightly clutching his free wrist. Down they went: two more flights of stairs. And then Heero wasn't in the stairwell any more. Relena had pulled him roughly through the door, and he stumbled. Disoriented, Heero pumped his feet along as she dragged him through the corridor. People had begun peeking out of their rooms curiously, and only half aware of what he was doing, Heero worked to conceal the gun. There could be no panic. He hoped they hadn't heard the shots.
Halfway down the way, Relena stopped and began pounding on a door. More people poked their heads into the hallway.
Heero glanced up and down the corridor nervously. Perhaps it was his imagination, but he could still hear the soldiers scrambling. There was commotion on the floor above. He could have sworn he heard the dinging of an elevator bell.
Relena continued for what felt like an eternity to pound on the door until at last it opened a crack, and Noin's wary eyes peered out. And then the door was open, Relena dove inside, and Heero staggered behind her clumsily enough that he landed on the floor.
"What's going on?" Noin cried. "I thought I heard gunshots."
"Barricade the door!" Relena replied. She was well and fully sobbing by now.
When Heero looked up, Milliardo was standing above him, looking in no way as friendly as he had hours ago. Heero dragged himself on hands and knees away from the door, and once he'd moved, Milliardo sprang to action, pulling furniture and luggage and every available movable implement toward the door whilst Noin helped Relena to sit.
"Relena, calm down," Noin cooed. "What's happening? What's going on?"
But Relena couldn't force a coherent word out of her mouth. She was sobbing too hard. So Noin looked at Heero, but he, too, was at a loss. His mind wouldn't focus. His body felt so tired.
"Heero, talk to me!" Noin shouted. "Did you shoot at someone? Where'd you get a gun?"
But he couldn't answer. Reality had hit. He'd practically crushed that man's skull on the doorframe. He'd shot at people. Real, human people. He could've hit someone, could've killed someone, and he'd vowed never to kill again. Heero felt sick. He reeled and toppled, his forehead suddenly pressed against the floor. He was so dizzy. He wanted to throw up. He grasped at his chest absently.
"Heero!" Milliardo roared. But Heero did not move. His mind was spinning.
"Heero?" Noin had gotten to her feet by then, and she stood behind Milliardo with a face full of fear.
Heero slid the gun out from beneath him, and Milliardo scooped it up, examined it. "They… Killed the guards," Heero panted. "Attacked me. Chased us. Armed. Soldiers. I think... Assassination..." He choked on the last word, the bile rising in his throat. The room had started spinning again, and all Heero could hear was ringing in his ears and the distinctly raspy sound of his heavy breathing. All he could feel was tightness in his chest, a dull but radiating ache where he'd been punched. He groped weakly at the pain. "I can't breathe," he gasped. "I can't breathe."
The room went silent for a moment that felt like an age, the moment at which Noin, Milliardo, and Relena must have realized that something was truly wrong. Heero was only dimly aware of the comings and goings of noise, but he distinctly heard Relena crying from what sounded like miles away. He heard Milliardo swear.
"Give me the gun!" Noin shouted, "I'll watch the door!"
Then Heero felt hands, cold, strong, and deft, which handled his aching body with tender purpose. He knew it was Milliardo only by virtue of a steady stream of colorful swearing spilling forth in his voice. And then Heero was on his back, staring dazedly at the ceiling. It was spinning, dancing, shimmering like rising heat above a flame. It was all he could focus on. It mesmerized him.
"What happened?" Milliardo demanded. He must've been talking to Relena, as Heero could hear her stammering in the distance. Everything sounded to Heero as though he'd been put in a wide metal tunnel. "Relena, what happened?"
A pounding came at the door. Many voices shouted words that Heero couldn't understand. He heard the clicking of the gun.
"I'm armed!" Noin shouted. "You stay outside that door if you know what's good for you!"
Her voice was fading away. Everything seemed to be fading away. All Heero wanted to do was sleep. All he'd ever wanted to do was sleep. His body felt warm. The heat enveloped him.
"Heero!" Relena cried suddenly.
"Oh no you don't, you little bastard..."
A firm backhand brought Heero back so suddenly that he jerked upward, sitting almost fully erect, eyes wide and all-seeing. His hands had found their way back to his chest. He sat that way long enough to find Noin, her back to him and down on one knee, the gun in her hand pointed at the door. Then Heero felt himself slumping. His muscles couldn't hold his own weight.
"Don't hit him!" Relena sobbed.
Milliardo grabbed the collar of Heero's nightshirt roughly, holding him upright. He was inches away, so close that Heero could feel his breath on his face.
"Wake up!"
Heero wanted to say something but he didn't know what. He felt he needed to explain, to apologize. All he could muster was a repeated, "I… I… I… " that sounded wholly foreign to his own ears.
Relena sobbed.
The pounding at the door continued more forcefully. The men's voices persisted.
Milliardo shook him until he snapped to focus. Heero recognized the look in Milliardo's deep blue eyes as genuine fear, such as Heero hadn't seen in years, such as he'd never seen out of the indomitable Lightning Count. A shot of adrenaline coursed through him, and panic welled back up.
"You stay awake; do you understand me?" Milliardo growled. "I don't care how you do it, but you stay awake. What the hell happened? You have to tell me what happened."
Heero groped at his chest wordlessly, his eyes darting back and forth between Milliardo's face and the floor. It was all he could do to communicate. The words wouldn't come through the panic.
The pounding intensified. "If you don't open this door we'll be forced to open fire!"
"I don't know what to do..." Noin said, her voice higher pitched than usual. "What do I do? They outgun us."
"Hold the door," Milliardo replied gently. "Just hold the door. Don't talk to them. I can only handle one crisis at a time."
Milliardo laid Heero back on the ground, and everything Heero felt was again dwarfed by the unyielding urge to sleep. Heero heard the sound of tearing fabric, and then the cold hit him. Heero felt goose bumps springing up all over. He wanted to curl up against it.
"Well, that explains it," Milliardo said, forcing Heero's arms flat at his side. He'd gone suddenly calm. "Just keep your hands down, keep calm. Breathe."
He felt pressure against his chest, the light brush of hair on his skin.
"I need to hear you breathe."
Heero drew a rasping and all-too-painful breath at Milliardo's command.
Milliardo shifted to a new position, listening carefully. "Again," he ordered, and Heero drew another shaky breath. Heero watched Milliardo sit up. His face had relaxed somewhat. "Relena, get me whatever first aid you can find in this room. Right now."
Heero heard Relena's footsteps receding in the eerie silence between pounds on the door. The men outside would not relent. He felt himself fading again.
"How the hell did you not notice this," Milliardo scolded, apparently uncaring that Heero's mind had gone elsewhere. He held a bloodied hand up before Heero's eyes, and Heero stared at it, unknowing and afraid. It was his own hand. "How did you not notice this?"
"What..." Heero gasped dumbly.
"You said you were attacked, didn't you? Well, you were stabbed, you idiot. And you're lucky. This could've been a lot worse."
"I can't breathe..."
Milliardo didn't respond. Relena had returned with two large square boxes that had taken his attention away. Milliardo rifled through them. As he dug, Milliardo spoke authoritatively. "Relena, you're going to fix him so I can take care of these people outside... You see this hole?"
Heero grimaced as Milliardo poked about his chest. He heard himself groan. It was a sound he'd never heard before.
"Oh, god!" Relena cried.
"It's not bad. Must've hit his rib, was an inexpert thrust and you'd both better be thankful for that. You clean him up with this, and pack the hole as full as you can with this, and bandage it tight. He won't be able to catch his breath until you do. Can you handle that?"
Relena must have nodded, as Milliardo was suddenly no longer at Heero's side.
"I'm so sorry," Relena said as she brushed a rough cloth over the wound. Heero grimaced again. "I'm so, so sorry."
"This is Milliardo Peacecraft," Milliardo shouted through the door. "Stand down!"
"We can't do that, sir," came an angry reply from the opposite side of the door. "We need the Secretary General."
"One of your men injured my brother-in-law. Are you going to tell me that you expect me to open the door after that?"
"The threat has been neutralized, sir. Rogue colonists infiltrated this building. They were out to kill Secretary General Peacecraft."
"That's a lie," Heero gasped through the discomfort. Relena had begun sealing the wound with some cold, thick, odorless substance. He felt himself calming. "The guy...The guy that hit me... He was wearing the same uniform as everyone else."
"Heero, lay still," Relena urged. "Stop talking."
"No, no," Heero insisted quietly. He stared at the ceiling, intent upon Relena's gentle touch. "They're lying. They're trying to trick us..." His voice had taken on a tone of dreamy delirium. It sounded to his ears as though his words were running together. His voice sounded far, far away.
"Sir, we're going to have to ask you to give up the Secretary General, or we'll resort to using force," a voice demanded from outside.
"Don't do it," Heero insisted. He felt his mind going blank again. His body and mind had been exhausted. The world began to fade again, and Milliardo was not there to pull him back. "Don't do it. Don't do it…"
