My ramblings -

(Note - You don't have to read all of this. I've realized sometimes I ramble a lot and often times it's not needed to the chapter or story itself. I've decided from now on that I will only put things I feel are necessary in bold, like an important detail or the warnings).

Thank you to everyone who's reviewed, following, or making my story a favorite. I appreciate these small things and they encourage me to keep writing.

To one of my more recent reviews - it is weird I keep occasionally switching to to Barton instead of Burton. It could be my inferior writing program (that occasionally puts capital I's in the middle of words) or it could be me lapsing - whichever it is, it should have been caught by my proof-reading, so I apologize. I once read that the creator said he chose Burton as the English-language name because he loved Tim Burton's work, as do I and, I think, most people. Random fact of the day!

And thank you to the person who mentioned Midazolam can be placed under the skin for a number of days - that is actually helpful to know. I'm not medically minded, so I may gloss or full out get wrong information like that - correction and information is always helpful (:

As I was going through the fic anyway to look for Barton vs. Burton mistakes, I decided to go back to Chapter 1 - SURPRISE! and change all the first names to surnames, as it comes from Wufei's perspective. I would have left it, but blah blah I was sorting this all out anyway, so I may as well. Also, for this chapter, please note I haven't read any official manga regarding Duo and Solo, so it's a non-canon piece.

As for mentioning little details like Heero's trousers and how he got them and the fact they're jeans etc., I feel at the moment it's an important detail in establishing that Heero is no longer the fairly unfashionable (if you considered someone wearing it in real life) teenage boy he once was and given both money and choice, things slowly change for him. It's also all new to him that he no longer has to dress as the doctors have ordered, or dress to fit in, like at the school during the GW series. It's like picking up on little things Wufei does (or does not do) now the war is over in comparison to during the war itself, or even before when he was on L5.

Of course, I'm mainly focusing on Duo and Wufei as my central and eventual romantic characters - so how now Wufei actually thinks about Duo when he's not around rather than just being grateful for it, and how Duo is actually using a technique that previously he would have ignored with meditation not coming easily to him - but I still feel the other characters need to be shown as developed and different through little changes.

Warnings - It's the same as always. Rainbow flag all the way. Swearing, a little; nothing over the top. Past character death; slightly graphic.


Some Things Don't Need To Be Said

Chapter 6 - Flash-bang Memories

The blonde man withdrew his hand with the bottle. Duo desperately wanted to ask when he would have more, and that it wasn't a big deal to let him have water - another thing OZ had let him have that was comparable to this situation. But more importantly, he wanted to know why he was there, and he demanded an answer in rough, angered tones.

The man chuckled, throwing the empty bottle on the floor. "You are here, Duo, to save L2. Yes, you. And you don't need a huge robot to do it in, or any of your favored stealth missions. All I need from you in some blood, and your body for some little experiments."

Duo tensed himself up, once more looking around and finding no exit. Not even a tiny window to the outside where he could look to get attention, all the bricks looked thick and unmovable. It felt like a cage built just for him - not something that was for any other prisoner. If that was the case, maybe the guy was a newbie - that would mean he had to have left some mistake somewhere, cut some corner.

"What do you know of the plague spreading across L2?" The man asked Duo as he mentally took in his surroundings. Duo looked back to the man. "...The palace delivered the L2 Colony Daily to me every morning. I...know a little bit about it." In all honestly, after five mornings of the 'plague' being the headline of the paper, he had asked that it wasn't allowed in the palace anymore. It wasn't that he didn't care - he just didn't know what to do to help, and he didn't need the flash-bang memories associated with the word plague and everything associated with it.

Trowa had explained the concept of those sort of memories when 4am found them both up and in Relena's massive kitchen. "Think of it like this...you know flash-bang grenades? They're sudden, they're noisy, they're confusing, and sometimes you can't escape them - that's what a memory like that is like. When you see the word plague...you can't help but to see ten million visions, and you can't do a damn thing about them." Trowa gave a slight shrug. "I'm sure we all having them...or, at least something similar to them, even if certain people won't admit it. You just have to learn how to distract yourself and, maybe in the meantime, give those papers a miss."

It had been the longest time Duo hadn't spoke, and it wasn't just because he was continuing to make a sandwich, focusing intensely on cutting off every crust from his bread. He just couldn't think of any words to thank Trowa for not just calling him insane, or staring at him silently. He couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't make him over-emotional, because over-emotional was the only level he had been on in the last couple of days. He was either a pathetic flood of tears and sorries - or bouncing off the walls, what the others would be considered 'normal'. And right now, he was more sliding towards tears than anything else. So he quietly pushed the food over to the other and gave him a nod. "...Thanks Trowa. That's...good advice, I think. You can come to me too if...you need it."

Duo shook his head now, looking back to the man. "I know it's the same plague. I know all the politicians are offering sympathetic words but don't want to get their hands dirty. I know it's still a disease spread among the homeless and...the kids." It was one of the first things he had seen once he got out of the shuttle terminal - begging kids, all hoping someone rich would fly in (as if that would happen - all the rich did was leave when they saw the run down colony) and he had managed to spare some change, though it didn't stop the disgusting feeling in his stomach and the deja vu in his head.

"Ahh, yes, all the little children. The poor and the needy. No-one will care until someone with the disease flies off to L4 or Earth and it starts to spread. And that's when you really come into use."

The man was talking faster now, pacing in front of Duo. "I know when you were 6 years old, only ten years ago, you took a vaccine against the plague. You had mistaken it for the antidote to give your dear, dying mentor, but your colour-blindness got the better of you; out of the bottles you could steal, it was green. An antidote is red."

Duo shut his eyes tight at the memory. Solo, puking for days, coughing up blood, still trying to help out the other sick kids and still trying to help on their daily 'missions' for bread, but it didn't take long to find him flat on his back in their hideout. He had whispered he was cold, even though his forehead was burning. Fever, Duo knew that. He didn't know what to do about it, but he knew what it was. So Duo stole all the unused sleeping bags and coats he could, as it was daytime and most of the healthy kids were on 'mission duty' outside. He curled them all around Solo, zipped them up where he could.

"Kiddo...I need you to do a big thing, okay?" Duo nodded solemnly. "You know the research facility I've been stealing antidotes from when..." He started to cough, and stained the sleeve of someone else's coat crimson."...When we've need them." They had only needed them five or six times now - most of the kids had, somehow, stayed in good health and the few that had found themselves with the plague had even managed to shake it. Solo had made a big point that stealing the medicine was only for when it got bad; really bad. And this was really bad.

Duo nodded, taking Solo's hand, which was ice cold. "I'm giving you permission to...steal this...for me. You got that? One bottle only; red." Duo nodded again, then realizing Solo's eyes were only pencil slits, spoke up instead. "Okay. I-I won't be long, Solo. Promise!"

And he wasn't long. It hadn't been a hard steal but he had worried all the way there about dropping it and losing everything. He got back to the hideout, and to Solo's side - the older male seemed to be sleeping so Duo shook his shoulder. "You're back," Solo's voice groaned in the dark of the room. "Uh-huh. And I got it!" He held up the green bottle, triumphantly.

For a moment, Solo said nothing. Then, as if out of nowhere, he laughed, and then laughed, until he was coughing. Duo was confused - was he laughing because he was going to live now? Solo eventually went quiet and an expression crossed his face that Duo didn't understand, before he spoke again. "Kiddo...that's a vaccine. I guess you're colourblind, huh?" Duo didn't know what the last bit meant - but he knew a vaccine was no good for Solo. Solo was already sick.

"I-I can run and get another one before the clinic closes!" He said, stumbling back to his feet. "...No point, Duo," Solo said, softly. He only ever really used his name when things were bad - so things had to be bad. "...That antidote at that time was my only hope. I...I'm dying.'

Duo moved close and cradled his mentor's head, wiping away his hair from his forehead, wishing he had a spare hairband to keep his hair away, and an icepack for his head, because it was a summer day as warmly wretched as anything, trying to mirror some exotic location on Earth when really it just made the illness spread quicker and the rubbish smell worse.

Solo was quiet, peaceful. Duo realized now as an adult, what that expression had been when he realized it wasn't the right medication - it had been sadness, sure, but hopelessness too. No shred of selfishness, of asking why he should die above people who probably deserved it more, just thinking of what he would have done, what he needed to do on this earth - protect the kids. It had been his only role, and now he was going to lose it thanks to Duo's cock-up and death being ever indiscriminate.

It hadn't been a peaceful death. Nothing like he had seen sneaking into the cinema where the heroin had turned her head slightly, coughed, and lay still. Solo ranted with delirium - at a moment of being lucid he made Duo promise to drink the vaccine, right in front of him, right now. He wasn't going to die too, even if sickness had been all over him. Duo nodded and drank it down. It tasted horrible, but it was probably better than dying.

At times, Solo was quiet; sometimes, he cried for his mother and that was when Duo had hugged him close, hoping his lithe body would do as a substitute. He barely recognized Duo most of the time and once told him to go away, because he was waiting to go on a train downtown. Death is never pretty, Duo realized then. Nothing like in the pictures.

Eventually, Solo seemed to have worn himself out and lay on the nest of sleeping bags and coats. Duo wanted to go and collect the others, so they could all say their goodbyes, but they would get sick with no vaccines in them. Duo hoped he would go then, just take a last breath and fall asleep, but then the seizure happened that he had no idea what to do with, apart from keeping his head still because smacking it against the ground even once seemed so painful. It calmed down to the occasional twitch and, at one point, Solo opened his eyes and fixed them on Duo. His mouth moved as if to say something, but nothing came out. Solo closed his eyes for the last time and finally that shuddering breath left him, and Duo imagined his soul leaving - a healthy soul, a happy soul, waving at Duo and heading into some mysterious light a lady had once told him about.

But just then, Duo was painfully aware of being with the corpse of his best friend, who he could have saved if his eyes worked right. They were fixed prior to him becoming a pilot, in a painful operation, but he couldn't go back in time and fix his mistake. Solo was dead weight as Duo dragged him up against him and rocked him like Solo had done when Duo had nightmares - he whispered in their silly made up language that kept them safe on the streets, he promised that he wouldn't let their little group break up, and then he finally kissed his forehead.

No, Duo realized, suddenly back in the room, triggered by the flashbang of the 'doctor's' words. He couldn't fix mistakes that happened then, but he could sure as hell fix mistakes that were happening right now.

"Okay," he said, softly. "You have me. Physically and mentally. If I can help someone, then let me help them."

A selfless act, maybe, but if Duo had known exactly what that had meant, maybe he wouldn't have volunteered with quite such gusto...


To be continued