rest stop

by Darkwood

[Two figures illuminated only by the dashboard lights sat in a car. One person had her hands glued to the steering wheel, the other was reclining with his eyes closed and his features set expressionless even in his sleep.

“Heero?” she purred softly at her husband tenderly. He ignored her, unconsciously, brow furrowing. “Heero,” she called a little louder.

“Hn, shut up, baka,” he responded in the tone reserved for only one idiot. “I’m tired, I say, let me sleep already.”]

“I mean, I try to be a reasonable person, doctor. Is it so much to ask that my husband murmurs my name in his sleep?”

“Now, now,” the doctor says, understanding her valid point but not her foundation. “Please explain exactly what you meant by ‘baka.’”

“It’s Japanese for a lot of things, Doctor, but mostly, when he uses it he means ‘idiot.’ And he’s only used it in that tone of voice with one person. He certainly never sounds caring or tender about me.”

[He slid forward in his seat some and his eyes flew open swiftly, taking in the scene around him. He bit his tongue inside his mouth and looked stubbornly out the window.

“Heero,” she began for the third time, but this time he purposefully ignores her, not offering even a grunt in response. “Talk to me, honey.”]

“I can’t be like that, Doctor. I’m a patient woman, all of the people I know can attest to that, but this obsession he has with that… that… unhealthy young man.”

“What do you mean when you say ‘unhealthy?’ You’ve never even described this ‘young man’ your husband is supposedly seeing.”

“Don’t talk to me like I am a crazy person. My husband’s lover does exist, and if he doesn’t now then he did during the war.”

“What about the war?”

“Well you know that my husband was a Gundam pilot, Doctor Reeves, and unless you were held in a shelter for the two years we were being torn apart by the battles, you should know that there are five of these Gundam pilots. Well my husband, during the war he chose to associate himself in an intimate manner with another one of those pilots. The pilot of the Deathscythe, Duo Maxwell.”

“I sense that you feel threatened by this Maxwell person, Miss Yuy, please continue.”

“Duo… he and my husband were… well, they were lovers, only more seriously than they were after the fighting was over. There was some kind of falling out between them just after the war, and he, Duo, didn’t come back for some reason or another.

“During this time I spent a lot of time with my current husband. For a long time he didn’t acknowledge my presence or would thrust a gun at me anytime I spoke. Especially when I spoke of Duo. The two of us, Duo and I, we never got along. We were both after the same man, so to speak, and saw each other as bad elements around him.

“He fell apart when he got the telegram.”

“What telegram?”

“It was, of course, from Duo. It read, and I remember most of it to this day, because I snatched it from Heero’s trembling hands and then threw it back at him before he got the chance to fire his gun. It was one of those ‘Dear John,’ letters. And, at that time, I thought it a meaningful display of his surrendering Heero to me. I also thought it meant little.

[Heero,

I never thought I’d have to say this to you, but we’re over. I can’t let myself love you right now, for all I know, anymore. Too much has happened and I don’t even know who I am anymore. It’s… it’s something I have to do for myself, and I’m going to get really dirty for a while. I don’t want to hurt you any more than I have to by subjecting you to all of what I’ll be doing to my soul, and you can’t help me at all this time. I want you to be happy in life, and I can’t give you that now. The war is over, and except for petty skirmishes we aren’t need how we were made. That says something to me. Something more than you do.

Shinigami Eternal

Duo Maxwell]

“Heero didn’t eat or speak or sleep for a solid month. I know now that he felt that he had failed his mission. He felt he’d failed Duo. Then he slowly wandered out of his room and when I was leaving, he just followed me.”

“You based a marriage on this?”

“You don’t understand, Doctor, I was so obsessed with him that I truly believed, at that time, that I was in love with my husband. No, please don’t laugh. I found out later that I didn’t.”

“He proposed, we were married within the month as he regained his normal… or at least what I was blind enough to believe was his normal, self.

“Sorry to interrupt again, Misses Yuy, but you said that ‘back then’ you didn’t believe it meant anything to your husband. How do you know differently?”

Slowly her well-manicured hands tighten on the bag in her lap and she sits in silence for a moment, finally cutting off the doctor’s apology by saying, “He still has it. It’s old and worn from being opened and closed from someplace he keeps it, and he read it for a long time.” Her throat closes and she says quietly, “May I-”

“Yes, please go on.”

“He was obsessively devoted to me during the first two months. Anything I wanted, I had, anything I felt like doing, we did.” The doctor blushes. “Please don’t think ill of me, Doctor Reeves, I grew up the privileged daughter of a wealthy man, and then became a princess. I had never known want or need. I felt it natural that I got my way with whatever I wanted and needed.

“It was only a matter of time before I got him. I never expected I’d loose him more easily.”

“Lost him?”

“A year passed and he was no longer interested in me. I had burnt up his care of me, and it was over romantically. He still catered to me, but in a different way. My husband was always devoted to his missions, his duties, and I was just that, his duty.

“Duo turned up again, did he ever. Quatre called late one night, and Heero left the room to get the phone. I slept for almost ten minutes thinking he’d gone for a snack, and then I heard a shout in the hall and hurried out to look and see what had happened.

“Quatre, on the other end of the phone, was calling ‘Heero, Heero!’ frantically, and my husband was looking crazed, and then he turned and shoved his fist into the wall above the phone table. His eyes were so wild and full of some sort of emotion that I couldn’t recognize, and he didn’t notice the pain. There was blood on the dust crowding the air. I could taste it.

“I was shocked, and so were the other people in the hall, a few visiting dignitaries and the servants from that floor were all crowded into the hallway. I smiled politely and walked past him to calm them, he yanked his hand out of the wall after I passed him and went into our room.

“I was just ready to ask him more questions when Quatre shouted for me, and so I lifted the phone. Quatre? I asked.

‘Oh, Miss Relena, I’m so glad you picked up the phone. What happened to Heero?’

“He had no response for me other than a weak apology for my husband’s actions. I hurried to the room only to be shoved out of the way roughly as he left the room and headed down the hall to the fitness rooms.”

“What did he do?”

“He worked out. Four in the morning, he gets a call, puts a fist through the wall, and goes to work out.”

“Oh yes, now I remember, you first called me that next day.”

“Yes. Well needless to say I was curious. I didn’t find out until after Wufei arrived at my place with a duffle bag and a brusque hello. He headed straight for where Heero was. It was uncanny. I hadn’t even known where to look for him, but he got there, and when he saw I’d followed, he closed the door, and locked it, in my face.

“They cut the security camera together and began to talk heatedly. I watched for a long minute, suddenly being hit by the reality of the situation. Something was wrong, and Heero wasn’t worried about me.

“After that I fearfully went downstairs, three levels since he refused to eat in the bedroom or near it, and had breakfast. Pagan brought me the paper, and I was shocked. The headline baffled me, ‘Gundam Pilot Brutally Attacked at L2 Home.’ I was naturally upset that someone had been injured during this time of peace, but I didn’t understand what would get the three still-surfaced pilots so riled up. So I continued reading and ignored this little twinge of a memory at the thought of L2 colony. I suppose that if I hadn’t I’d still be a happily, and obliviously so, married woman.”

“What the hell!” Heero snapped, temper getting the best of him for once. He grabbed the wheel and began to pull over to the side right under a blue information sign.

“Why are you still talking about him? Why! I can make you happy!”

A dark look passed across his face and he turned back to the window again, yanking her foot from the pedal by the ankle and ripping the keys out of the ignition. She threw her arms around his neck.

“Get off me,” he snapped.]

“What happened?” The doctor asks, trying to remain only politely intrigued. “You found out, didn’t you?”

“It was Duo. He hadn’t informed either Wufei or Quatre where he was going, and of course not Heero. Hilde was mentioned in the article. She was with him at the time, and he had protected her with horrific results. She had escaped with only a minor slice to her cheek, but he had been stabbed twice and shot before he collapsed and the police arrived to stop the then-vanished assailants.

“Quatre had found the article and flown to L2 just after calling us, and we received word that they were going to move Duo to the earth since he would need the support of fresh air after having his left lung punctured. I agreed. I was very naïve. I didn’t understand what all of it meant, but that a savior had been hurt and I would loose face by denying him.”

“Why was your husband exercising? What did Wufei come to the room and what were they talking about?”

“Heero, like I said, hadn’t eaten that month before we married, and he just didn’t bother getting back to his previous strength because he still had his precision and wouldn’t need his strength ever again.

“I suppose he didn’t want Duo to see him weak. Duo felt the same way because he told Quatre, before he slipped into the coma, that he didn’t want Heero in to see him. He didn’t even want to be taken to the earth, but Quatre pulled some trick with the physicians.”

“Why not? They were friends at least, weren’t they?” Reeves asks. “Shouldn’t he want the support of his friends?”

“Duo is ever an abstinent fool when it comes to my husband. He didn’t want to ruin his happiness, I found out from Quatre. He hadn’t wanted to come to the earth for fear he’d ruin Heero’s life. Didn’t matter if he ruined mine. Or if he died for being stupid like that.”

“He hated you. You hated him. You have to understand that the seeds of hate set deeply. Especially if Mr. Maxwell found out the two of you were together. He would have felt betrayed by you for taking what he felt was his, no matter that he left Mr. Yuy, he would still have felt that way.”

“I think I can understand. It’s the same way that I felt first when I accidentally… walked in on them during the war.”

“My that must have been embarrassing.”

“It was one of the most shocking and traumatizing experiences of my life. I only got over it blaming Maxwell for seducing him.” The doctor stifles a chuckle.

[The door was shyly pressed open and a honey-blond haired young woman steps in, adjusting her sundress with her white gloves carefully before looking up to inspect the creaking noises coming from bouncing springs and the panting noises and moans.

“Nnn… harder!” Duo shouted.

“I-I’m… oh… trying!”

“God, I’m… I- Hee-!”

“HEERO!” She bellowed.

The two young men on the bed, or rather the one only beginning to fall into the throws of his orgasm turned to look at the prim and proper dressed young woman before he rolled his eyes and a moan surged from his throat as inner muscles clamped down on his member.

For a time afterwards there was only a frantic scramble for a sheet to cover them with on Duo’s part and sweaty panting from both of them. As Duo collapsed, blushing brightly, forward on to the pillows, spent, Heero angrily yanked the sheet Duo had covered them with around his waist and tried to get out of the bed without showing himself off to the princess while getting his gun and ended up on the floor.

“Heero…” she stuttered.

Being uncovered, Duo yanked the blanket from the bottom of the bed and covered himself up to his chin, averting his eyes from hers as she glared at him.

His counterpart, however, managed to get up off the floor and points the gun at her angrily. “Of all the lousy times to show up,” Duo panted from behind him as Relena found herself backed up to the door by the muzzle of a Colt .22, the braided boy suddenly stared at his partner’s falling sheet and pulled the blanket up over his head.

“GET OUT!” Heero shouted, shoving the gun forward before his body, not even bothering with the sheet anymore, just advancing quickly and angrily at her, clicking off the safety.

Peeking out from his hiding spot, Duo slowly slinked out from under the cover, dog crawling towards his lover with the ends of the sheet as her suddenly dumbstruck hands fumbled with the doorknob.]

[The windows in the parked car began steaming up to show mere shadows to the passing cars of two silhouettes inside, motionless.

“If you’re that wrapped up in him, why don’t you leave, Heero?” She purred, “It would be better for both of us.”

“Have you no sense at all!” he snapped agitatedly.

“What are you talking about?” she shouted back. “I’m trying to find a peaceful solution here!”

“Pardon my unsympathetic condescending tone for your naiveté, darling, but do you know what will happen if I just take off and someone finds me with a man! You’ll be taken down without a second thought: ‘she failed her husband, what about us,’ or ‘how could she have let it happen that way?’ You can’t fix this. Just don’t try, ok!”

Slowly she turned back to the front of the car, realizing the perils of the situation, and tears began to flow down her cheeks. He grunted under his breath and opened his window to let cool air in to let the color from her cheeks.]

“What happened after that? When Mr. Maxwell wouldn’t let Mr. Yuy see him?” the doctor asks.

“He started breaking down again. The next day Quatre called the house to say that Duo had slipped into a coma and that I should come collect Heero or at least help him since he was breaking down.

“I did, thinking I could save him from his fate brought on him by Maxwell the Demon. I really thought he was evil. Sometimes I still do, he stole my entire life, ruined me.

“Heero was on his knees in the waiting room when I got there, his chin was resting on his chest and he wasn’t moving. Trowa was there. I was furious that Quatre hadn’t stayed himself since Heero was breaking down, but Quatre, I was told by a helpful nurse, was in a separate room recovering from emotional shock.

“Trowa tried to explain something to me, but I just didn’t hear him. I only knew that my ‘baby’ was suffering, and so I tried to talk to him. For my tender efforts I received a shove that pushed me into the row of plastic metal seats so hard I bruised for days and had to wear knee-length skirts for a couple weeks.

“I tried once more. I was going to go in and get all of this business straightened out. I was going to see Duo and prove everyone wrong by exposing his lie. Of course I thought he was faking just to get Heero’s attention.

“The only other time I’d seen that expression on my husband’s handsome features was when I’d walked in on the two of them, and then the gun had scared me, not him. This time I couldn’t swallow or move simply from the expression he was directing at me.”

[The window down, Heero leaned out and takes a few deep breaths himself, calming his frazzled and Duo-deprived nerves.

“Look, Relena, I’m sorry for shouting like that, and blowing up about what you said it’s just… you try to hard.”

“How should I act then? You’re leaving me for him! The only person I ever hated or was jealous of! You’re trying to hurt me, aren’t you?”

He sighed in defeat and his head droops down to the edge of the door, eyes searching out the dark horizon. “I never wanted it this way.”]

“Well obviously Heero didn’t want me to go into the room, whether it was because he couldn’t go in, or be there to watch my actions or just that he didn’t want the two of us mixed up together even by proximity, I will never know.”

“What happened?”

“Duo stayed in that coma for months. It didn’t seem he would ever wake up, and they asked Quatre what to do. His hands were tied, he said. He didn’t have the final decision.”

[The doctors grouped around the young men looked at the pilot’s benefactor in shock. The other three pilots stared as well.

Heero began to crack, “What do you mean you can’t do anything?” he snapped.

Quatre held up a hand with a small vid-disk in it. “I can’t do anything, Heero. I wasn’t the one he gave his last rights to. He gave them to you.” The pale hand took Heero’s larger one and placed the frail plastic in it, “I was also given instructions that if something… anything were to happen… you were supposed to get this when I told you.”

Shocked to silence, everyone looked at Quatre, who didn’t even attempt to hold back his tears. He turned away from Heero, who stares blindly at the disk. “Duo…” Heero whispered quietly.

Relena made a move to stand but Wufei turned and stared her down and Heero stepped over to put his arms around Quatre gently. “I’m sorry it wasn’t you.”

“I just… can’t see him like this anymore, Heero,” the Arab put his face on the Japanese boy’s shoulder, “it hurts horribly. Do something for him. Wake him up or let him die in peace, but he’s just being tormented now. I know. He’s stuck in limbo.”

Heero squeezed once and Quatre points towards a room marked ‘family council’ before turning blindly into Trowa’s embrace and letting the tears escape his eyes.

About twenty minutes of held breath later, he emerged, stopping to thank Wufei and Trowa for their support during the troubled time, and then he aimed himself at the door to the room, Quatre stopping him briefly.

“It’s all right, he’s going to come back to us, whether his body thinks so or not,” he said in a determined voice before leaving the shocked semi-personal waiting room and disappearing into the antiseptic room, closing the door firmly behind him.]

“What happened?”

“I'm not sure, but whatever it was, it worked. Heero came out looking as worn as Quatre, and as his door closed a noise alerted one of the nurses and she went to check Duo’s room. His heart was beating by itself again, and was climbing, very slowly, to normal. Or at least, Duo’s normal.”

“It took a long time?”

“Yes. Six months before he could breathe on his own.”

“Please continue.”

“I had to leave the country and my husband with his former lover on a gurney for the next four days, an ambassadorial trip to Geneva to meet with the newest delegates from the colonies. It turned out that the situation I was handling required more time than anyone suspected when the ambassadors were first detained for a week and then had lost their luggage and… it was the biggest non-violent political mess since the Eve Wars.

“It took three months to complete the engagement and then I was backed up on everything else and had to run around. In a very large way I welcomed the distraction. I welcomed it with open arms. After seeing the four pilots idling in a hospital over a comrade I began to feel uselessness setting in to my mind as well. I could almost touch Quatre’s desperation. He’s always been the most emotional, in a good way, of the five, and his distress projected to the staff so much that they allowed him in any time he felt it necessary.

“Four months later I was delivered to the doorstep of the Peacecraft mansion and slept for almost two days straight. I woke up and found an empty bedroom and then remembered I was married.”

‘I don’t think she minds as much as she thinks she does,’ the doctor notes on his small pad.

“I was dressing in a rush when Pagan brought up an envelope. I opened it to find Heero’s angry scrawl. It said:

“That was all except for this colorful and thoughtful card with plenty of space to write in. I was the first to sign. I was touched, but then I figured out a couple reasons why. One - if I didn’t sign it right Heero could just buy another one and sign it himself so the others wouldn’t have to copy theirs over. Two - he wanted to check up on what and how much I wrote. I was, needless to say, quite angry with him. I was also angry with myself for what I wanted to write to him. The look in Wufei’s eyes that day told me all I needed to know about the authenticity of Duo’s illness.

“It had also come to my attention that it would be stupid for him to do that when he could’ve done so many other things that would’ve made a better impact, and he wouldn’t have named Heero as his next of kin if he wanted attention. He was too serious about death for that.”

“Serious? You always portrayed Mr. Maxwell as a scheming, jovial prankster. Sometimes vengeful but always smiling and joking.”

“That’s just it, he was!” she snaps uncontrollably, “but he was quite serious about his job.”

“Job? I thought he worked for a salvage yard.”

“During the war he was the pilot of ‘Deathscythe’ whom he liked to call ‘Shinigami.’”

“Again the Japanese lingual reference eludes me. Please specify.”

“The God of Death. Shinigami is the God of Death in Japanese. I used to use it like a curse word when I was mad, but it only ever made him smile and say something like ‘You know it, ojou-san.’ Or something else that was stupid and playful. Almost like he was flirting.

“I must admit that I haven’t met or known anyone to dislike him.”

“Ah?” the doctor looks at her pointedly.

“I hated him for his attachment to Heero, but as a person he was charismatic and I still liked him. After all, I didn’t have to fight him in a mobile suit. That had its pluses for what scant non-cat fighting relationship we had.”

He notes this, ‘Perhaps this is why the husband so vehemently kept her out of the hospital room. Pity and sympathy emit strong emotions in human beings.’

“So, being the self-proclaimed God of Death, and I believe a devout, though I could be wrong, Catholic, life and death would mean a lot to him. Perhaps that would explain his preoccupation with Heero having a happy life. Not that it was possible.”

‘Are you taking the blame for this?’

“He used to wear a black priest-like outfit, and a cross around his neck, but who knows? He also had about a yard of hair tied in a braid. Never did figure him out.

[The dimly lit waiting room held four people, the three men looking rather worn and the woman looking anxious and outwardly caring. The blond haired man sank to the couch wearily, dark bags under his eyes and a light growth of stubble on his cheeks. He slumped forward and rests his forehead on his kneecaps.

“Quatre, you should rest,” she said, “where are you guys staying?”

“We’re not, and Quatre just slept for eight hours,” Trowa replied, walking over to the young man and putting a hand on his shoulder caringly.

“Has anyone slept since I left?”

“We’ve been taking turns in the room over there. One of the nurses pushed Quatre and me in when he tripped and fell into me and we both took a tumble onto the floor. Heero’s next.”

“No, he just started in there an hour ago, he’ll be in there for a long time yet, even if he falls asleep with his head on the railing. Wufei should sleep.”

The Chinese man, however, continued to stare out at the brightening morning sky. Having had enough of watching the three wilting men do nothing, Relena stood and stomped her foot angrily.

Six eyes turned to lock on her.

“I realize how the four of you feel about Duo. Perhaps not as much as I should, or even as much as I could understand, but I have seen my share of loss as well. I can sympathize with your loss, but you can’t let it eat you away! If you keep this up Duo will be better off than all of you when he wakes up. I am taking you all to my house to sleep some. And since I know no one wants me in there, Quatre will you tell Heero where we’re going?”

Wufei snorted, but Trowa shook his head and prodded Quatre to his feet. Dutifully he went, and returned, nodding something about six hours, and Trowa swept him up into weak arms and followed to the elevator as Wufei left the number with the desk and went after at the prodding of the secretary.]

[Slowly his hand moved and pressed a button on the radio, giving it power and letting the radio waves exit through the speakers.

A woman’s voice drifted out, “End of the third round…” Relena closed her eyes tighter and felt the heat fade away as she tilts her head back and falls off to sleep. “I’m pushing zero/where is my hero…”]

[Heero looked over at her, noting her relaxed posture and tear striped face. “And my world falls down/and you’re there calling out… It’s a game that I can’t play, not today…”

Making up his mind, he checked the papers of the current car, and nodded. He looked into the back of the car trying to make his final decision. Choosing whether or not to desert his feeble hopes of salvaging the public’s respect of her while realizing his own lack of it, he opened the car door.]

“I convinced them to stay the time sleeping at the house. In a manner I fed them, bathed them, and held their hopes while they cared for the life of their fallen comrade. I still didn’t see Heero though. I was never let into the hospital room.

“I saw him in passing once, I had ridden with Pagan to drop Wufei off and he forgot the cookies that Mrs. Madison made for them, so I carried them up and he passed me in the hallway. He was a ghost. He hadn’t shaved, obviously, in days, and it didn’t look like he had slept well, but he was back to his ‘old’ self again. Five foot three inches tall and slender with muscles so subtle that even I no longer noticed them, but…”

“But what, Misses Yuy?”

“He had an exhausted look in his eyes. I had tried so hard to keep from dragging him home with me as well, I didn’t want to force him back into my life as I had before. I tried not to stop, call his name, and face the rejection. But I wasn’t strong enough, and I was still obsessively in love with him. It was like we were back to square one again and I wanted all of my questions answered.”

[The dim yet sickly yellow of the fluorescent lighting of the hallway did nothing to help the view she was faced with of her formerly healthy husband. He was pale with the sick greenish tint of someone who had gone without sleep for days, only normally it was transfixed to a teenager or a college student studying hard for a final or term paper.

The comparative case should have set off the alarms and bells in her head, but did not. She saw in his tired face the handsome and beguiling man he had been only months prior, and her vision left out all the current bad parts. She felt her heart twist at the sorrow in his eyes, the first actual emotion she had seen in them other than anguish and guilty grief. She couldn’t hold herself in check any longer, not about her husband.

“Heero!” she cried happily, throwing herself at him, the cookie tin falling to the ground in her wake making a metallic clang as she hugged him tightly and he did not respond.]

“What after he pushed you away?”

“Quatre came in the hall and I was still wrapped around his neck while he didn’t even move except to pick up and inspect the tin. Quatre took it and headed down the hall. ‘Go,’ he told me, and eager to obey him again, I did, feeling uplifted and happy that I had helped them all. That gut-wrenching feeling kept gnawing at the inside of my stomach, and I thought I had an ulcer so I saw a doctor in that same hospital. By that time they had borrowed a car from the garage and were driving themselves back and forth. Wufei left behind me towards the house as Pagan drove me off. Even he was stressed about the situation.

“I got home late, and no one was around except for the servants, and they were doing their normal duties. Pagan retired to his quarters and I looked for one of the other pilots. No one was home so I ate a light dinner and went to bed.

“For another three days no one showed up, and I, still on my high about the cookies, the hug, and the fact that they had taken me up on the offer of real beds, didn’t bother, figuring that even Quatre had to be recuperated after a month of reliable sleep. If only I’d known.

“He and Trowa were passing the time exploring each other. The two of them explored their feelings and that eerie talent that Quatre always had, over meals. They did almost everything together, and I just didn’t notice. Wufei, meanwhile, had taken up drinking during the third month and half of the time it was Heero who dragged him home and shoulder flipped him onto the bed before yanking covers over his ankles and requesting a vegetable shake for him in the morning.

“A month passed that way, and I didn’t notice, I was still throwing myself into my work with abandon. On the fourth day without any of them, however, I called the hospital. Duo had started breathing on his own. His heart had finally strengthened enough to support his respiration and he was off almost all of his machines. His lungs were very close to being healed, and he was just returning from the OR when I made my way up to the waiting room to find them all much more relieved.”

[The quiet room made all the excitement seem very palpable as the five of them sat and wait. Heero paced behind the chairs in the hallway, still keeping his distance from his ‘wife’ but within range to hear the doctors.

“I’m very proud to say that Duo Maxwell is doing perfectly fine!” came an ecstatic voice from near the elevator, wheeling the gurney back towards the room, flanked by a nurse on each side.

The three pilots made a collective sigh of relief and then a laugh of joy at themselves, while the concerned ex-Wing pilot followed the gurney into the room with a more eased expression on his face.]

“What I saw that day really stopped my pampered heart in its tracks. I’d been jealous, still, of the attention Duo was getting and secretly wondering who would sit by my side for months until I saw him being wheeled through that area. He was always very thin, but I never believed that he was scrawny. But then, his body lain out on pillows and a tub in his mouth and a separate one in his nose with various cables coming out from his oversized hospital gown and terrycloth robe that made him look like Quatre had years ago, all the guilt caught up with me and I left in a hurry.”

[He picked up the cellular phone and dialed the highway patrol number, looking away from her face. Feeling the slightest twinge of guilt at getting ready to leave her, he turned back, and regretted it.]

“Is that all that happened?” the doctor asks. “Of course he woke up, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“It was another month before he even opened his eyes, and the pilots were so shaken that the three of them came to the mansion together and went straight into their rooms and went to sleep. Duo had only stayed awake for about fifteen minutes, but it was a lot for his poor psyche to handle, and then he passed out.

“Things progressed quicker after that. His appetite returned days later, and things got a little hectic, but he was obviously himself. He started physical training and then I had to leave for another conference. I heard from Quatre that he kept asking for a cheeseburger and they were going to sneak him in one while Heero slept in the next room.”

[The brisk air flowed into the car behind him as he opened the door again and stepped back into the shadows, the note in the folds of the registration papers and the broken end of the key in her palm. He stayed close to the foot lights of the information sign until the flashing lights of the patrol could be seen near by, and then stepped back into the full shadow of the growing night where he’d stashed his things.

“Maybe I could have loved you… if you’d only learned this lesson five or six years ago,” the twenty-four year old whispered into the night.]

“So what happened?”

“Well, I heard from Quatre that there was a little mix up and Duo didn’t remember anyone specifically for a while. Just a bunch of people he could feel safe with and trust. He’s got some great instincts. He looked at Heero, said, ‘Hey man, where’s your wife?’ and waited for an answer from his sputtering lips.

“He didn’t have a thing to say to that. I got a card in the mail yesterday from him.”

“Duo or your husband?”

“Duo. He told me that physical therapy is going well. He said he got a message from a little birdie. It said, ‘See you later.’”

[Quatre, Trowa, and Wufei all stand in the background while Heero sputters at Duo’s question. Quatre chuckles hoarsely and Trowa just grins while Wufei stares at the amnesic invalid growing back to his old self.

“She was outside waiting, a lot.”

[Hearing the beginning of a new song, Heero leaned back as the chords continued and the officials help his ‘wife.’ She looks back at him, almost directly as the last line plays, “You were free, now you’re not, you were free baby,” and she glowers.]

“So he left you?”

“What else could he do? I wouldn’t keep him like a caged bird. He’s a man, no matter what. Despite how much I miss him, and really wish I weren’t a pacifist and could give him something back for leaving me, I know…” her hand clutches a piece of paper in her pocket, “I know what this means.

[She pulls the pages from her glove compartment and the small note drops into her lap as she hands the proper things to the officers, and holds open her hand with the head of the key; she turns to look out in the darkness again.

‘If that’s how you want it, darling.’]

“What did the note say?” the doctor asks her. “Did you ever open it?” his face is mildly intrigued.

“No, I didn’t, and I’ll tell you why. I threw a fit for a long time, it took a few weeks and three delegates to get me to get back to work, but I know why.”

“Don’t keep me in expense, Misses Yuy.”

“That’s Miss Peacecraft, thank you.”

“But…?”

“I’m not the most important person in the world, Doctor Reeves. There are other living, loving beings on the earth that need him a lot more than I do. That doesn’t mean that either of them are off the hook, but… it’s kind of neat that the damsel in distress let go of the cowboy and got her own horse, isn’t it?”

“Duo, I'm home,” a soft, low voice calls in through the small house. A shuffle step replies and a pale-skinned young man enters the living room and hugs him.

“So did I get anything?”

“Yeah, from Relena. Why did you want to send that crazy thing anyway? She’s not sick, she’s fine, and for what she’s ill of, I don’t think a ‘Get Well Soon’ card will do her any good.”

“We’re really going to have to work on your sense of humor.” Once-nimble fingers slowly open the small envelope.