By: Spooks
~ ~ ~ ~
Duo frowned down at his leg. Damn thing. A whole month, stuck in a hospital just because of his leg.
The bone had been shattered badly enough that it’d required surgery, banding around the multitude of splintered fragments, then internal fixation devices...meaning screws going through his skin and holding things in place. But still. Annoying.
At least those damn pins were finally gone. Now he was stuck with a ridged cast from hell, going all the way from his hip to down past his knee. It itched.
Yet, despite all his protests, Duo knew well that his leg was too delicate for him to be too reckless with it for at least another month. The very thought of just what that chisel had done to his femur made him feel a bit nauseous.
But now he could move around without risking tearing holes in his muscles and getting a bad infection. Which meant that he could get a wheelchair and terrorize Heero at home. Home, for the time being, was Quatre’s house, the same one where they’d had the party.
Hey...For that matter, he could terrorize Quatre and Trowa as well. A shame that Catherine had already left. She would have been fun to torment. Well, accept for the knife throwing.
With his leg still healing, there was no way he and Heero were moving anywhere else anytime soon. Moving and traveling was never quite a carefree experience, even if it was fun, and there was no pressing reason why they had to go anywhere too quickly. Besides, Quatre might not have let them. Not that they minded. Despite Duo’s total lack of wanting to go anywhere near that pool shack ever again, the house itself wasn’t a bad place.
And good, there was his wheelchair. “Lost in thought?” Heero asked, raising an eyebrow.
Duo rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll save you the punch line: It was unfamiliar territory.”
Heero snorted, abandoning the chair and sitting carefully down beside him on the hospital bed. Duo had noticed that since the stalker incident, Heero had all but hovered over him. Incidentally, the two of them had been hovered over by Trowa and Quatre as well, and before they had to return to their respective jobs, Wufei and Relena had hovered, and for that matter so had just about everyone else they’d known. All in all, there was just a lot of hovering.
Of course, most of the reason they’d been hovering around Duo so much was because Heero had been almost constantly with him. Heero didn’t take well to being fussed over. He didn’t appreciate the attention even if he understood that it was only because people cared and worried. So Duo had taken on all the obvious attention, and it worked out for everyone involved.
Everyone had been more than a little shocked at what had happened, even though they all expected something to happen eventually. With all of Quatre’s preparations, and their precautions regarding the temporary staff, it had been a nasty shock to everyone that one of the two stalkers had been on permanent staff. Worse, that she’d taken two days off to go and detonate the apartment complex.
More devastating was the fact that she’d made friends with the younger guests. But it also seemed that those friendships had saved them all. Not something said younger guests took lightly. Mariemeia had gone to the girl’s funeral, accompanied by both Hakim and Ophelia.
The idea that a civilian, a supposed casualty, had risen up and come after two of their own didn’t help matters either. If it could happen once...could it happen again? No one really wanted to think about it. It had become a haunting concern in everyone’s minds.
“You all right?” Duo asked after they’d just sat there, holding hands for at least ten minutes of silence.
Heero shrugged. “I’m still thinking about things.”
Duo nodded and squeezed Heero’s hand. “Well, you know, I’m here for you. I’ll shut up and listen, or we can both shut up, or I can talk. Whatever, you just tell me.”
“I know,” Heero sighed. “I’m just glad you’re here.”
Duo smiled. “Thanks. Oh! I got an email from Hilde. She sent a picture as well...her tummy’s starting to get big. Hey, and of all people, Dorothy’s visiting her. So, have you talked to anyone lately that I haven’t?”
“Here and there. Sylvia and Gregory sent out wedding invitations, and we’ve got one waiting for us at Quatre’s,” Heero replied, smirking a little. “Which made Trowa and Quatre a bit uncomfortable. Evidently half of Quatre’s sisters are hounding them to set a date.”
“Ouch, I can’t imagine having all those women after me,” Duo laughed. “Poor them. What about everybody else?”
“Wufei and Relena are still cheerfully thumbing their noses at the media. I talked to them earlier today, and they said to tell you hello. Zechs and Noin are doing well...and that news comes from Wufei. It seems Zechs is extremely repentant for his little scene,” Heero replied. He nudged Duo carefully. “It’s not as though you didn’t see everyone a couple weeks ago.”
“Yeah, but I was still on big painkillers and time did all sorts of fuzzy things,” Duo replied, poking his cast. “Hey, how’d the case go through? God, I can’t believe how much work Sally put into that. She’s a damn smart lady.”
“She is,” Heero nodded. “The case is closed now. They found a lot in places the two sisters had lived. It was more than enough evidence to connect everything.”
“So it’s over, then,” Duo said.
“It seems to be. Even the media storm has died down,” Heero replied.
Duo shook his head after a few minutes, smiling. “To completely change the subject here...I vaguely remember half the Manguanacs coming in here and singing in harmony. Did that happen?”
Heero laughed a little. “Not quite. But there were here. Mostly all at once.”
“That was nice of ‘em,” Duo mused. “Heh, I’m surprised the medical types let so many of them in at the one time, especially after the entire household of guests and staff was rushed here all at once after the gassing for tests. I’ll bet the nurses are going to throw a party as soon as you wheel me out of here.”
“I doubt that,” Heero shook his head, then kissed Duo’s cheek. “If I didn’t scare them off, I think half the nurses--men and women alike--would be always in here trying to fluff your pillows.”
Duo snickered. “Fluff my pillows? Did you mean that as a euphemism or did it just come out that way?”
Heero snorted, then laughed a little as well.
“We’re so lucky,” Duo whispered suddenly. “It could have been so much worse. I mean, Tredici could have died from the gas...not woken up and starting screaming her little head off, bringing Catherine and the paramedics right to us...Hilde could’ve lost her kid...hell, we could have all gone up in a fiery explosion and the psycho would have gotten away.”
Heero bowed his head. “I know.”
Sighing, Duo hugged Heero awkwardly on the small hospital bed. They were in danger of toppling, but it was worth it. “It’s not your fault. You suffered enough for it when you were just a kid. They were the ones that held a grudge and blew up the apartment complex. Yours was a mistake, theirs was malicious....And a lot of good came from this, even if we can’t see it right now.”
“Logically I understand that...but the guilt’s just something I’m going to have to wait on,” Heero replied. He paused. “What good?”
“You mean you examined the hell out of all the negative and didn’t catch any of the positive?” Duo asked. “Well look. They did the hard work of finding out about your family. We could easily know your real name. If you want to, we could go from there and contact the rest of your family. It wouldn’t be hard at all.”
“I thought about that actually,” Heero shook his head. This was not easy to talk about. “How do you think a normal bunch of people would feel finding out that they’re related to a Gundam pilot, someone whose continued existence caused two of their own to be killed?”
Duo frowned. “If they weren’t happy to have gained another family member and couldn’t see past things that weren’t his fault, then they wouldn’t be your family anyway.”
“What?”
“That’s the other good thing we learned from all this mess. That psycho chick was totally right. Blood doesn’t make a family. Love does. That’s it, period,” Duo shook his head, then looked right into Heero’s eyes. “Understand?”
“I think so,” Heero replied slowly.
“The rest just shatters when it has to deal with any sort of pressure. I’m still here. Everyone else is too. We didn’t break. You already have a big family,” Duo smiled. Then he made a face. “I sound too sappy. It must be the euphoria from finally getting out of here.”
“Then shall we get on with it?” Heero smiled back, sliding off the bed.
“Hell yes!” Duo exclaimed, letting himself be helped into the wheelchair. They both knew his leg was still aching and it saved time if he just shut up and accept the assistance. “Let’s go.”
It didn’t take long for them to get signed out, since they’d dealt with everything except Duo himself.
“Told you we’d have wheelchair races,” Duo laughed a little, thumbing the armrest of the wheelchair absently. He looked up at Heero and winked.
Heero bent over and kissed Duo firmly, ignoring the other people in the corridor. They were both fine. Their lives would go on. “You were right.”
They left the hospital.
~ ~ ~ ~
end.