Disclaimer: It's not mine! STFU!

“Please, Quatre, I'm begging you.”

The incessant beeping and clacking and hushed hospital noises were driving me off the wall. I'd been hearing them for the past thirty-seven hours – okay, so I'd been unconscious for most of those, minor detail – and I had yet to be allowed out of this god-forsaken bed.

“Duo, you aren't ready,” Quatre told me, for most likely the billionth time.

“Stop whining,” Trowa said from behind him. “You put yourself into this situation.”

I glared at him, unable to accept such words when I had yet to see Heero. Who was still struggling against a coma. And may never wake up.

My heart did some interesting things at that knowledge.

“Is Maxwell still whining?” Wufei asked, wheeling himself into the room with a look of annoyance. I'd thought more than once to ask him if he was supposed to be wheeling himself around, but I figured I shouldn't butt in on a subject I had no right to talk about.

“Yes,” Trowa immediately harrumphed.

“Maxwell, you dick. I don't want to hear a word of it.”

Wufei, by the way, had been pissy ever since I'd woken up. Something about my trying to kill myself and how it was absolutely unforgivable. At least until I was well again. Or something.

“Wufei, I need to see Heero,” I said, though I knew it was a stupid, selfish request.

“No.”

I scowled. “Look, I'm the stupid bastard who shot him-”

“And then tried to kill himself,” Wufei cut in, finishing the sentence.

“Fine. I'm the stupid bastard that shot Heero Yuy and then tried to kill himself, and I want to fucking see him.”

“No,” Wufei said again. “The doctors say he went into shock when he heard the news and that he needs all the rest he can get.”

I winced at the reminder. Not only had I shot the man I loved, but when he'd overheard Wufei screaming to Quatre that I would kill myself, he'd apparently freaked out, which had upset his injury, which had in turn almost killed him. So he'd slipped into a coma solely in order to preserve his life.

“I need to see him,” I said again. “I'll be good. I'll just look at him and then I'll leave. I won't make any noise. Come on, Wufei, you know I would never...” I winced again; honestly, there was no way someone could know I wouldn't hurt Heero willingly. Not after all of this.

Wufei sighed, but it sounded more aggravated than anything else. It was Quatre who stepped forward. “All right,” he said quietly.

“Winner!”

“Quatre!” Trowa hissed.

Quatre turned on them both. “How would you feel, Trowa, if it were me?!” he demanded. “Because if it were you, and all of this had happened because you'd played your part a bit too well... I'd want to do the same as Duo! I wouldn't...”

Well, at least it shut the two of them up.

“Come on, Duo. If you can sit up in the bed, I'll go and get a wheelchair for you.”

“Thank you, Quatre,” I said as sincerely as I possibly could, and just sat the hell up, ignoring the pain in my joints and muscles. I'd pulled several of them, and it would take weeks to fully heal, but in the end I'd been saved.

Enter sigh here.

Wufei and Trowa glared at me from their little spots in the room, so I very carefully avoided eye contact. I'd already told the both of them that they could hate me to their hearts' content. I deserved that and more, after all.

It was a few minutes later that Quatre came in with a doctor, a wheelchair before him. And though I said I could handle the transfer on my own, Quatre still carefully moved me to the wheelchair and deposited me safely down. It was amazing just how much said transfer hurt.

“Duo, I have to warn you,” Quatre said, leaning down to speak into my ear as he wheeled me out of the room, “he doesn't look too good.”

I'd already told myself that, but hearing it was like a stab to the chest.

But my worst fears didn't quite stack up. When Quatre had successfully gotten my through the elevator and past the hallways and finally opened that door, the sight that greeted me was...

Heero was a lump on the bed, a very pale, very quiet lump. One with tubes that looked like tentacles splayed all over and around him, and that beeping sound somehow made the humming of the machinery louder, more ominous. His IV bag swayed on its pole. His eyes seemed almost sunken into his face.

“Oh God,” I moaned, and leaned forward as if to stand on my own. Quatre hurriedly pushed me to the side of the bed.

Closer, it looked even worse. If I couldn't hear his heartbeat through every beep, I'd think he was dead. His chest hardly rose or fell. He looked... dead. Pale and dead. He didn't even smell like Heero, all dosed up on drugs and trapped in the smell of antiseptics.

“Heero,” I whispered. “I'm so sorry. I...” But how could you apologize for what I'd done? What could you possibly say to take away... to take away the scars I'd given him? “I won't do it,” I said. “I won't try to hurt myself again. I won't hurt you again. Heero...” I forgot Quatre was there; that was the only excuse I had for letting myself lean on that railing and sobbing like a child.

“Duo.” Quatre's voice was quiet, pained.

I flinched and quickly dried my eyes. Hell. I could remember the days when I never freaking cried; now I felt like every minute I was awake, my eyes would want to just tear right the hell up.

“It's my fault,” I said, my voice hardly more than a breath. I'd sworn not to bother Heero; if nothing else, I had to at least keep that promise.

“Duo, you couldn't have known.”

No, that was true enough. There was no way I could have known – Heero had played his part brilliantly. But still, that didn't change the fact that my gun and my bullet had torn apart Heero's organs, even to the point where they had ended up just picking out pieces of them from inside his body. It was a miracle Heero survived the surgery.

“I shouldn't have...” I clenched the railing so tightly I feared for a moment I would bend it. “I should have known Heero would... and then I tried to...! I didn't even think about how he would feel about it! I just thought of myself – of how much I was hurting! Heero!”

And I just said fuck it and started crying again.

Quatre was silent. There was nothing he could say.

“Heero, I'm sorry! I'll do everything I can, anything you ask, I swear, just please wake up.”

I was not expecting a reply. I hadn't expected a twitch of a hand or a groan or anything clichéd or soap opera-ish as all that. That is not to say that I wasn't devastated when I was wheeled out and there was absolutely no change whatsoever.

I was very silent on the way back, keeping my lips firmly sealed. Only when my eyes had dried and my shoulders had stilled had Quatre silently pulled me away from that bed. Like a child I almost grabbed onto the railing, but I let myself be taken away. It would be stupid to grab onto something I myself had thrown away.

“Thanks for this, Qat,” I murmured when the elevator doors opened and we stepped back onto my floor.

“It wasn't a problem,” Quatre said, and I think his voice was soft in deference to my own.

Trowa and Wufei were still there in my room when Quatre brought me in, both oddly quiet, as well. Quatre wordlessly helped me back into bed while Wufei and Trowa watched, then tucked me in. “Now rest,” Quatre said softly. “All that must have worn you out.”

I silently thanked him for keeping quiet about my little breakdown. Quatre just closed up the portable wheelchair and leaned it against the wall. When he saw me watching him, he cocked an eyebrow. I obediently shut my eyes.

It was odd; I hadn't really been paying attention to it, but once I was back in my hospital bed, all I could think about was the horrible ache all over my body. My muscles had been stretched too far and had ripped like string cheese, and my joints had been tested so often they'd actually weakened in some areas. The doctors had had a pretty little time patching me up. Thankfully I'd been in la-la land during their hard work.

And apparently even just sitting up had tested the limits of my capabilities. Agh. I was back to recuperating. It was getting old.

But I would take it and more if Heero would just...

Damn. And now I sounded like a martyr. And considering it was me who put the both of us in this situation, acting as a martyr just didn't seem quite right.

“Heero,” I tried, simply moving my lips more than actually speaking. I take it back. I take it all back. Heero. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry...

<*>

“Duo. Duo, wake up.”

My shoulder was shaken. I grumbled and swatted the hand away.

Heero chuckled at me. “Duo, seriously. Get up. You have your doctor's appointment-”

I jumped up and grabbed Heero's shoulders and looked straight into his cobalt eyes. Was this real? Was this really happening? “Are you... real?”

“Duo? Are you okay?” He touched his hands on my shoulders, a gentle thing. “Did you have a nightmare?”

A nightmare. I felt almost giddy. A nightmare? Had it really been?

I laughed. “Maybe,” I told him. “Or maybe this is a dream?”

But instead of going mother-hen concerned on me, he simply smiled. Yes. Definitely a dream. “If this were a dream,” Heero asked me, as if there was a chance in hell that it wasn't, “what would you want me to do?”

I already had the answer in my hands. A simple one. The perfect one.

I laughed again as I kissed him.

It was a simple matter for him to push me back, to place my head on the pillow beneath me and kiss me in earnest. I pulled him down on top of me, and he pressed our bodies together.

It was warm. So warm it almost burned me. Then his hands were on me, cupping my cheeks, running down my neck. Warm. His hands were warm.

“Heero,” I whispered when he released my lips.

“Hmm?” He slipped down my skin, latched onto my pulse. I jerked up at the electric shock of it, at the crashing wave that slipped up and down my body, flushing my mind of everything but Heero's tongue on my neck and fingers on my chest, teasing me, making me gasp.

“Heero,” I repeated. “Heero, I love you.”

Heero chuckled. “What's this all of a sudden?”

“Because you won't wake up,” I told him, even as I grabbed his hair and freaking lurched up on the bed. “No matter how much I called for you. Because I killed you.”

“What are you talking about?” His hands were tugging at my shirt, and with a sigh I raised my arms and let him slip the garment off.

“I love you,” I said again, letting it slide, and made a strange little noise when his teeth carefully bit down on my nipple. The shock this time made my back arch like a bow.

Once he was finally done his little administrations, he looked back up at me, those deep blue eyes of his deadly serious. “I love you, too, Duo. Forever.”

I woke up just as he began kissing me again.

It wasn't surprising, but somehow the pain of it still choked me. I was alone in the room now; it was night, and I'd slept through whatever interesting discussion Quatre and Trowa and Wufei had had. I was alone.

I was alone because I'd made myself alone.

The pillow was the perfect muffler, and once again I found myself using one, only this time on myself. I shook with sobs until I just had nothing left in me, nothing but the pain in my body from bouncing around and shuddering, and I accepted the pain with a sigh and carefully let myself go back to sleep, making sure it was only a half-sleep and that I would wake up before I dreamed.

<*>

Because of my tendency to wake up just as I was about to drift into a deep sleep, I'd had an interestingly long night. A doctor came in all bright and chipper for his morning routine and checked up on me. He said I looked like I hadn't gotten a lot of sleep, and did I want any medication for it? I just told him I was worried about my friend and I didn't need any pills. When he let it go, I figured the news had traveled. It always seemed to in hospitals.

Then I had a nurse come in to test my muscles and check their healing progress, which even I could tell was minimal, and then she helped me exercise my joints. Oh joy, oh bliss.

So I was hurting like a bitch when Quatre and Trowa returned.

I was kind of surprised that Trowa let Quatre come see me – before, he'd seen my existence alone as taboo. But there they were, Trowa taking his usual place against the wall, arms crossed and one visible eye staring steadily at me. Like a bodyguard. I almost laughed at the thought.

“Duo? How are you?”

Quatre came right up to the side of my bed. I sent him a tired smile to let him know I caught the subtle reference to my bawling up a storm yesterday. “Better,” I told him. Then on a whim I snaked out my Jester's smile and nodded over to Trowa. Dammit, I wanted to know. I was curious as hell. “So how come your leash got longer?”

Quatre seemed to flinch for a short second before tensing up and sending a careful look to Trowa. I just lifted an eyebrow. The taller man looked wicked pissed.

“I told him,” Quatre said carefully, “that if he kept it up, I'd... kick him out.”

I felt the promise of death as soon as I started laughing.

“Duo?” Quatre sounded almost distressed. “What's so funny?”

“Oh, Qat!” I randomly grabbed his shoulder and clutched at my stomach – freaking ow – as I tried to calm myself down. “Qat, that's hilarious! I never would've imagined you telling Trowa to fuck off, even nicely! Oh my God, how'd he take it?” In my humor, I had completely neglected the fact that said he was currently in the room, clenching his arms so tight it was probably cutting off his circulation.

Quatre seemed, however, to relax and even pulled up a chair. “Do you remember that last time I visited you, and how Trowa had arrived and had me leave?”

I nodded, my smile slipping a fraction. I very well remembered it.

“Well,” and here Quatre blushed cutely, “we got into an argument almost immediately. I... was angry, because I wasn't allowed to see you, and you're my best friend.”

Ah, shit. Hello guilt.

“Same,” I mumbled, looking over at the wall.

“I know.” Quatre beamed that smile of his at me and leaned in conspiratorially. I flicked a glance at Trowa, but Quatre only stage-whispered. “I kind of told him just what you said.”

“Huh?” It took a second, but then I was laughing all over again. “No way! You seriously said it? The 'f' word? You?! Oh my God, say it now!”

Quatre backed away, blushing furiously. “No.”

“Come ooonn,” I wheedled. “Come on come on come ooonn.” I grabbed his arm and pulled it.

“No,” he repeated, but he seemed to be having a hard time not laughing. “I'm not angry enough.”

“Aaaagh. Trowa!” I called, “call me an asshole. Say I'm a dick.”

“Duo!” Quatre admonished.

“I wanna heeeaar. You never say shit like that. Please? Pretty please?”

“Glad to see you've recovered,” Trowa said sarcastically.

All things stopped.

Quatre and I both gaped at the man. His hands were no longer clenched, though they were still crossed over his chest. And his body wasn't tensed to spring, though he'd always remained leaning back against the wall.

I think my mouth dropped open.

Um, where was the hostility?

“Quatre, out.”

The order was not rude, just kind of... ordered. Like Heero when he always told me to eat and to eat everything, dammit, or he'd shove it in my mouth and choke me with it until I swallowed.

Ow. Best not to think about Heero.

Quatre seemed about as stunned as I was, because he stood very, very slowly. “Trowa?”

“Out,” the man said firmly, but his eye never left mine, and finally Quatre turned to me and promised... something – food? Maybe food – before he carefully left my room. Though Quatre did leave the hospital door wide open, a sort of warning, most likely, to his lover.

Trowa pushed off from the wall and sat in the chair Quatre had pulled up. My eyes followed every single move he made, just in case he wanted to strangle me or something.

“I haven't forgiven you,” Trowa snapped out suddenly.

I jumped. “Uh, I really hadn't even thought that,” I said honestly.

“It's just...” Trowa broke eye contact and dropped his head between his knees. “These past few days... I haven't been able to get him to laugh like that.” It seemed painful for Trowa to admit that.

“Uh, ah, that's probably because he was worried about me. So really I only repaid my debt, right?” I held up my hands in a sort of surrender. It was kind of creepy, seeing the unflappable Trowa bent like that.

“No. The truth is, the two of you have a sort of... understanding... between one another. One that I don't share in.”

Uh-oh. Was Trowa jealous? Was that physically possible? “Well, we did kind of commiserate together,” I tried.

He snorted. “Over what?”

“Unrequited love,” I answered simply.

My answer made that head jerk back up. It was a relief to see that spine of his stiffen back up; it was even scarier than the glare. “What do you mean?”

“Well, we both loved someone we thought didn't love us back. We pined.” I gave him a little nervous chuckle; the glare was back. “Uh, look, maybe you and Quatre should talk about, uh, something other than me? I mean, obviously there are a couple holes... in...” I shut up at the fierce look I got.

“And your relationship with Yuy,” Trowa said steely, “has no holes in it?”

“Uh, my relationship with Heero is like Swiss cheese?” I said, and though I'd meant for it to simply be a statement of fact, it ended up lilting up at the end like a question. It was probably because of the scowl I was receiving.

But after I said it, Trowa's head ducked down and his shoulders started shaking and I got really scared. Was the man crying? I bit my lip. Should I call Quatre back? It wasn't like I knew how to help this guy.

“You bastard,” Trowa managed, and his voice was definitely messed up, “I'd managed to forget just... just what kind of person you were.”

well how the fuck was I supposed to respond to that? “Uh, sorry?” I tried.

He snorted. “I had forgotten, over time... just how much you feel.”

Huh?

I waved my arms a little crazily, until the pain in them almost made it impossible for me to concentrate. “Hey, hey, Trowa, uh, um... don't cry, okay?” Great. Now I was the one feeling all panicked.

But when Trowa looked up to me in confusion, there was absolutely no trace of tears. “Cry?” he echoed, and his voice would have been priceless if I hadn't been trying to figure out what the hell the problem was if the bastard wasn't crying.

“Trowa!”

Quatre came running into the room then. Trowa was only half-standing when Quatre simply launched himself into his arms. You could see the acrobatic training come into play as Trowa kept them both on their feet. “Quatre, what is it? What's wrong?”

“It's Heero,” Quatre sobbed, and the little blond clutched Trowa's shirt with fingers tight with tension.

The room got kind of fuzzy, like cottonballs had been stuck in my ears and glasses with the wrong prescription had been placed over my eyes. And things started to tilt.

“What?” Trowa demanded, but his voice faded in and out, and it was really soft. A saw him push Quatre away to look into his eyes, but I missed what he demanded. I only saw how his eyebrows were scrunched down worriedly.

“He's – Trowa, Heero's...”

I felt the shadowy grip of unconsciousness just before I slipped into its hold.

<*>

Muahaha. And for the sake of preserving Duo's manliness, we shall not say he fainted. He simply fell unconscious. >_> <_< Not like it isn't my fault he fell unconscious to begin with...