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GW - Newtypes - chapter 3 scene 2
First
Previous
Heero could tell Wufei hadn't expected to see him waiting at the bottom of the stairs. The man didn't slow down long, just one step out of synch, but his jaw tensed and his shoulders squared, bracing for confrontation.
Heero checked his inner clock and nodded. "If we walk fast, we can catch the next bus to the hospital."
Wufei stopped walking then, a couple of steps over the landing.
"Yuy..."
Heero didn't want to discuss things right now. 'Do you mean you already know how stupid I'm going to be?' 'Do you mean you're coming with me?' There was nothing to say. He pushed away from the wall and opened the front door. Wufei was slowly taking another step down, though that looked more mechanical than deliberate.
He stepped off the stairs and went to him -- to Heero, not the door, but Heero stepped out into the street and started walking down toward the bus stop, pretending he didn't know Wufei had meant to talk to him privately.
"Are you coming?" Heero asked, because he didn't want Wufei to ask him the same thing, because Wufei should have known the answer already.
Wufei seemed conflicted for a second; but then it was gone, and he caught up to Heero without even really looking at him. They walked in a silence heavy with things unsaid.
Heero had thought Wufei looked tired, three days ago in the computer room, but now he looked beyond that. There was purpose in every single of his movements, but the kind Heero remembered from the war. The kind that saw a goal, and nothing afterward. 'Just one step more. Then another step. Then I put that bomb in the car. The rest doesn't matter.'
The bus ride took only fifteen minutes, and then they were just a block away from their goal. Almost a hour and a half left to do what needed to be done, before they had to be at the spaceport; he'd worked with much tighter schedules. Heero walked with elastic steps, pretending to take on the sights, nothing but a normal young man on a stroll. Neither of them were in uniform; if he acted normal enough, he hoped the passersby wouldn't take much notice of the seething ball of negative emotions that was his partner. They didn't need to be remembered.
"What's the plan?" he asked casually, noting down the position of security cameras covering banks and shops and arranging to block their view of Wufei's more distinctive ponytail, more visibly Asian face.
Wufei twitched a shoulder in what was probably supposed to be a shrug. "I'll see when I get there."
Heero frowned a little. He'd make the contingency plans, then. He had looked at the hospital blueprints, and it wasn't the war anymore, with guards everywhere; breaking out should not require explosives this time around. The difficult thing was to get into the no doubt guarded room where they kept the comatose women. If they knocked out personnel to impersonate them, that would burn down even more bridges than simply sneaking in...
He wasn't sure such a little thing would matter in the long run, compared to the rest of their offenses.
"You can't come with me," Wufei said under his breath as the hospital entrance came into view.
Heero snorted. Smiled, fleetingly. "You need someone who has experience driving ambulances."
Wufei glanced at him, briefly breaking his single-minded focus on what was in front of him. The reference seemed to puzzle him, but in the end he didn't ask. His gaze hardened. "I won't let you throw away your career for me, Yuy."
"Chang," Heero said almost pleasantly. "Shut up." He took the steps up to the hospital gate first, ending the conversation.
"Hey, Yuy!"
Heero felt Wufei go tense behind him, and stepped in the middle before he could lead the Preventer plainclothes agent to a discreet corner and knock her out. " Natasha." She was carrying her gun. Here on the job then. "Security detail?"
"Yeah, you wouldn't believe the number of reporters. Like those poor women are doing anything but lying there like slabs of meat."
Heero shifted his weight from one foot to another casually, bumping into Wufei and hiding his clenched fist.
"Whatcha doin' here?"
"Dietrik roped me into bringing a care package to his cousin," he said, lifting his own backpack off his shoulder as if to point at something inside. He'd heard his lunch partner complain about the woman enough that he remembered her name and room number. "Captain Matsumoto around?"
"Sure, this way."
Heero frowned a little, like he wasn't extremely happy. It wasn't a secret that they didn't get along much. The man was extremely sharp-minded, but either he had an anti-electronic power or sitting in front of a keyboard made his IQ revert to negative points. "Let's hope he misses us then. I'm still not done with his computer."
Natasha laughed. "Well, I didn't see you."
Heero offered a small smile of thanks, and hoped she would stick to that story later on; he didn't want her to be reprimanded for not stopping them. He nodded a salute and walked away, Wufei on his heels. Dietrik's cousin was in an entirely different wing, but he was betting on the agent not checking.
"If Matsumoto sees us," Wufei said, and fell silent. Heero just nodded. If the man saw them, he was high enough on the food chain to perhaps be aware they weren't supposed to be there. Hard to tell until they ran into him.
There was a Preventers guard at the entry of the ward, but the man was another Heero knew on sight, and he was on the phone; he gave them a very professional look-over and a little nod of acknowledgement, but didn't interrupt his conversation.
"His partner?" he said under his breath. He couldn't locate the other half of what should have been a pair.
Wufei tilted his head toward him. "He was talking about a press conference."
Ahh. Then they would have to gamble that it meant the absent partner had gone there to help. Heero hoped it would drain away enough of the security detail.
Soon they would reach an area of the hospital where visitors weren't welcome. Without breaking his stride, Heero walked into an empty nurse station, chose two lockers that would let him block the view of the camera with his back, and casually broke each lock with a twist of the wrist. The strain he hadn't prepared for made his joints ache, but he didn't let himself show it as he put on the scrubs. Wetting his hands at the sink, he combed his hair back. It wouldn't hold long, but perhaps enough.
"It won't hold up to someone who knows either of us," he noted quietly.
Wufei gave a dismissive snort, like he hadn't even planned to bother. Heero clenched his jaw and tried to stuff his worry away. He couldn't. Wufei looked too... He didn't know.
Too dull, too flat. Heero trusted Wufei at his back in most situations, but everyone had a breaking point; and he didn't know if Wufei would implode and crumble, or explode -- if he broke outward he wouldn't go down alone. Heero didn't know how to tip the balance, or which would be the least damaging option.
"Wufei -- the press conference. They're having it in the hospital. There's still time to go on record as official next of kin. Maybe we can control the spin the media puts on this."
The rage suddenly burning in Wufei's eyes refused to be reasoned with. "No," he snarled.
Heero growled right back, wishing he could grab him by the shoulders and shove him against the wall -- but the last thing they needed was Security dropping by to stop a fight. "Stop reacting. Start thinking. Tell me why not."
"You didn't have to come with me," Wufei hissed -- just enough control left to keep from raising his voice. "I don't need your help, I don't want your help--"
Heero grabbed him by the collar and kissed him, and thought it might attract just as much attention as a fight, and didn't care enough. It wasn't a nice kiss, just a quick, harsh way to startle him out of it, one that wouldn't end in violence like shaking him or throwing water at his face would have.
"That's not up for debate," Heero said, eyes hard and uncompromising. "Talk to me."
Wufei shook off his brief moment of shock, walls coming back up. "Shouldn't you have asked that first?"
"Stop stalling, someone will come."
Wufei clenched and opened his fists, breathing out slowly, and Heero relaxed a little. "... Because then Madison will spring the trap, and I'll be buried in red tape, and perhaps thrown in prison, and I won't have any options at all." He sneered, but his voice was more resentful than furious. "Une must have had her reasons to want me away."
He sounded wholly unconvinced, but that was good enough for Heero. "... As long as you don't forget you have allies inside the system."
Wufei stared at him as if he had totally missed the point, and that was a look Heero hadn't seen aimed at him, ever.
"I went to her burial," he said in a quiet, precise way Heero didn't like, every word bitten off and spat out. "I went to her burial, and threw earth on her casket, and it was empty."
His rage seemed to coalesce, harden into a lump of hate and determination.
"I don't care what their reasons are. Nothing is ever going to be good enough. I don't care what's the trap, or why. I don't care why they think they have jurisdiction. They don't. She's mine."
Heero nodded slowly. He didn't even mention that Wufei would likely lose his job, perhaps worse. Wufei cared about his job -- cared about the things he could do thanks to it -- but not at that price. And he was running on emotion and not logic, and Heero wanted to tell him to stop, slow down, find out what everyone really wanted, make a real plan -- but he would never wait that long.
Wufei turned away from him, staring straight ahead, pride pulling his spine ramrod straight.
"You don't have to stay."
Heero snorted. He'd never been half as attached to the Preventers as Wufei was. The only bothersome thing was he'd gotten used to his Heero Yuy ID. "I don't have to do a lot of things. Let's go."
No one stopped them; the few orderlies they saw looked too harried to let their eyes and curiosity wander. Wufei and Heero matched their pace and attitude to seem like they belonged and knew perfectly well where they were going. Heero didn't, but they would find a clue -- ah. He dived into an open cupboard, pulling Wufei after him. Just past the angle of the corridor he could hear angry voices.
"Don't talk to me about life first!"
Doctors, more likely -- orderlies didn't walk with quite that decisive, proprietary note to their steps.
"Those women were used as living incubators. How is that not horribly wrong?"
Heero stole a glance at Wufei, but his face seemed carved in stone, offering no hint of reaction.
"I'm not saying it isn't --"
"They died, Karl, they died and instead of letting them go, they hooked them up on machines to force their hearts to keep beating and they bred them! That's just -- that's just... I can't even imagine why on Earth no one has pulled the plug yet. If there's anything left of them in there, they would thank us for ending it."
"... What if we unplug and they don't die?"
The first doctor's voice quieted down, went tense and cagey. "Perhaps it would be a kindness to slip up with a dosage."
"Shit, Ormon, you know the policy. If a patient isn't dying on their own, and they're not in a state to ask to speed it up --"
"...Yeah. I know. I just... Feel bad for them."
"Lying," Wufei whispered, eyes hard.
Heero arched an eyebrow. There had been something subtly off in the man's voice, but he hadn't identified it.
"Maybe true, but not all of it." Wufei tilted his head. "...Afraid. Afraid of them."
The patients? But Newtypes or not, there wasn't a lot unconscious people could do -- shit.
Not a lot, apart from waking up.
Heero could see the second it hit Wufei; he swayed, hand shooting out to press against the wall. He breathed out a denial, more to himself than to Heero. "They said brain dead. Vegetables--"
Heero grabbed his arm. "You said afraid. Means his perspective's skewed."
Wufei nodded, but Heero could tell he was still reeling. "... Are they gone?"
Heero nodded, and peeked out of the cupboard to confirm. The corridor was empty; he slipped out quickly. There would be guards by the observation room, and perhaps someone inside to monitor vitals, and they couldn't afford to infiltrate discreetly anymore. Wufei wouldn't wait that long.
They waited until the camera was turned away, and swept through the last corridor in total silence. Wufei caught the Preventer guard with a precise chop to the back of the neck before the man could fully turn around while Heero slipped in the room, checking for threats. He closed the door neatly the second Wufei had dragged the unconscious body in, almost catching the man's shoes.
The room was more like a dormitory, eight bed, four on each side, full of tubes and beeping machines. Only seven of the beds were occupied.
Heero was still scanning their faces for the proper age range when Wufei moved. He went straight to her, as if he'd already known where she was.
She was about their age, but Heero couldn't tell more, if she was eighteen or twenty-three, what kind of personality she'd had, whether she'd been pretty. Her straw-like hair had been braided on the side to get it out of the way, but a few locks fell across her eyes. She didn't look asleep, he could tell even around the respirator mask. Features too slack, ashen complexion. She looked gone. Not dead, just -- gone. Heero forced himself to look away. He laid the unconscious Preventer on his side, so he wouldn't choke, and started walking through the room, checking the other women's clipboards and what he could understand of the machines attached to them.
"... Nataku."
Heero kept his back to his partner, but the machines could as well have been mirrors. He saw Wufei's shaking hand take hers, his body slowly, so slowly curve over hers, staring at what he could see of her face.
Heero didn't know much about Chang Meiran, only that it had been an arranged marriage, that they'd started out hating each other, and that Wufei hadn't stopped trying to make himself worthy ever since.
It looked like he wasn't ever going to let go, knuckles white, leaning over her like he was trying to curl around her body, become her shell, her cradle. Heero stood in silence, knowing he'd been forgotten. He should have left, let Wufei have some privacy, but there was nowhere to go.
"You can't break down now," Heero said quietly. "There's no time."
There was no response for so long he thought there wouldn't be any. And when it came it was raspy, choked up, and he hated it. "...Ah. Yes."
He took the time to do a full circuit around the room before he joined his partner, time enough for Wufei to get a hold of himself -- but even someone who didn't know him at all could have seen he wasn't alright at all. Heero didn't comment, just picked up Meiran's clipboard and read the doctor's notes.
"--Ah. That's new."
Wufei blinked slowly and tore his eyes away from her. "What is it?"
"She's in a persistent vegetative state--" Wufei flinched; Heero continued, not knowing whether it was really kind of him to say so. But Wufei would want the whole truth, no matter if it broke him. "But it isn't full brain death."
Wufei blinked again, like the words didn't really make sense. "... Full brain death? What does that mean?"
Heero frowned, and read more, trying to find the meaning through the jargon. "The activity in a lot of sectors of her brain is very low -- sporadic, it says... But enough dark areas have thrown off a few sparks at some point that they can't say it's dead." He looked up, meeting Wufei's eyes with a sober look of his own. "There's still an overwhelming probability that it will never get better, and that if she ever wakes up she will be severely mentally impaired." He glanced at her body then, thin like a stick, muscle melted away. He could see no curled limb, no visible atrophy, but that didn't mean her motor functions would fare any better. "They're giving her some drugs to ensure she sleeps more peacefully, but it looks like those are just in case. She probably wouldn't wake up on her own even if they stopped."
Wufei was quiet as he took everything in, once again staring at his wife's slack face.
"What do you want to do?"
Wufei didn't even seem to think about it. "Take her out of here." He paused, closed his eyes. His thumb was rubbing a little circle on the back of her hand; she didn't react. "Then -- let her body decide." He would have seemed almost normal, voice quiet but steady, if Heero hadn't seen him swallow. "If she wants to go..."
Heero nodded briskly, pulled his laptop out of his backpack, and went about arranging their escape and abduction.
Next.
Previous
Heero could tell Wufei hadn't expected to see him waiting at the bottom of the stairs. The man didn't slow down long, just one step out of synch, but his jaw tensed and his shoulders squared, bracing for confrontation.
Heero checked his inner clock and nodded. "If we walk fast, we can catch the next bus to the hospital."
Wufei stopped walking then, a couple of steps over the landing.
"Yuy..."
Heero didn't want to discuss things right now. 'Do you mean you already know how stupid I'm going to be?' 'Do you mean you're coming with me?' There was nothing to say. He pushed away from the wall and opened the front door. Wufei was slowly taking another step down, though that looked more mechanical than deliberate.
He stepped off the stairs and went to him -- to Heero, not the door, but Heero stepped out into the street and started walking down toward the bus stop, pretending he didn't know Wufei had meant to talk to him privately.
"Are you coming?" Heero asked, because he didn't want Wufei to ask him the same thing, because Wufei should have known the answer already.
Wufei seemed conflicted for a second; but then it was gone, and he caught up to Heero without even really looking at him. They walked in a silence heavy with things unsaid.
Heero had thought Wufei looked tired, three days ago in the computer room, but now he looked beyond that. There was purpose in every single of his movements, but the kind Heero remembered from the war. The kind that saw a goal, and nothing afterward. 'Just one step more. Then another step. Then I put that bomb in the car. The rest doesn't matter.'
The bus ride took only fifteen minutes, and then they were just a block away from their goal. Almost a hour and a half left to do what needed to be done, before they had to be at the spaceport; he'd worked with much tighter schedules. Heero walked with elastic steps, pretending to take on the sights, nothing but a normal young man on a stroll. Neither of them were in uniform; if he acted normal enough, he hoped the passersby wouldn't take much notice of the seething ball of negative emotions that was his partner. They didn't need to be remembered.
"What's the plan?" he asked casually, noting down the position of security cameras covering banks and shops and arranging to block their view of Wufei's more distinctive ponytail, more visibly Asian face.
Wufei twitched a shoulder in what was probably supposed to be a shrug. "I'll see when I get there."
Heero frowned a little. He'd make the contingency plans, then. He had looked at the hospital blueprints, and it wasn't the war anymore, with guards everywhere; breaking out should not require explosives this time around. The difficult thing was to get into the no doubt guarded room where they kept the comatose women. If they knocked out personnel to impersonate them, that would burn down even more bridges than simply sneaking in...
He wasn't sure such a little thing would matter in the long run, compared to the rest of their offenses.
"You can't come with me," Wufei said under his breath as the hospital entrance came into view.
Heero snorted. Smiled, fleetingly. "You need someone who has experience driving ambulances."
Wufei glanced at him, briefly breaking his single-minded focus on what was in front of him. The reference seemed to puzzle him, but in the end he didn't ask. His gaze hardened. "I won't let you throw away your career for me, Yuy."
"Chang," Heero said almost pleasantly. "Shut up." He took the steps up to the hospital gate first, ending the conversation.
"Hey, Yuy!"
Heero felt Wufei go tense behind him, and stepped in the middle before he could lead the Preventer plainclothes agent to a discreet corner and knock her out. " Natasha." She was carrying her gun. Here on the job then. "Security detail?"
"Yeah, you wouldn't believe the number of reporters. Like those poor women are doing anything but lying there like slabs of meat."
Heero shifted his weight from one foot to another casually, bumping into Wufei and hiding his clenched fist.
"Whatcha doin' here?"
"Dietrik roped me into bringing a care package to his cousin," he said, lifting his own backpack off his shoulder as if to point at something inside. He'd heard his lunch partner complain about the woman enough that he remembered her name and room number. "Captain Matsumoto around?"
"Sure, this way."
Heero frowned a little, like he wasn't extremely happy. It wasn't a secret that they didn't get along much. The man was extremely sharp-minded, but either he had an anti-electronic power or sitting in front of a keyboard made his IQ revert to negative points. "Let's hope he misses us then. I'm still not done with his computer."
Natasha laughed. "Well, I didn't see you."
Heero offered a small smile of thanks, and hoped she would stick to that story later on; he didn't want her to be reprimanded for not stopping them. He nodded a salute and walked away, Wufei on his heels. Dietrik's cousin was in an entirely different wing, but he was betting on the agent not checking.
"If Matsumoto sees us," Wufei said, and fell silent. Heero just nodded. If the man saw them, he was high enough on the food chain to perhaps be aware they weren't supposed to be there. Hard to tell until they ran into him.
There was a Preventers guard at the entry of the ward, but the man was another Heero knew on sight, and he was on the phone; he gave them a very professional look-over and a little nod of acknowledgement, but didn't interrupt his conversation.
"His partner?" he said under his breath. He couldn't locate the other half of what should have been a pair.
Wufei tilted his head toward him. "He was talking about a press conference."
Ahh. Then they would have to gamble that it meant the absent partner had gone there to help. Heero hoped it would drain away enough of the security detail.
Soon they would reach an area of the hospital where visitors weren't welcome. Without breaking his stride, Heero walked into an empty nurse station, chose two lockers that would let him block the view of the camera with his back, and casually broke each lock with a twist of the wrist. The strain he hadn't prepared for made his joints ache, but he didn't let himself show it as he put on the scrubs. Wetting his hands at the sink, he combed his hair back. It wouldn't hold long, but perhaps enough.
"It won't hold up to someone who knows either of us," he noted quietly.
Wufei gave a dismissive snort, like he hadn't even planned to bother. Heero clenched his jaw and tried to stuff his worry away. He couldn't. Wufei looked too... He didn't know.
Too dull, too flat. Heero trusted Wufei at his back in most situations, but everyone had a breaking point; and he didn't know if Wufei would implode and crumble, or explode -- if he broke outward he wouldn't go down alone. Heero didn't know how to tip the balance, or which would be the least damaging option.
"Wufei -- the press conference. They're having it in the hospital. There's still time to go on record as official next of kin. Maybe we can control the spin the media puts on this."
The rage suddenly burning in Wufei's eyes refused to be reasoned with. "No," he snarled.
Heero growled right back, wishing he could grab him by the shoulders and shove him against the wall -- but the last thing they needed was Security dropping by to stop a fight. "Stop reacting. Start thinking. Tell me why not."
"You didn't have to come with me," Wufei hissed -- just enough control left to keep from raising his voice. "I don't need your help, I don't want your help--"
Heero grabbed him by the collar and kissed him, and thought it might attract just as much attention as a fight, and didn't care enough. It wasn't a nice kiss, just a quick, harsh way to startle him out of it, one that wouldn't end in violence like shaking him or throwing water at his face would have.
"That's not up for debate," Heero said, eyes hard and uncompromising. "Talk to me."
Wufei shook off his brief moment of shock, walls coming back up. "Shouldn't you have asked that first?"
"Stop stalling, someone will come."
Wufei clenched and opened his fists, breathing out slowly, and Heero relaxed a little. "... Because then Madison will spring the trap, and I'll be buried in red tape, and perhaps thrown in prison, and I won't have any options at all." He sneered, but his voice was more resentful than furious. "Une must have had her reasons to want me away."
He sounded wholly unconvinced, but that was good enough for Heero. "... As long as you don't forget you have allies inside the system."
Wufei stared at him as if he had totally missed the point, and that was a look Heero hadn't seen aimed at him, ever.
"I went to her burial," he said in a quiet, precise way Heero didn't like, every word bitten off and spat out. "I went to her burial, and threw earth on her casket, and it was empty."
His rage seemed to coalesce, harden into a lump of hate and determination.
"I don't care what their reasons are. Nothing is ever going to be good enough. I don't care what's the trap, or why. I don't care why they think they have jurisdiction. They don't. She's mine."
Heero nodded slowly. He didn't even mention that Wufei would likely lose his job, perhaps worse. Wufei cared about his job -- cared about the things he could do thanks to it -- but not at that price. And he was running on emotion and not logic, and Heero wanted to tell him to stop, slow down, find out what everyone really wanted, make a real plan -- but he would never wait that long.
Wufei turned away from him, staring straight ahead, pride pulling his spine ramrod straight.
"You don't have to stay."
Heero snorted. He'd never been half as attached to the Preventers as Wufei was. The only bothersome thing was he'd gotten used to his Heero Yuy ID. "I don't have to do a lot of things. Let's go."
No one stopped them; the few orderlies they saw looked too harried to let their eyes and curiosity wander. Wufei and Heero matched their pace and attitude to seem like they belonged and knew perfectly well where they were going. Heero didn't, but they would find a clue -- ah. He dived into an open cupboard, pulling Wufei after him. Just past the angle of the corridor he could hear angry voices.
"Don't talk to me about life first!"
Doctors, more likely -- orderlies didn't walk with quite that decisive, proprietary note to their steps.
"Those women were used as living incubators. How is that not horribly wrong?"
Heero stole a glance at Wufei, but his face seemed carved in stone, offering no hint of reaction.
"I'm not saying it isn't --"
"They died, Karl, they died and instead of letting them go, they hooked them up on machines to force their hearts to keep beating and they bred them! That's just -- that's just... I can't even imagine why on Earth no one has pulled the plug yet. If there's anything left of them in there, they would thank us for ending it."
"... What if we unplug and they don't die?"
The first doctor's voice quieted down, went tense and cagey. "Perhaps it would be a kindness to slip up with a dosage."
"Shit, Ormon, you know the policy. If a patient isn't dying on their own, and they're not in a state to ask to speed it up --"
"...Yeah. I know. I just... Feel bad for them."
"Lying," Wufei whispered, eyes hard.
Heero arched an eyebrow. There had been something subtly off in the man's voice, but he hadn't identified it.
"Maybe true, but not all of it." Wufei tilted his head. "...Afraid. Afraid of them."
The patients? But Newtypes or not, there wasn't a lot unconscious people could do -- shit.
Not a lot, apart from waking up.
Heero could see the second it hit Wufei; he swayed, hand shooting out to press against the wall. He breathed out a denial, more to himself than to Heero. "They said brain dead. Vegetables--"
Heero grabbed his arm. "You said afraid. Means his perspective's skewed."
Wufei nodded, but Heero could tell he was still reeling. "... Are they gone?"
Heero nodded, and peeked out of the cupboard to confirm. The corridor was empty; he slipped out quickly. There would be guards by the observation room, and perhaps someone inside to monitor vitals, and they couldn't afford to infiltrate discreetly anymore. Wufei wouldn't wait that long.
They waited until the camera was turned away, and swept through the last corridor in total silence. Wufei caught the Preventer guard with a precise chop to the back of the neck before the man could fully turn around while Heero slipped in the room, checking for threats. He closed the door neatly the second Wufei had dragged the unconscious body in, almost catching the man's shoes.
The room was more like a dormitory, eight bed, four on each side, full of tubes and beeping machines. Only seven of the beds were occupied.
Heero was still scanning their faces for the proper age range when Wufei moved. He went straight to her, as if he'd already known where she was.
She was about their age, but Heero couldn't tell more, if she was eighteen or twenty-three, what kind of personality she'd had, whether she'd been pretty. Her straw-like hair had been braided on the side to get it out of the way, but a few locks fell across her eyes. She didn't look asleep, he could tell even around the respirator mask. Features too slack, ashen complexion. She looked gone. Not dead, just -- gone. Heero forced himself to look away. He laid the unconscious Preventer on his side, so he wouldn't choke, and started walking through the room, checking the other women's clipboards and what he could understand of the machines attached to them.
"... Nataku."
Heero kept his back to his partner, but the machines could as well have been mirrors. He saw Wufei's shaking hand take hers, his body slowly, so slowly curve over hers, staring at what he could see of her face.
Heero didn't know much about Chang Meiran, only that it had been an arranged marriage, that they'd started out hating each other, and that Wufei hadn't stopped trying to make himself worthy ever since.
It looked like he wasn't ever going to let go, knuckles white, leaning over her like he was trying to curl around her body, become her shell, her cradle. Heero stood in silence, knowing he'd been forgotten. He should have left, let Wufei have some privacy, but there was nowhere to go.
"You can't break down now," Heero said quietly. "There's no time."
There was no response for so long he thought there wouldn't be any. And when it came it was raspy, choked up, and he hated it. "...Ah. Yes."
He took the time to do a full circuit around the room before he joined his partner, time enough for Wufei to get a hold of himself -- but even someone who didn't know him at all could have seen he wasn't alright at all. Heero didn't comment, just picked up Meiran's clipboard and read the doctor's notes.
"--Ah. That's new."
Wufei blinked slowly and tore his eyes away from her. "What is it?"
"She's in a persistent vegetative state--" Wufei flinched; Heero continued, not knowing whether it was really kind of him to say so. But Wufei would want the whole truth, no matter if it broke him. "But it isn't full brain death."
Wufei blinked again, like the words didn't really make sense. "... Full brain death? What does that mean?"
Heero frowned, and read more, trying to find the meaning through the jargon. "The activity in a lot of sectors of her brain is very low -- sporadic, it says... But enough dark areas have thrown off a few sparks at some point that they can't say it's dead." He looked up, meeting Wufei's eyes with a sober look of his own. "There's still an overwhelming probability that it will never get better, and that if she ever wakes up she will be severely mentally impaired." He glanced at her body then, thin like a stick, muscle melted away. He could see no curled limb, no visible atrophy, but that didn't mean her motor functions would fare any better. "They're giving her some drugs to ensure she sleeps more peacefully, but it looks like those are just in case. She probably wouldn't wake up on her own even if they stopped."
Wufei was quiet as he took everything in, once again staring at his wife's slack face.
"What do you want to do?"
Wufei didn't even seem to think about it. "Take her out of here." He paused, closed his eyes. His thumb was rubbing a little circle on the back of her hand; she didn't react. "Then -- let her body decide." He would have seemed almost normal, voice quiet but steady, if Heero hadn't seen him swallow. "If she wants to go..."
Heero nodded briskly, pulled his laptop out of his backpack, and went about arranging their escape and abduction.
Next.