[FIC] - [GW] [C] Walk a Thousand Miles
Disclaimers: don't own 'em. we all know.
Rating: G, i guess...
Genre: weird? sap at the end
Characters: Heero POV, all the other boys make an appearance
Warnings: intended to take place immediately after Endless Waltz, but well... it's open to interpretation
Notes: I have no idea what I was writing here. haha. I was inspired by that Proclaimers(?) song from the Benny & Joon movie. but... the fic went somewhere else without me. also i suspect that the ending doesn't fit with the mood/tone of the rest of the fic... but oh well, what can you do? ^O^;;;
There was something he needed to do.
Something...
It was important, he was sure of it. But for some reason, he just couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
“Heero! You’re awake!”
He tried to turn his head but succeeded only in rolling his eyes to the left.
There was a girl there.
With blue eyes.
The blue eyes were of some significance: he could feel it. There was this...twinge...in his chest? His heart? That felt weird. Maybe he needed to get that checked out.
Actually, he needed to get up, that’s what he needed to do.
“Heero! Don’t move!” she cried out. “I’ll go get a doctor. Just stay still for now, please?”
He wasn’t sure what was more surprising, that the name, ‘Heero’, didn’t sound at all familiar, or that this mere girl had been able to restrain him with nothing more than a teary-eyed look and a soft voice. The girl must be important, but was she part of that vague, nagging ‘something’...?
He didn’t think so.
But how could he be sure?
The doctors came and examined him. There were tests and more tests, questions and more questions, pain and more pain.
And then, quite suddenly, it stopped hurting.
He'd gotten better. Just like that.
The doctors couldn’t explain it and neither could he. One day he couldn’t sit up straight and the next day he’d kicked an orderly in the head for trying to make him drink milk. It was a miracle, they said. He should walk himself down to the hospital chapel and thank God, they said.
There *was* a god that he was supposed to thank, now that they mentioned it, but he didn't think it was the God to which they were referring. The one he was thinking of was clothed all in black. And there was a certain grin…a cheerful voice… that niggled in the back of his mind. The God in the hospital chapel seemed a rather stern fellow. He was absolutely sure that it wasn't the one he was thinking of. Well, he was pretty sure.
It was all part that ‘something’… He knew he was missing it. And he knew that it was Big.
Just…
He felt very irritated that no one could tell him what it was.
The blonde girl was nice, but there was something brittle about her. And when he asked her about the ‘something’, she always looked so sad. She was so pretty and so kind, though; he didn't want to break her. She was already starting to fray at the edges and he thought he could see cracks in that fine porcelain facade.
So he stopped asking.
But that didn't make it go away, that nagging feeling, that oppressive, all-pervading *pull* towards... that ‘something’.
And it made him restless.
===
"Relena, I'm sorry."
She sighed so daintily.
"I know. You're always sorry, Heero."
He looked down at the shattered bauble in his hands. It had been this sparkly, blue-purple thing and he’d just wanted to touch it.
Yesterday it had been Relena’s award-winning irises. Last week it had been her black velvet opera cloak. Since she’d taken him home from the hospital, he’d broken or ruined one thing after another. All he was trying to do was to ease that weird ache that was inside of him.
“I didn’t mean to…”
Relena waved him off.
“Heero, are you starting to remember?”
He looked down again at shards in his hands. Did he remember? Was it the ‘something’? Maybe it was…maybe he was getting closer! Sometimes he felt it. Or at least, he thought he did. Lately, certain sights or sounds or tastes would make his beat faster and he would feel warm and maybe almost ‘happy’. It felt like…well, like the ‘something’.
But it wasn’t quite there, yet. He couldn’t put it into words.
And so he remained silent.
Relena sighed.
“You have to leave.”
He looked up in shock. Relena had been the most attentive and caring hostess, how could she be so cruel now?
“I know you’re looking for it, for that ‘something’ as you call it. You won’t find it here,” she said, her voice soft.
Did she know what he was looking for?
“I’ll help you as much as I can, Heero, but I suspect it’s a journey you have to take for yourself.”
He nodded, suddenly eager.
This was it.
This had to be it.
===
Relena had sent him to see her friend, an influential businessman on the affluent L4 colony. She had said that this man could provide answers to some of his questions and maybe help him fit a few pieces of the puzzle together. All he knew was that his heart was telling him he was getting closer to the ‘something’.
The sharp ache eased to a dull throb.
The man’s name was Quatre Winner. He was of average height, average build, but somehow he exuded an aura of confidence and calm that made him seem bigger, more impressive. However, he still had a bright, cheerful smile on his face. It seemed familiar.
“Heero!” the man exclaimed, wrapping his arms around him in a warm hug despite the fact that they were in a bustling shuttleport. Quatre appeared to have no worries about the undoubtedly $5000 suit he’d just wrinkled.
It was weird at first, being so close to this guy who was almost, so close, to the ‘something’ that he sought and yet it wasn’t quite right.
Quatre smiled at him, and it warmed him, but he knew there was more.
Quatre touched him, and he welcomed it, but he knew there was more.
And when Quatre kissed him, the ache in his chest returned with a vengeance.
There had to be more.
There had to be… ‘something’.
===
Quatre sent him to see his “special friend” on L3. Trowa Barton was a circus performer, tall, muscular, with brown hair and a hard glint in his green eyes. There was certainly a familiar air to him, like Quatre, but he wanted say even more so. He reached out to feel it.
Trowa let him touch his hair.
It was close, but it wasn’t quite right.
It wasn’t enough.
There was still ‘something’ missing.
Everyone seemed to know about the ‘something’, but no one seemed inclined to tell him. It was quite vexing.
Trowa was very understanding when he said he wanted to touch the circus’ panther.
Trowa was very gentle when he cleaned and bound his wounds.
And then Trowa gave him a black shirt. It belonged to someone once, someone who was nice enough to lend it to Quatre to help staunch the bleeding from a rapier wound. Trowa said that that someone would have wanted him to have it.
But he wasn’t bleeding, was he? There was just that irritating heart problem.
He asked Trowa if he knew of a doctor who could help him with the persistent chest pains.
“I’d worry about the persisting memory loss more than the chest pain, Heero,” Trowa replied.
Maybe Trowa was not so brilliant. After all, one could live perfectly fine with memory loss, but not with a defective heart, right?
===
One day, a young man came to visit Trowa. It wasn’t Quatre, but Trowa still appeared to be quite happy to see him.
“HEERO?” the newcomer yelled, incredulous.
Both Quatre and Trowa had confirmed that this was indeed his name and though he felt it was a bit silly because he certainly didn’t feel very heroic, he’d still learned to respond to it.
“Heero! Where have you been?”
Around. Here. There. Places.
Nowhere.
This man was not part of the ‘something’, but he could feel that he was…a road marker of sorts. It was finally clear that this was the right path and the right direction.
Trowa and his friend here would show him the way now.
Trowa introduced the newcomer as Chang Wufei, an old “war buddy”, he called him.
He thought that was odd as none of them looked like anyone ought to be calling them “old” anything.
“You really don’t remember, Heero?”
Obviously he didn’t.
People could be so obtuse.
“Nothing at all?” Wufei continued. “Not even-”
But Trowa hushed him.
There was something wrong here. They *knew*. They *all* knew. And they wouldn’t tell him. They were deliberately keeping him like this, in pain, in limbo.
Why?
“He needs to remember it in his own time, Wufei,” said Trowa.
“He *needs* to remember it *now*.”
“This isn’t about you!” Trowa shouted.
“Nor is it about you! You can’t keep him in the dark just because you don’t want him to remember what you did, what *we* did!”
They argued over his head, but he didn’t hear it. They had done something, something that had made him the way he was now. They had done this to him and they were hiding behind their cryptic masks and words!
WHAT WAS IT?
His heart was pounding now, harder than it ever had before; not even their shouting could drown it out. What if his heart burst, here and now? He was going to die without ever knowing the ‘something’ he was missing.
No.
Wait.
Not ‘something’, but ‘someone’.
===
Neither Trowa nor Wufei had noticed when he left. He ran. He called Quatre from the shuttleport and demanded a ticket to L2. Quatre smiled at him and he knew that he was on the right path. The feeling in his chest had turned from a tight pain to a soft warmth. And it was growing. The closer he got to L2, the better he felt.
It was as if a weight had been lifted.
It was as if a rope that had been pulled taut suddenly went slack.
And it was because he was finally going the right way.
But when the shuttle landed, the tightness returned. He was lost. He didn’t know where to go and he had no one to call. Quatre was in a closed-doors meeting. Trowa was in the middle of a performance. Wufei’s number was unlisted. And Relena simply refused to speak to him.
There was something he needed to do…
On this colony.
That ‘something’ was on this colony.
With that ‘someone’.
But where?
Why wouldn’t anyone help him?
He started walking. He left the shuttleport and just went ‘right’. After all, he reasoned to himself, he wanted to go ‘the right way’ on ‘the right path’, right? Right. He walked straight for a while, and then he took a left. He couldn’t really explain that one to himself, but it seemed as good a decision as any other and there hadn’t been a right turn for him to take.
It started to rain.
Still, he kept walking. He’d thought about stopping when the water first started coming down, but he figured that the simulated “rain storms” on the colonies didn’t last very long. He was wrong, but nothing could deter him now.
He was getting closer.
And he broke into a run.
It was just out of his reach, just around that next corner, but it was so close…almost within his grasp. He could practically feel it.
It was here.
He knew it.
But it was so cold and he was so tired. How long had he been running? Walking? Was it still raining now? Was it dark when he started?
He thought maybe he’d just sit down for a minute to rest up.
Suddenly, the door he’d been leaning against opened and he tumbled backwards into someone’s front foyer.
A friendly face peered down at him, open curiosity showing in his expression.
“Well, what have we -- HEERO!”
Oh.
This was IT.
“Heero, where have you been?”
This was the ‘something’!
“Heero? Heero, are you okay?”
This was the ‘someone’!
“Oi, Heero! Snap out of it, buddy!”
“Duo.”
He’d just opened his mouth and the name had popped out. It had been ready, waiting on the tip of his tongue for him to say it. And when he did, it was as if the gates had been opened and everything came flooding back.
So many images, memories, thoughts, flew threw his head, each vying for his attention. Brightly coloured explosions, like fireworks in the night sky. Mechanical monsters, gods of war marching into battle. A little redheaded girl dying at his feet, only to be reborn a minute later. Quatre, Trowa, Wufei, laughing, screaming, shouting, crying, talking, touching…
But there was only one thing he *needed* to know. And know it, he did.
This was Duo.
===
When Heero woke up, he discovered something. Actually, he discovered someone. And it was the ‘something’ and the ‘someone’ that he’d been seeking for the past however many months that he’d been subsisting in his strange dreamlike state. For the first time, his heart felt free, unfettered. He felt light, almost weightless and yet…grounded. When he looked over at the young man sprawled next to him, long pale limbs and long brown hair tangled in black, black linens, Heero felt…found.
Then Duo opened his eyes, his blue, blue eyes.
And he smiled, his bright, open, cheerful smile.
There was something Heero needed to do…
So he did it.
And Duo kissed him right back.
END
Rating: G, i guess...
Genre: weird? sap at the end
Characters: Heero POV, all the other boys make an appearance
Warnings: intended to take place immediately after Endless Waltz, but well... it's open to interpretation
Notes: I have no idea what I was writing here. haha. I was inspired by that Proclaimers(?) song from the Benny & Joon movie. but... the fic went somewhere else without me. also i suspect that the ending doesn't fit with the mood/tone of the rest of the fic... but oh well, what can you do? ^O^;;;
There was something he needed to do.
Something...
It was important, he was sure of it. But for some reason, he just couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
“Heero! You’re awake!”
He tried to turn his head but succeeded only in rolling his eyes to the left.
There was a girl there.
With blue eyes.
The blue eyes were of some significance: he could feel it. There was this...twinge...in his chest? His heart? That felt weird. Maybe he needed to get that checked out.
Actually, he needed to get up, that’s what he needed to do.
“Heero! Don’t move!” she cried out. “I’ll go get a doctor. Just stay still for now, please?”
He wasn’t sure what was more surprising, that the name, ‘Heero’, didn’t sound at all familiar, or that this mere girl had been able to restrain him with nothing more than a teary-eyed look and a soft voice. The girl must be important, but was she part of that vague, nagging ‘something’...?
He didn’t think so.
But how could he be sure?
The doctors came and examined him. There were tests and more tests, questions and more questions, pain and more pain.
And then, quite suddenly, it stopped hurting.
He'd gotten better. Just like that.
The doctors couldn’t explain it and neither could he. One day he couldn’t sit up straight and the next day he’d kicked an orderly in the head for trying to make him drink milk. It was a miracle, they said. He should walk himself down to the hospital chapel and thank God, they said.
There *was* a god that he was supposed to thank, now that they mentioned it, but he didn't think it was the God to which they were referring. The one he was thinking of was clothed all in black. And there was a certain grin…a cheerful voice… that niggled in the back of his mind. The God in the hospital chapel seemed a rather stern fellow. He was absolutely sure that it wasn't the one he was thinking of. Well, he was pretty sure.
It was all part that ‘something’… He knew he was missing it. And he knew that it was Big.
Just…
He felt very irritated that no one could tell him what it was.
The blonde girl was nice, but there was something brittle about her. And when he asked her about the ‘something’, she always looked so sad. She was so pretty and so kind, though; he didn't want to break her. She was already starting to fray at the edges and he thought he could see cracks in that fine porcelain facade.
So he stopped asking.
But that didn't make it go away, that nagging feeling, that oppressive, all-pervading *pull* towards... that ‘something’.
And it made him restless.
===
"Relena, I'm sorry."
She sighed so daintily.
"I know. You're always sorry, Heero."
He looked down at the shattered bauble in his hands. It had been this sparkly, blue-purple thing and he’d just wanted to touch it.
Yesterday it had been Relena’s award-winning irises. Last week it had been her black velvet opera cloak. Since she’d taken him home from the hospital, he’d broken or ruined one thing after another. All he was trying to do was to ease that weird ache that was inside of him.
“I didn’t mean to…”
Relena waved him off.
“Heero, are you starting to remember?”
He looked down again at shards in his hands. Did he remember? Was it the ‘something’? Maybe it was…maybe he was getting closer! Sometimes he felt it. Or at least, he thought he did. Lately, certain sights or sounds or tastes would make his beat faster and he would feel warm and maybe almost ‘happy’. It felt like…well, like the ‘something’.
But it wasn’t quite there, yet. He couldn’t put it into words.
And so he remained silent.
Relena sighed.
“You have to leave.”
He looked up in shock. Relena had been the most attentive and caring hostess, how could she be so cruel now?
“I know you’re looking for it, for that ‘something’ as you call it. You won’t find it here,” she said, her voice soft.
Did she know what he was looking for?
“I’ll help you as much as I can, Heero, but I suspect it’s a journey you have to take for yourself.”
He nodded, suddenly eager.
This was it.
This had to be it.
===
Relena had sent him to see her friend, an influential businessman on the affluent L4 colony. She had said that this man could provide answers to some of his questions and maybe help him fit a few pieces of the puzzle together. All he knew was that his heart was telling him he was getting closer to the ‘something’.
The sharp ache eased to a dull throb.
The man’s name was Quatre Winner. He was of average height, average build, but somehow he exuded an aura of confidence and calm that made him seem bigger, more impressive. However, he still had a bright, cheerful smile on his face. It seemed familiar.
“Heero!” the man exclaimed, wrapping his arms around him in a warm hug despite the fact that they were in a bustling shuttleport. Quatre appeared to have no worries about the undoubtedly $5000 suit he’d just wrinkled.
It was weird at first, being so close to this guy who was almost, so close, to the ‘something’ that he sought and yet it wasn’t quite right.
Quatre smiled at him, and it warmed him, but he knew there was more.
Quatre touched him, and he welcomed it, but he knew there was more.
And when Quatre kissed him, the ache in his chest returned with a vengeance.
There had to be more.
There had to be… ‘something’.
===
Quatre sent him to see his “special friend” on L3. Trowa Barton was a circus performer, tall, muscular, with brown hair and a hard glint in his green eyes. There was certainly a familiar air to him, like Quatre, but he wanted say even more so. He reached out to feel it.
Trowa let him touch his hair.
It was close, but it wasn’t quite right.
It wasn’t enough.
There was still ‘something’ missing.
Everyone seemed to know about the ‘something’, but no one seemed inclined to tell him. It was quite vexing.
Trowa was very understanding when he said he wanted to touch the circus’ panther.
Trowa was very gentle when he cleaned and bound his wounds.
And then Trowa gave him a black shirt. It belonged to someone once, someone who was nice enough to lend it to Quatre to help staunch the bleeding from a rapier wound. Trowa said that that someone would have wanted him to have it.
But he wasn’t bleeding, was he? There was just that irritating heart problem.
He asked Trowa if he knew of a doctor who could help him with the persistent chest pains.
“I’d worry about the persisting memory loss more than the chest pain, Heero,” Trowa replied.
Maybe Trowa was not so brilliant. After all, one could live perfectly fine with memory loss, but not with a defective heart, right?
===
One day, a young man came to visit Trowa. It wasn’t Quatre, but Trowa still appeared to be quite happy to see him.
“HEERO?” the newcomer yelled, incredulous.
Both Quatre and Trowa had confirmed that this was indeed his name and though he felt it was a bit silly because he certainly didn’t feel very heroic, he’d still learned to respond to it.
“Heero! Where have you been?”
Around. Here. There. Places.
Nowhere.
This man was not part of the ‘something’, but he could feel that he was…a road marker of sorts. It was finally clear that this was the right path and the right direction.
Trowa and his friend here would show him the way now.
Trowa introduced the newcomer as Chang Wufei, an old “war buddy”, he called him.
He thought that was odd as none of them looked like anyone ought to be calling them “old” anything.
“You really don’t remember, Heero?”
Obviously he didn’t.
People could be so obtuse.
“Nothing at all?” Wufei continued. “Not even-”
But Trowa hushed him.
There was something wrong here. They *knew*. They *all* knew. And they wouldn’t tell him. They were deliberately keeping him like this, in pain, in limbo.
Why?
“He needs to remember it in his own time, Wufei,” said Trowa.
“He *needs* to remember it *now*.”
“This isn’t about you!” Trowa shouted.
“Nor is it about you! You can’t keep him in the dark just because you don’t want him to remember what you did, what *we* did!”
They argued over his head, but he didn’t hear it. They had done something, something that had made him the way he was now. They had done this to him and they were hiding behind their cryptic masks and words!
WHAT WAS IT?
His heart was pounding now, harder than it ever had before; not even their shouting could drown it out. What if his heart burst, here and now? He was going to die without ever knowing the ‘something’ he was missing.
No.
Wait.
Not ‘something’, but ‘someone’.
===
Neither Trowa nor Wufei had noticed when he left. He ran. He called Quatre from the shuttleport and demanded a ticket to L2. Quatre smiled at him and he knew that he was on the right path. The feeling in his chest had turned from a tight pain to a soft warmth. And it was growing. The closer he got to L2, the better he felt.
It was as if a weight had been lifted.
It was as if a rope that had been pulled taut suddenly went slack.
And it was because he was finally going the right way.
But when the shuttle landed, the tightness returned. He was lost. He didn’t know where to go and he had no one to call. Quatre was in a closed-doors meeting. Trowa was in the middle of a performance. Wufei’s number was unlisted. And Relena simply refused to speak to him.
There was something he needed to do…
On this colony.
That ‘something’ was on this colony.
With that ‘someone’.
But where?
Why wouldn’t anyone help him?
He started walking. He left the shuttleport and just went ‘right’. After all, he reasoned to himself, he wanted to go ‘the right way’ on ‘the right path’, right? Right. He walked straight for a while, and then he took a left. He couldn’t really explain that one to himself, but it seemed as good a decision as any other and there hadn’t been a right turn for him to take.
It started to rain.
Still, he kept walking. He’d thought about stopping when the water first started coming down, but he figured that the simulated “rain storms” on the colonies didn’t last very long. He was wrong, but nothing could deter him now.
He was getting closer.
And he broke into a run.
It was just out of his reach, just around that next corner, but it was so close…almost within his grasp. He could practically feel it.
It was here.
He knew it.
But it was so cold and he was so tired. How long had he been running? Walking? Was it still raining now? Was it dark when he started?
He thought maybe he’d just sit down for a minute to rest up.
Suddenly, the door he’d been leaning against opened and he tumbled backwards into someone’s front foyer.
A friendly face peered down at him, open curiosity showing in his expression.
“Well, what have we -- HEERO!”
Oh.
This was IT.
“Heero, where have you been?”
This was the ‘something’!
“Heero? Heero, are you okay?”
This was the ‘someone’!
“Oi, Heero! Snap out of it, buddy!”
“Duo.”
He’d just opened his mouth and the name had popped out. It had been ready, waiting on the tip of his tongue for him to say it. And when he did, it was as if the gates had been opened and everything came flooding back.
So many images, memories, thoughts, flew threw his head, each vying for his attention. Brightly coloured explosions, like fireworks in the night sky. Mechanical monsters, gods of war marching into battle. A little redheaded girl dying at his feet, only to be reborn a minute later. Quatre, Trowa, Wufei, laughing, screaming, shouting, crying, talking, touching…
But there was only one thing he *needed* to know. And know it, he did.
This was Duo.
===
When Heero woke up, he discovered something. Actually, he discovered someone. And it was the ‘something’ and the ‘someone’ that he’d been seeking for the past however many months that he’d been subsisting in his strange dreamlike state. For the first time, his heart felt free, unfettered. He felt light, almost weightless and yet…grounded. When he looked over at the young man sprawled next to him, long pale limbs and long brown hair tangled in black, black linens, Heero felt…found.
Then Duo opened his eyes, his blue, blue eyes.
And he smiled, his bright, open, cheerful smile.
There was something Heero needed to do…
So he did it.
And Duo kissed him right back.
END