The silence of the hospital hallway was broken as Heero Yuy slipped two quarters into the soda machine and pressed his selection. He pulled the iced can from its berth and cracked it open, again breaking the silence. Cola dripped from the opening and onto his shoes, reminding Heero that compressed carbonation and shaking was never a good thing.
He muttered a curse for wearing such expensive shoes and cleaned the mess up with a handkerchief. Stepping over to the window, he allowed himself a few moments of peace and watched the brilliant lights and structures that were Sicily. He did not look at his face in the reflection of the glass...he knew what it looked like, and it never gave him any more answers as to who he was.
Heero took another drink as he followed the signs to the waiting room, his shoes clicking on the peach-colored tile. Soon the tile changed to a light blue carpet, and the walls changed to a faded pink, a shade that almost matched the color of Heero's shirt. Accented with a white silk tie, dark slacks, and a white blazer, he almost appeared...normal.
He pushed open the door of the waiting room, and found it surprisingly empty, even for two in the morning. Only two people were there: a volunteer who had fallen asleep reading a copy of Cosmopolitan...and Sylvia Novinta, the granddaughter of Marshall Novinta, the man whom Heero had murdered by mistake so many years ago. Heero had pushed that memory into the basement of his mind, but it liked to peek out through the keyhole every so often.
He walked over to Sylvia, and stood in silence. When he had heard that she was looking for a bodyguard, he had accepted the job, since she remembered him from his days a Gundam pilot. She was a little more grown-up now, but still had that same small face and petite nose. Her blonde hair was cropped close to her head, and fell just below her ears, framing her picture-perfect face. Besides the obvious benefit of being the bodyguard to a delegate for the Earth Sphere Unified Nation, Heero had come to respect her as a strong person and supporter of Relena Darlan.
She was sleeping with her coat draped over her, and she stirred, opened one eye at him. "Is that Heero Yuy I see?"
"It might be." He put his cola on a nearby table and lifted the coat off of her, hanging it on a rack with his blazer.
"Have you heard anything about your grandmother?" Heero asked. Sylvia and he had been out to dinner with her grandmother, to celebrate Sylvia's election to Vice Officer of Domestic Matters for Sicily. The laughter and congradulations soon turned to a cough, a hack, and finally vomiting blood. An ambulance had rushed Mrs. Novinta to the hospital, and that had been two hours ago.
"No," she said. "No phone calls, no messengers." She seemed to shy away from Heero, but then looked him in the eyes, something that he had yet to adjust to. It had been almost a year since he had become her bodyguard, and he knew that Sylvia had some kind of affection for him...but every time she looked at him, right in the eyes, a jolt went through his heart.
"Heero," she began, "have you thought any more about my offer?"
Before dinner, Sylvia had suggested that Heero move in with her, since she would be moving to a new apartment closer to the E.S.U.N. headquarters. Heero had a small place of his own, but living space had never meant much to him.
"I have," he said. "Sylvia, you are a special person, but--"
"But you won't." Her voice screamed dissapointment and failure, and Heero could think of nothing to say that would cheer her up.
The door opened, and an intern in scrubs came in. "Miss Novinta? Your grandmother is up in room 366. You can visit her for a few minutes."
Heero took Sylvia's elbow and led her towards the elevator, just a few steps from the waiting room. In those few steps, Heero's training took over his emotions, and he noticed that the intern had disappeared rather quickly.
"Heero?" Sylvia inquired, her eyes peering at him. She knew that look, the wild-eyed animal that was surrounded by hunters. "Is something wrong?"
"I can't tell," he whispered back.
It was then that all the lights went out.
Sylvia let out a small gasp, and Heero allowed his eyes to focus to the vanilla light of the emergency bulbs spread out across the ceiling, too far apart for his liking.
He spotted the red exit letters pointing to the fire escape, and pushed Sylvia toward them. She didn't need a verbal hint: she took off running, pushing the door open with her shoulder, Heero following behind her. She bolted up the stairs, and Heero followed in the dim light, his hand reaching to the side holster and removing the Beretta 93-R, a sleek piece of semi-automatic he had picked up with his hiring bonus.
They traveled up two more flights of stairs, and stopped at the door labeled "Rooms-300 to 400." Bathed in the red glow of another exit sign, Heero saw Sylvia's eyes, the controlled fear that had replaced the dissapointment he had witnessed in them earlier.
"Heero, what's going on?" she asked, her small chest rising up and down.
"I don't know," he confessed. "Someone may be after you, or your grandmother." He reached under the cuff of his right pant leg, removed the silver .38 from it's holster, and handed it to Sylvia. "Best to be prepared."
She nodded, took the gun in her able hands. Heero slid towards the door, reached for the handle. Sylvia's hand met it there, her soft and trembling fingers enveloping his own. "Heero, I need to know...I need to know how you feel about...me."
He must have given her one of the "Not now" looks, because her voice became more insistent. "I can't go out there and face God knows what if I don't know if my feelings are unrequited."
Being a trained solider, Heero had never been one to spend time on love or dating. But he knew that Sylvia cared about him, and that he...well, did he care about her? He had never been able to tell, but he did know what he felt.
He pulled his hand away from the door, wrapped it in hers, and in the next moment their lips touched, soft and gentle in the red light. Sylvia turned away, then back again, sharing one more brief kiss with Heero before he returned to business.
There was that jolt in his heart again, and it's sensation wasn't going away.
"Now!" he said, and Sylvia pulled open the door, slid half her body out the doorway and into the hall. The .38 was poised and confident, a reflection of Sylvia's own attitude. She slid across the floor with her feet and pressed against the peach wall, then nodded to Heero. He darted from the fire escape and into the hall, carrying his gun at his side with both hands and staying low to the ground.
The hallway was a "T" shape, and he cut a diagonal path to the main hall, pushing himself into the wall again. Sylvia peered around the corner, waited for his signal, and ran softly past a set of room doors before stopping. Heero smiled slightly at his protege`...she had payed attention to him after all. In the same pattern, they made their way down the dark hall, with one vanilla light in the center and several exit signs positioned around that.
Heero spotted the room number first, and held up his index finger, a signal for Sylvia to stop. She did so, held the .38 close to her face in her right hand. Heero slid his ear closer to the door, saw that it was open by the tiniest of inches.
Voices filtered out from the hole, and Heero focused in on them:
"Did we really have to kill her grandma?" A high voice, probably from a thin and tall man.
"It's necessary. Deal with it." A deeper voice, perhaps from a bulkier man.
"Remember the plan: first her, then Sylvia, then Marquise...and finally, that idiot Darlan." That voice, it couldn't be, and yet...the fire and ice in it was unmistakeable. Heero knew that voice from somewhere, and it was one that he would have preferred to forget.
There was a clinking sound in the hallway, and Heero turned to see the tip of Sylvia's shoe bump the rusty hospital cart that had been disguised in the shadows.
"What was that?" the thin man said.
"SYLVIA, RUN!" Heero shouted, and slammed the door back with his elbow. A satisfying crunch answered him; probably the poor thug's nose. Sylvia was running down the hallway, and Heero followed her, keeping one eye on the door.
A man stumbled out and fell on his face, clutching his ruby nose. A thin guy, almost aqualine in appearance, stepped out from the door and pulled out two automatics. Heero jumped and rolled across the floor, heard the bullets miss him. The second sound was the .38, as Sylvia dropped to one knee and drilled the punk in the arm, watched him stumble backwards.
Then the third man came out, brandishing a MAC-10. Heero came up a few inches short of Sylvia's position, whipped his Beretta around--
And watched as the man unloaded into Sylvia, her petite frame dropping to the hospital floor, blood staining her blouse. Heero switched the Beretta over to semi-automatic mode, allowing him to fire three shots at once. He blew chunks from the wall out into the man's line of sight, then tried to aim for his shoulders. He was good, Heero admitted...the man shifted back and forth in the dust and spun to a sitting position behind the hospital cart.
There were sounds of running footsteps and shouts from the patients in the other rooms. The three men ran for the fire escape, and Heero turned back to Sylvia.
She was still alive.
"Heero," she choked, a trickle of blood running down that pretty face. Heero knelt beside her, reached for her cold hand. "Heero..."
"Don't try to talk," he advised, but she shook her head.
"I know I'm dead," she whispered. "I just...wanted to tell you...that I love you."
The jolt was stronger than ever. "Sylvia, please--"
"I had to tell you," she said, tears mixing with the blood. "I finally met someone that I loved, and I...I did before...I died. Isn't that what...what any person would ask for?"
Emotions, raw emotions, ran through Heero's mind. He couldn't sort them out, could not form words that he wanted to say, could do nothing but hold that cold hand.
"I know...that you love me..." she said, her voice fading. "You can't say it...but that's okay."
"Sylvia," Heero said, feeling his instincts subside once more. He was now in that part of himself that hadn't been touched in years, his humanity, the side that Relena and the other Gundam pilots had taught him all about. He lifted Sylvia into his arms and held her, held her until she sobbed her last breath, and fell limp against him.
Her eyes were closed, and her face was peaceful, as Heero layed her back down on the floor gently, her blood smeared across his pale shirt. He could hear the footsteps getting closer, and as he picked up the Beretta, he took one look back at Sylvia Novinta, so that he would never forget her face.
If he did forget it, then he might also forget what to do to the man who had killed her.
He ducked into a supply closet as a parade of police officers ran down the hall, and stopped at Sylvia's body. Heero threw on a white coat, turned the collar up, and walked out of the closet slowly, not looking back.
"Hey! You! What do you know about this?" one of the officers asked.
"Nothing," Heero said, still walking forward. "I was sick in the bathroom."
"Stick around the building," another officer advised. "We need some witnesses."
Heero did not reply, but instead reached the end of the hallway, threw open the double doors, and dumped the coat in his rush for the stairs. Brushing past several confused patients and doctors, he jumped over the last few stairs and came down in a crouch, from which he darted past the security guards and out through the main exit.
The parking garage was just ahead, and not all of the police had coordinated their efforts. In fact, they were just arriving, the blue and red lights penetrating the morning darkness as Heero ran across the pavement toward the garage entrance. He leaped over the toll booth's guard bar and continued running toward the blue sports car parked in space A-3.
He replaced the Beretta with the keys, and used the automatic starter to warm the engine. The top was down, and he dove into the driver's seat, slammed the keys home, and shoved the car into reverse, backing out of the space and cutting through the assortment of officers that had followed him in.
Heero turned on his high beams, and the officers dove out of the way, blind and befuddled. One of their jackets was unmistakeable, a khaki on navy, and Heero knew that the wearer would not pursue him...Wufei Chang had no reason to chase after a friend.
The sports car cut across the hospital lot and out to the interstate, where electric signs pierced the night with their green letters, announcing the way to Sicily's city limits. Heero passed car after car as he accelerated, his mind back into it's soldier mode.
The words of the third man kept repeating in his ears: "...then that idiot Darlan." They had to mean Relena. If there was one person in this world that he had promised to protect, it was her. He had failed with Sylvia, and he would not allow himself to fail again.
But, more imporantly, he had to live to see tomorrow. For whoever was after Sylvia would now be after him, and if he knew the man like he thought he did...tomorrow would be a long time coming.
