Carrier
Carrier-A GW fanfic-by Masamune
Disclaimer: IF I did own Gundam Wing then there'd be many more episodes of
it and lots more blatant yaoi. But I obviously don't own it or any of the
characters. They all belong to Sunrise, Sotsu Agency, Bandai etc... but they
don't belong to me. I just write about them
Pairings: 1x2
Warnings: yaoi, death, angst
Please send feedback to MasamuneEHS@hotmail.com
Summary: Heero is dying from the AIDS virus and Duo blames himself.
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Ever wanted to pitch yourself through a window?
Or just maybe tie a little noose, like in all those old movies, and hang
yourself in your bedroom?
I'm not normally this suicidal, nor this depressed. But right now the view
from the hospital window creates a very inviting picture of a crowded
street, some 18 stories below, calling my name.
"You're a pestilence to the world," it seems to moan. "You kill everything
you touch."
And everything I care for...Yeah that's me. Duo Maxwell. The living hand of
Death, Shinigami, mass murderer, carrier.
I've got quite an arsenal of names. But I've got one simple function, to
bring death to anything and everyone. Kill everything...
Back in the day (sounds like I'm 80) I was 02, a nameless marvel that
brought justice to a chaotic universe. A brave knight whose steed wielded a
marvelously destructive scythe. But that was little more then 7 years ago.
Seven years of happiness and joy, unlike anything I've ever had in my life.
...Get to the point? Yeah I babble way too much, everyone I've ever met has
told me that. Well how about this? My name's Duo Maxwell, I'm now 24 years
old, I live in a small apartment on G-1024. I own a small salvage place on
L2 that's probably a pile of junk now (like it wasn't before).
I run a small mechanic service here on G-1024. And I have the AIDS virus.
Am I one of those stinking bastard queers that started and spread that
terrible plague? Yes, I'm homosexual, but I got the virus from my mother. I
found out that's why I was an orphan. I don't know what AIDS means to the
rest of the world. As far as I'm concerned the world can quite frankly go
and fuck itself. That's what's happening anyway.
So then why do I feel so bad about all the stuff I did during the war?
Because even with all the evil in the world I'm one of the most evil things.
I'm no innocent pretty boy, although even at 24 cops still check my ID when
I drive through town. I'm the bringer of Death, a living plague.
What will people say about me when I die? What was my greatest
accomplishment? Killing hundreds, maybe thousands of soldiers and bringing
peace to the universe? No that was easy enough. I'm a highly skilled pilot
and in something as unstoppable as a Gundam I might as well be fighting a
swarm of chinchillas. No, my greatest kill of them all is Heero Yuy.
Well not yet...but soon. Doctors say it's a miracle that he's hung on this
long. I should have noticed earlier. His failing health this past two years.
A powerful cold or fever, all too frequent. He never went to a physician.
Why would he? If a hundred Leos, Zechs Merquise and a self-destruction blast
couldn't kill him, what could?
Me. The one thing he loved.
Since he was hospitalized and the doctors told him what it was, I know he's
been silently cursing himself. His training's always told him not to open up
to anything. No friends, no loved ones, only the mission. The one thing that
he opened up to and loved turned around and bit him. And so Heero Yuy, Wing
Zero pilot, savior of the universe and Perfect Soldier is lying in a
hospital bed dying from pneumonia.
Nearby Wufei sits, not really watching me but just keeping an eye on me. He
never approved of my relationship with Heero, probably because he was raised
in such a traditional group. He even said to my face once that he thought I
should give up my Gundam and quit the war because I was too much of a
distraction for Heero. He probably wants to say something to me right now. I
hate "I told ya so"s,
One more person that Shinigami's dragged to the grave. One more for the body
harvest that I've collected around me my whole life. It shouldn't matter to
me; I shouldn't be upset at myself, at life, at God. Whatever I blame I
really should have expected this.
The one thing in my life that's brought me joy, I should have known that it
wasn't to stay. Mirages of happiness and my own hope for peace and quiet and
love blinded me. We were doing a gunfight scene from a play, but my gun was
loaded to kill. All became blackness and I shot in the dark. My aim wasn't
deadly, but the ricochet was.
Oh, and I should mention this too. I'll never die from HIV. The same killer
that snippered the Perfect Soldier can't even make this braided baka sneeze.
I'm asymptomatic. I'll live with the virus my whole life.
Hurray.
I got the call this morning, Trowa had been watching him. It didn't matter
that it was 4 in the morning, I was still awake. I can't sleep at night
anymore, not in a lonely bed for two. When it rang all I thought was that
Heero was dead and I'd never be able to say goodbye. I cursed myself for
ever letting Quatre and the doctors convince me that I needed to go home and
rest. I wanted to do the toaster in the bathtub bit, like in the movies, and
be able to leave the world with you. But instead I just answered the phone.
"Hello," my voice is cracked, and scared. I don't want you to be gone
already, I don't want to have to think the rest of my life what I could have
said or what I could have done in those last few minutes that he was alive
and I wasn't with him. But of course he was alive.
"Duo, come to the hospital quick, Heero's not doing well," Trowa's voice
crackles through his cell phone, almost as flat and dead as ever, almost.
"What do the doctors say?" I ask. What does it matter though? The doctors
say an hour and he dies in 10 minutes. The doctors say a million years and
his life goes out just when I pull into the parking lot.
"...They don't think he'll make it through the next five minutes." 5 minutes?
5 minutes, 5 minutes. "But personally I give him almost an hour...if he's
strong," Voice as cool as ice, sometimes I didn't wonder if Trowa and Heero
were from the same batch.
"I'll be there soon." I hang up the phone, not waiting for a response.
Jump in the car, tear ass down the empty desolate streets. I could hit some
drunk or some late night cabby, but I speed through the red lights
regardless. Nothing matter's now, only getting there in time.
The night scene blurs by me, some old houses, some abandoned, some filled
with happy families. All is quiet. All is dark. The roads filled with litter
and debris, a homeless man is the only sign of human existence tonight. Ever
think about it? To that one man all I am is another quick wind that chills
his old bones. To him there is only his misery and pain, his hunger and his
cold, shivering body. There is at least one thing for everybody and for some
more then eight. But to me there is only Heero.
And how does that bring me here, two days later?
Today I awoke (Trowa and Quatre convinced me to take some heavy duty
sleeping pills) and when I got up I shivered and turned the heat up and
still shivered. And in the back of my mind, in the back of my head I knew,
just as I knew that when I returned with the mobile suit Maxwell Church and
all I loved were gone. In the back of my head ad through my entire being I
knew it. Today was it.
Doctors and nurses finally make their way out and the head one comes over to
me. Can't remember his name for the life of me.
"I'm sorry, son," he drawls slowly. "We've done everything we can, at this
point it's all up to him."
I nod and thank the man for all he and his staff's done for Heero.
Nothing can stop Death though, no matter how valiant an effort you put up.
Hope and faith in God are such gimmicks put up by people too scared of
death. And in the battles all will fall that use them as their shield, they
will be massacred by the unstoppable and inevitable final sleep that is
death.
I walk up slowly to the door, it seems like millennia since I last saw him,
less then a few hours ago. I enter and the smell of medicine and that acrid
stench, much too similar to that of decay, which seems to haunt all medical
facilities, reaches me and makes me scrunch my nose. Try not to breathe in
and it won't be there. Tubes and machines and a TV. There's also one window
falling onto the busy scenery of streets below, millions passing, always
oblivious.
In my relatively short life I've seen heart-wrenching scenes in many
different forms. Poverty, deceit, abuse, injustice, and my personal number
one, Death, have always been parts of my life, parts of my existence. And
the pain that lingers and the suffering brought on by these sights and
experiences all pale in contrast to what I feel right now, staring at the
near lifeless body of Heero Yuy.
He's laying under a thin green hospital blanket. His loose, white patient's
robe is a stark contrast to his usual tight jeans and oh-too-sexy spandex.
His hair is thin and shaggy, falling chaotically over his face. He looks so
weak now that the tears refuse to stay down. No matter how hard I try to
suppress them, they surge and mass together in the wells of my eyes. Why do
I cry now? Not because of this miserable sight of a man who is a ghost of
the shell of the Heero Yuy of old, a man I loved, a man I still love.
No, it's not his depressing condition that rolls the first betraying tear
down my cheek. It's the fact that this is going to be the last time I'll
ever see him alive, ever see that sparkle in his eyes, ever be with him
while his chest rises and falls and his heart beats on. In death all stops.
All emotions, all things physical stop when confronted by death.
They are swallowed up by death and afterwards, there is only death.
So I do what I've done for the past month now. I shut the door, take a seat
by his bed and look into his eyes. No talking, no communication other then
our eyes locking and searching. It's ironic for me to say this, but it's true
that words aren't necessary to communicate.
"I'm sorry, Heero," I finally sob out, tears beginning to fall freely. "I
never wanted this for you, I only wanted to make you happy. I never wanted
you..." The last two words get lodged in my throat, they won't come out, they
don't want to accept that I'm the reason that his life is now ending. "I
never wanted you to die Heero," I finally blubber out, losing more and more
the control of myself that I've always been so proud of. "I only wanted to
make you happy."
"You have, Duo."
His response is less then a whisper. I feel his hand cover mine and give a
weak squeeze. I look into his Prussian eyes and through the blur of my tears
I can make out his message to me. He coughs violently and the fit brings me
pain as well as I watch, helpless, as it racks through his body, finally
leaving him drained and weak.
"Before you came into my life I had nothing. I was nothing. You're the best
thing that's ever happened to me Duo Maxwell, and I love you. I don't just
love you for what you've done for me; I love you for who you are. And I'll
never stop loving you. My love for you will be forever, it will go on for
infinity, through anything and everything."
I sob and wipe away the falling tears. I look into his eyes and I can't help
but wonder what good this world will be without him. I need him.
"God, Heero, I love you," my voice is so weak and shaken, barely it's able to
get out of my mouth. "I'll always, always love you. Please Heero, I'm so
sorry."
"Shhh," Heero's voice is so soothing even as he wipes away my tears with his
shaking hand and places it on my cheek, holding it there. "It's not your
fault, Duo."
"For all that's happened I think death is a small price to pay," He smiles
at me, even as the life begins to flicker and fade from his eyes.
His hand stops shaking and begins to fall away from my cheek. "I'm the
luckiest person to ever live because I got to known you. I got to know one
thing special."
"Ai shiteru, you, my love."
And with that, I'm left alone in the world again.
The funeral is held soon after, life goes on for the world and for damn near
everybody in it. I find myself visiting Heero's grave less and less often
lately. Life goes on, he'd want me to go on too. But it wouldn't be that
easy, if I didn't think he was still with my, always watching over me,
always loving me.
~owari~
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©2001 by Masamune. Please do not remove without permission.
