--------------- Kyuuketsuki Duo Episode XXIII Life Support --------------- Visiting hours were nearly over, but not quite. Time bore no relevance to the Guardian, of course, but for the boy that followed mortal rules, time's passing was felt quite keenly, and here, in this one room in this particular hospital, time flowed far too slowly for his liking. The curtains at the open window flared a bit from the early evening wind, and when they settled, a form swathed in black shadows was revealed. "Duo," Wufei said with no little surprise. "What are you doing here?" It then occurred to him to become angry. No matter his reason, he had no right to be here, where he could bear witness to the living corpse that was his mother, and to Wufei's own weaknesses. He gathered his thoughts to speak, to demand answers or exits, when he was preempted. "I think," the braided one started slowly. "I think you called me here." "What do you mean?" He knew his mother was as good as dead, yet the empty shell still demanded his respect, and he kept his voice down and nearly calm. If the guardian failed to provide a proper answer, however, he would suffer for this violation at a later time. Duo studied him with a long, steady look, his head cocked to one side as if in contemplation. The gaze unnerved him. There was something inhuman about it. Duo was looking at him, but not, rather through him, and around him, and into him, and seeing all manner of things made clear to Duo's peculiar Sight. It left him feeling exposed, an impression hardly helped by the way the guardian's eyes seemed to shift colors restlessly, and finally the fey youth spoke and broke the thick silence. "Something inside of you wanted me to come to you here tonight. Why don't you tell me what this is about?" He spoke evenly, softly, a mode the Chinese boy was unaccustomed to observing in him. During the day, he was bright, vivacious, sparkled the way diamonds do in the light, but sometimes it faded with the passing of the sun, on those few times Wufei had seen him thus, and in its place came the cool slide of silk and a cauldron of obsidian darkness. If his lively nature was intended to draw one out, then this fall of shadows was intended to draw one in, to tempt and devour and command. A shiver ran down the human's spine. He didn't like that the creature standing before him seemed to know more about the situation than he did himself. He glanced involuntarily at the figure lying upon the bed. Could Duo be a threat to her? She was surrounded by modern monitoring equipment, the quiet beeps and hums thankfully fading into the background noise, inhuman and sterile as it may have been. Inhuman, did he think? Without question, Duo was not human. He claimed supernatural heritage without denial, walked down paths never meant for human tread, yet Wufei caught himself thinking that his own mother was inhuman? Her heart beat under its own power, but she breathed and carried out her human life processes with the support of the hated machines, even though the machines that were present told him quite conclusively that there was no neurological activity present in her cerebrum, and rightly so, for her spirit had been taken by a demon, and its fate beyond that, Wufei chose not to contemplate. Inhuman? Unnatural, perhaps. She should have died that night. She would have wanted it. Death would be far preferable to this non-life she floated in now. Her spirit had long since been torn from this body; it existed now as an empty vessel bound to life, undead. Wufei had tried to end it for her honorably, that very night when everything else had ended, and began, but he hadn't managed to succeed. It was just one more failure on his record that weighed down upon his soul. "Your mother," Duo said, and Wufei started, the presence of the guardian momentarily forgotten in his brief reverie. "What of her?" he responded warily. "Yes. What of her?" This Duo was foreign and alien to him. Duo spent the entire day usually calm, cool, and collected, but this went way beyond that. Wufei often had difficulty remembering that his classmate was an eternally young creature that had the shadows at his command, yet there was no mistaking it now. He could easily picture this version of the boy hunting, chasing, feeding, releasing. Duo seemed quite willing to wait for as long as it would take for Wufei to answer, standing almost preternaturally still as he stared at the Chinese boy with his strange eyes, especially given that he usually gave the impression of boundless energy, and beneath the weight of that steady regard, Wufei found words being drawn forth from his lips before he could give them full thought. "There have been things... that you've said...." Duo provided him with no prompt. He moistened his lips with his tongue and continued to think aloud. "About... about... what you can do for humans." The end of the sentence rushed out as if fighting against his reluctance to give the thought form, as if escaping before he could call them back. It was proof that he didn't like the turn of his thoughts, yet couldn't stop them from wandering into this dangerous territory. There had been a number of these ideas floating around in his head for at least a week, but every time he had become aware of it, he had ruthlessly squashed it, refusing to even consider it. Now that the matter was being pushed, however, the thoughts demanded release. One of Duo's eyebrows raised just slightly in acknowledgement of the point, but it may have been lost on the other boy as he struggled to continue. "What your... bite can do for humans." If Duo saw where Wufei was heading with this line of disjoint statements, he gave no indication of it, preferring instead to wait the boy out, and see if he would actually finish the forbidden thought, and how he would express it if he did. "And I wondered...." Wufei's nervous eyes fell upon the prone figure of his mother again, and while the sight of her did not help him in overcoming his hesitance, it did give him the motivation to continue, to at least ask and find out, despite the fact that it wouldn't do anyone any good if he just knew and didn't act on the knowledge. He just needed to know, even if it cost him his pride or condemned them all to the lowest pits of hell. "...if there was anything you could do for her." Duo's gaze flickered briefly at the woman, but nothing more was needed. "Anything...?" he asked softly, looking for clarification. Wufei's fists trembled minutely at his side and he refused to make eye contact with the guardian, instead focusing on the monitors quietly going about their business. They were what had brought him to such a point, after all. "You've said you can... take a person away from this. Give them peace. Happiness. Oblivion. Something." Nothing was said for a long moment, before Wufei finally looked up at him, irritated that the braided one wasn't making it easy on him. "Well?" Duo's eyes refocused from whatever far-off vision they had been privy to, and came back to the boy in front of him. Somewhere during the interval, his expression had softened into something less distant and cold, but just as solemn. A shallow nod preceded his next statements. "I can do that. But not this time. I'm sorry, Wufei." "Why not?" he demanded to know. It had been so hard to ask against all his better judgment, and now it was unacceptable that the answer was no. "I can do that," Duo repeated. "When there's someone to see off, someone to give such things to. But your mother is gone now, Wufei. She's gone now, and there's nothing I can do for her." Wufei's eyes slid closed for a moment as his shoulders slumped in defeat. "I know that. I know that her spirit has long since passed from this body... but still. I hoped that something... something could just put an end to this for her." The sounds of hospital life going about its way drifted through the closed doors, but no one came in to shoo them away. "I can end this for her, and for you, too, Wufei, if that's what you want. I can give her release. An honorable end, even if she's not around to appreciate it." Wufei flinched from the thought. "I would do it myself, if I could. As I should have done, when I had the chance, but not the time. And I would do it now, if I could just figure out some way to do it quietly.... It's horrible, you know. The doctors think I come here every week to visit her, to hope that she'll somehow come back or something. What would they think if they knew that I count the many long days until I'm old enough to demand that they end her life? That every week, I stand here and wonder how I can kill her without them noticing?" "You can't kill her, Wufei. She's already dead. You just want to give her a decent burial, and there's nothing wrong with that." Wufei wanted to believe, but there was another strong part of him that rejected everything Duo had to say. Duo was one of them, after all, one of those supernatural monsters that had destroyed his mother and his clan in the first place. He could scarcely believe he was asking the creature for aid in this matter. Wouldn't that just make it worse? Bad enough that he was seeking ways to end his own mother's life. That would probably send him straight to some sort of hell, unless his soul got eaten by a demon somewhere along the way. It would be even worse if he sought the assistance of a demon in his plans as well. Would he not be selling his soul in the bargain? Yet Duo spoke the truth. It was indeed simply an empty shell that lay before him. He had known that since that night, and he had tried to end it that night, and if he had succeeded, he would have had no qualms about the matter. She was no more alive or dead than she was then. Where was the hangup? The only difference lay in the passage of time. With each passing day, each moment longer that his mother had to endure this shameful existence, another strike was added against him, and it was this dishonor that weighed heavily upon his soul, not the deed itself. If that was so, then what was he waiting for? Standing in the room with him was the way to redeeming himself, and he didn't believe that Duo was offering so that he could feed upon her somehow. Not that there was anything left to feed on anyway. He didn't believe that he would offer from the kindness of his heart, either, but he still could find no way that Duo might gain from her death, or the finalization of the death started long ago. He believed somehow that the offer was genuine, despite the creature offering it. He didn't know how it would be done, and he didn't want to know how, but he knew that it would be as he would wish, if he could put it into words. He would do it personally if he could, but failing that, then he would have to settle for delegating the work to another, and there should be no loss of honor, no show of disrepect, for that. Some things were simply beyond a person's reach sometimes. Had he not had a demon to avenge himself upon, he might have considered just pulling the plugs or smothering her with a pillow and dealing with the consequences, but spending his days in a prison was even more of a waste than rushing off to face Epyon unprepared. He moved slowly to his mother's bedside and knelt there silently for a minute, before rising to plant a kiss upon her forehead. "Do it," he whispered painfully, knowing that the guardian would hear him, and then he spun and strode out the door before he could change his mind. _________________________________________ This piece of fiction is the intellectual property of the little turnip that could. The basis for this fic, i.e. Gundam Wing, Kyuuketsuki Miyu, et al., is the property of someone else. The author can be con- tacted at jchew@myrealbox.com. This has been an entirely automated message. http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~jchew/misc/gw.html last modified : 3/18/2002 00:46:04 PST