Title: Tainted Conviction – Chapter Three

Author: Sita Seraph

Genre: Angst, Religious relatings

Pairing: 1x2, 3x4 eventually.

Rated: R

Warning: Gruesome treatment, stigmata, sixth sense, and a whole lot of shit.

          Note: Tell me if anyone is OOC and what they would have done.  I’m still not sure if I’m playing them right…Enjoy!  *ears are ringing from Charlotte’s pan and pot beating* ^_~

 

Chapter Three

 

“QUATRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Quatre jerked up from his sleep, gripping the blankets and eyes wide as his name was screamed by one horrified voice.  Reacting immediately, covers were nearly thrown across the room.  Running out of his room, he came face to face with Trowa. They exchanged horrified looks before shooting down the hall towards the screaming voice.

“Quatre!!! QUATRE!!”

Wufei shot out of his room, dodging Trowa and Quatre and plowed down the hall with them.  The three pilots turned the corner quickly and ran to the open doorway where light was flooding out of the bathroom.  All three stopped at the doorway.  Quatre made a gasp and covered his mouth.  Trowa’s eyes grew wide.  Wufei closed his eyes and turned his head away, making a choking sound.

All three were greeted with Duo spilling blood all over the floor and Heero holding him, as if it was going to stop if he squeezed hard enough.

“Quatre! Quatre! Quatre!” Heero kept repeating, eyes too wide to be real and looking so sick as if he had never witnessed blood before.  Duo heaved once again, completely naked upon the tiled floor of the bathroom and it splattered along the man who held him.  Heero threw himself against the lower cabinets, gripping his friend as he kept pouring more and more blood on him.  Duo made pathetic gasping sounds, tears streaking down his face, as he could no longer stop what kept coming up.  Over and over again, gallons of red liquid came up and out of his body.  How could one person contain so much blood?

“QUATRE!!!” Heero screamed and broke all three pilots sickened gaze.  Trowa immediately went forward and grabbed Duo from behind while Heero had his front.  Duo trembled within the pilots’ arms, hacking up more and more with sickening sounds and sorrowful sobs.

“Stop him!!” Wufei screamed, getting paler by the minute.  He stepped back slowly as the blood spread across the tiled floor and towards the two frozen pilots at the door, slowly covering the floor completely.

“Do what!?” Quatre screamed, panic etched in his tone and face as tears were welling up in his eyes.  Completely helpless, Quatre watched in mute terror as his best friend coughed up more and more blood.

“Jesus Christ, do something!!!” Heero screamed slamming his head back against the cabinet.

Suddenly Duo grew very stiff in the two pilots arms and Trowa and Heero watched as Duo’s head went straight to the ceiling.  He gave a soft gurgle, then a cough as a bit of blood erupted from his red lips and down his cheeks.  Then he collapsed completely against Trowa, head falling on his shoulder. Eyes closed, Duo was completely out, taking slow and long breaths.

Trowa, who was on his knees while he had held Duo, completely fell on his butt in shock.  The silent pilot just held the sleeping boy in his arms, staring down at the large puddle of blood beneath them.  His arms trembled as he held the still boy and he slowly closed his eyes, making a soft pathetic sound at the untrained experience they all had just gone through.

Heero lay limply against the cabinet, arms lying in the warm blood beneath him and stared hazily at the two forms before him.  As if not really there, the pilot stared with a distance gleam in his eye at Duo’s sleeping face that dripped with red blood.

 “Duo…” Quatre murmured.

 

*****

 

“How…how could this happen?” Quatre whispered softly, gripping red hands in front of him.  All the Gundam pilots, nay Duo, were assembled outside the missing pilot’s bedroom.  The window behind them let in the seeping light of dawn but none of the four pilots noticed the sun’s awakening, as they were too busy with their own problems.

Quatre, with a huff, leaned tiredly against the wall.  The innocent pilot’s shirt was covered in dry blood, as was his hands.  But nothing was compared to Heero, who wore nothing but boxers.  From head to toe, he was nearly covered in red ‘paint’ and he had yet to dry.  Pieces of his hair were darker then the rest as blood had gotten there also.  Trowa’s pants were soaked here and there and even Wufei’s white pants had gotten some blood on them for caring for their sleeping friend.

“There’s no scientific fact for the cause…” Wufei said quietly, staring off and not meeting anybody’s gaze.

“It could have been a drug,” Trowa said just as quietly.  The whole experience had freaked them all out, not just because of the blood, but because they couldn’t come with a single reason of how it could happen.

“Heero?  Do you know anything?” Quatre asked, hope clinging onto his voice.

“No,” Heero answered, crushing the hope down and Quatre returned his eyes to the floor.  Drops of dry blood littered the carpet.

“Lets wait until Duo wakes up,” Trowa said, trying to comfort his falling friend and slowly laid a hand on his shoulder.  “He should know something.”

“And if he doesn’t?” Wufei asked pointedly, eyes rising from the floor to look at Trowa for the first time in the night.

“Then…Then he doesn’t,” Trowa answered, almost simply.  “Lets go clean up.”

 

*****

 

Duo stared blankly at the wooden wall before him, locks of brown cascading over his king sized bed.  Black and red covers covered him from the chest down as he laid down on his back, completely stiff and rigid.  All life seemed to have drained from his face, leaving him pale and his eyes almost hollow.  The light of humor was to a dim glow, completely lost in empty thoughts for all he could see was red.

From behind him, Duo could hear the click of his door opened and someone walking quietly inside, as if he was still asleep.  Duo didn’t move though, as he found himself he couldn’t if he wanted to.  Instead, he just listened to the person walk into the room and around to the end of the bed and stop.  Duo felt the burning eyes upon his skin, and Duo would have shifted uncomfortable at the powerful gaze.  Only one person could make him feel uncomfortable.

Heero.

Slowly, using all of his mental and physical power, Duo turned his head and met Heero’s obsidian gaze.  Heero watched him blankly, hands on the end of the bed.  He was cleaned up now, wearing his traditional green tank top and some faded jeans.  They continued to stare at each other, neither speaking nor really feeling the need to.  Duo suddenly felt that under Heero’s gaze, he was safe.  That he was always being watched, for who would dare to penetrate such a powerful stare.  Duo would have smiled if he had the strength.

Slowly, after another moment of staring at each other, Heero arched an eyebrow.  Duo watched it with most keen interest and secretly, Duo felt like beaming with glee.  Heero always did look so cute with that look on his face; something rare the happy pilot ever saw.

Duo suddenly felt like a little kid under a parent’s eye.  It was comforting that he was being watched over.  No big bad monsters under the bed going to get him.  No bumps in the night going to scare him.  Again, the feel for smiling cursed through him but he couldn’t crack the grin.  It would be too much work.

Heero watched Duo carefully from the moment he had walked into the room.  When the pilot had turned his head to him, he was almost saddened by the look of misery in Duo’s eyes.  He had never, ever seen sorrow in his friend’s eye and if it was depressing, it was more so.  Duo was never depressed; it just wasn’t his character.  But Heero watched, amazed, as slowly the light was creeping back into the happy pilot’s gaze.  He didn’t know where the joy was coming from but there it was.  Was it his presence that was making the sorrow go away?  That could be it…Maybe Duo was in need of support. 

Heero kept his gaze upon the unmoving ex pilot’s body as he watched it began to relax.  The boy didn’t know it but his simple stare was just making him feel better, physically and mentally.  Heero kept back a smirk.  So the pilot was the one now in need of help instead of giving it, ne?  Heero paused his thoughts for a moment then slowly relaxed.  Duo needed him.  Needed to be watched and to be assured everything was okay now.  Heero could do that.  I can do that.

Duo slowly sighed after a moment, sleep beginning to weigh heavily on him.  Even if he didn’t want to break the gaze Heero held, he couldn’t seem to keep his eyes open anymore.  Slowly, his head tilted to the side and his eyelids closed before he knew it.  But even as he began to drift off, Heero continued to watch him and beat away the demons in his mind.