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"Grounded"Written By: ExecutiveShrimp Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing, it belongs
to Bandai, Sotsu and associated parties. Written for pleasure not
profit. Rating: NC 17 Warnings: unbeta'd, sexual, violent content (graphic,
at times). Pairings: 2x1 Summary: A Preventer mission goes horribly wrong. Co-captains Duo and Heero both survive, but as changed men, and they have to rebuild their lives from the ground up.
"Grounded"
Part XI – Heero's POV He rolled down the corridor. The wheels of his wheelchair were soundless on the linoleum floor. A nurse coming his way stepped aside to make room for him, offering him a smile that registered as pitiful. He was no expert in deciphering expressions, but he had seen that brand of smile often enough now to be able to deduce what it meant. He didn't even acknowledge her as he continued on his way, knowing exactly where he needed to be: the fifth blue door on the left. It was a tight corner, but he easily maneuvered his wheelchair through the open door and into the wide open space of the practice room. The floor was the same faded red, marbled linoleum as what lined the hallway. The walls were painted a subdued yellow. Equipment lined the perimeter of the space. Balls and other attributes were gathered in one corner. One wall was entirely mirrored. A single, square window overlooked the training field outside. It was raining, per the weather scheduling. A team jogged in formation, their black clothes soaked through by the rain. Heero focused his attention on the only thing in the room that wasn't familiar to him: a short, young woman with curly, blonde hair pinned away from her round face. He resisted describing her as a "girl" only because she was wearing a white lab-coat over her navy blue trainers and matching shirt. A nervous blush appeared on her cheeks that drew attention to her freckles. After a moment's hesitation, she stepped forward, with her hand outstretched. "Hi! You must be Heero." He already decided she was entirely too chipper for his liking. Why was she acting so happy? Couldn't she see the kind of state he was in? He stared at the hand that was offered to him and didn't shake it and kept his hands on the rim of the wheels of his chair instead. She got the hint and tucked her hands into the pockets of her coat, but her demeanor remained unaffected. "My name is Doctor Pernille Verreaux, but you can call me Perry or Nilly. That's what my friends call me." "Can I call you Doctor Verreaux?" She blinked. "Uh… Sure. You can call me whatever you like, but there is really no need for formalities, Heero." "I'll call you Doctor Verreaux," he decided. "… okay." Her smile faltered. "Is it alright if I call you Heero, or do you prefer Mister Yuy?" He shrugged. "It doesn't matter to me. It's not really my name anyway." "Right." She chewed on the inside of his cheek, as unimpressed with him as he was with her. "So, I'm all caught-up on your medical dossier, but I'd like you to talk me through how you are doing right now." She walked over to a chair by a massage table and she sat down. She motioned for him to get closer. He rolled closer to her, but kept more distance than she probably wanted. "I'm fine." "No more pain?" "My toe hurts," he blurted, aware of how dumb that sounded. He looked away. "Phantom pain is totally normal. You shouldn't worry too much about it. It usually goes away within three to six months. If it's not gone by then, we can try some techniques for you to help diminish it." "It's already been three months," he pointed out, as if she wouldn't know. "I know, but like I said: it normally takes three to six months." "But I'm not normal." She pursed her lips and pointedly looked down into the file in her lap and muttered to herself: "No, you are not." She cleared her throat and looked back up at him with renewed resolve. "But you have no longer been experiencing pain in your stumps?" He clenched his jaw at the word "stumps", rejecting the term. He didn't think of his legs like that. As far as he was concerned, he didn't have stumps, he had legs just like everyone else, from his hips down to the tips of his toes. And he was determined to be able to do anything that anyone else can do with their legs – and be even better, like he always was. What else was the point of his life otherwise, if he couldn't do was he made to do? "No. No pain." "That's great. The sensitivity of the stump varies between people; sometimes it can take a long time for the soreness to go away. Of course, once you start putting your weight on it, you will probably still experience some discomfort, because the skin on the stumps still needs to thicken." "Hn." He really wished she would stop talking about "stumps". It was making him angry, like she was trying to impose a disability on him that he didn't identify with. Every time she used the word, he tensed up. It was all he could do to keep himself from flinching in response. "Can you hop up onto the table for me?" She patted the blue massage table next to her. "I'd like to do a quick examination, just to make sure that the stumps are-" "Would you stop saying that?" He snapped and he fixed a glare on her. She swallowed and reeled back in her seat, but after a moment she composed herself and decided that she wasn't going to let him intimidate her into submission. She rose up from the seat and patted the table again. "Up here. Please." Her voice was strained and she had trouble meeting his gaze. With a grumble he rolled closer to the padded massage table and put the brakes on his wheelchair. He grabbed one leg at the time, hooking his hand under the knee and directing the foot off the footrest. When both feet were planted on the floor, he reached for the massage table for support and scooted his body to the edge of his seat. He put all of his weight on his arms to raise himself out of his chair. He knee-joints were still stiff and remained bent as he tried to get upright. Once he felt secure that he was steady and could hold himself with one hand planted on the table, he reached down with the other hand and adjusted the position of knees, forcing them to straighten out. It took a lot of effort, but he got them locked into position and it was easier to balance that way. He did feel some pain in his thighs as standing put a pressure on them that he hadn't gotten used to yet. He twisted his hips so the edge of the table was against the back of his thighs and he grabbed hold of his sweatpants and lifted the first leg onto the table. He paused to give himself a little rest. Getting up from a chair and climbing up on a table should cost him no effort, but it was an exhausting chore. He scooted further onto the table until he could also lift his right, outstretched leg onto it. Finally, he was seated and he looked at Doctor Verreaux who had been patiently observing. She smiled at him. "Very good." He had never felt worse. "Now can you please take off your pants for me?" She asked with innocent tone. He glared at her. He was already sweating from getting up on the table and now he had to go through the ordeal of undressing as well? With his eyebrows pinched together in frustration he laid back down and started the process of inching the waistband of his sweatpants down his hips, shifting from left to right to take the weight off so he could pull them down one side at a time. Once they were over his buttocks, he sat up again so he could push the fabric further down his legs. He let them sit around his ankles, trusting that was good enough. "Thank you. You're doing really great." "Don't do that, Doctor Verreaux," he ordered. "I'm sorry?" "The compliments. They aren't helping." "Right, yeah, your last therapist made a note about that; that you didn't like it." "If you knew that, why are you doing it?" "Because I'm not Doctor Price. I have my own way of interacting with patients." "I'm not a patient," he argued. She quirked an eyebrow at him but didn't say anything. She didn't need to. She untied his shoelaces and took off his shoes and then removed his pants as well, setting everything aside neatly, all the while ignoring his dangerous stare. Then she peeled away the skin-colored elastic bandages that covered the seam between the skin on his thighs and the synthetic skin on his lower legs. She prodded him a couple of times, testing the sensitivity. Heero didn't react at all. It didn't hurt, but being touched did make him uncomfortable. "I'm going to take a better look at the stumps now," she announced. "I told you to stop that." "And I told you that I have my own way of dealing with patients. Especially difficult ones." She held his stare and even Heero could tell that she wasn't nearly as confident as she portrayed herself to be and that made him less inclined to give her a hard time. "Fine, whatever." She smiled again and reached around to the back of his right leg. She was searching for something and Heero didn't know what until she found a button under the skin and pressed it. It took quite a bit of force to press the button down, but when she succeeded, something clicked and before Heero could object to what was happening, she pulled his lower leg away, lifted it up and set it down on the floor, propped against the chair she had been seated in earlier. He was frozen and speechless and couldn't stop her as she repeated the procedure for the other leg. Doctor Verreaux didn't say anything and gave him a moment to process what he was seeing. Heero stared at the expanse of empty table in front of him where his legs had been. It took him a minute to shake the idea that his legs had become invisible, as opposed to them actually being gone. He directed his gaze to there his thighs abruptly terminated. There they were. His stumps. He swallowed. He became ill all of sudden; nauseous and light-headed. His heart was racing. All in all, it was a disturbing sight. "This is the first time you have seen yourself like this, isn't it, Heero?" Doctor Verreaux's voice is distant and barely cut through the disorienting white noise that filled his head. "Yeah." During his previous examinations, they had always put him under. The other four physical therapists he had had all believed that it was better for him to learn to cope with his new legs if he saw them as a true extension of himself, not as prosthetics and it was what Heero had preferred as well. He flinched when Verreaux touched a gentle hand to his shoulder and he pulled away from her. "I'm sorry. I know this is difficult." She leaned forward to examine the skin. It was a little red and irritated, but she concluded that it looked perfectly fine. Then she walked across the room to retrieve something from a cupboard and she returned with a handheld mirror that she placed on the empty spot on the table where his legs should have been and angled it straight back at Heero so he could see the underside of the stumps. The bottom of his thighs were red, clearly irritated from the constant contact with the prosthetic. There were horizontal lines on his skin, from where the edge of the synthetic skin pressed onto his real skin. The Gundanium femur implants protruded out an inch. His skin around the shiny alloy was stitched up horribly and the edge where his skin met the alloy was covered with a rubbery seal. Since he basically had 'bone' sticking out of him, the wound would always be open and, therefore, needed to be sealed. The protrusion was necessary to be able to attach the replaceable limbs. She tilted her head at him sympathetically. "How are you feeling?" "I-…" He paused to try to make sense of his thoughts and emotions. "I-…" There was only one clear realization amidst the chaos in his head. "My toe doesn't hurt anymore." She didn't bat an eye, although Heero was sure he was sounding crazy. "Well, that's a positive take-away. Very good." He rolled his eyes at her continuing to give him such belittling compliments. He watched her reattach his legs and she ran him through a few simple exercises as he was slowly starting to gain control over the limbs. He could wiggle the toes on both feet and rotate the ankles. The knees he couldn't only get to twitch lightly. She had him lie on his back and held his foot as she pushed back to bend the leg at the knee before straightening it back out again and repeating that over and over. He had to try to apply pressure and imagine it was him moving the leg and not her. It felt silly and awkward and he couldn't imagine how it was supposed to help, but he played along and focused on his task. After they had done the same with the other leg, she gave him his pants and his shoes to put back on. Five minutes later he was dressed again and he looked at her expectantly. "What's next?" "You've been here two hours, Heero. That's enough for today." He scowled at her. "No! You're not sending me home, we're not done." Doctor Verreaux put her hands on her hips. "And we won't be 'done' for many more weeks – months, more likely. I'm not keeping you here until then. You're not exactly good company." He was not in the mood for her joking. "We're never going to be done if you don't push me!" "Heero, I need you to trust me. I know what I'm doing." "Do you?" He countered. "Are you even qualified to be my therapists? My recovery is very important to the agency. They need me. Isn't there someone more experienced than you?" "You know what, Heero?" She sighed, exasperated. "I'm probably not the best for the job. I'm only two years out of med-school and this is my first case flying solo, but you chased everyone else away. The Preventer Agency employs four top-notch physical therapists and you have driven them all to the point where they refuse to work with you, so now you're stuck with me. And I don't give a shit how important your recovery is to the agency, I only care about how important it is for you. You should too," she insisted, pointing at him with an angry finger. "But you aren't helping me; you're not pushing me!" He argued, slamming his balled fist down on his thigh in rage. "At this rate I'm never going to get any better." "You will get better," she promised him and following a deep breath her voice was calmer. "You have to adjust your expectations; your expectations of the process and your expectations of the results." He pursed his lips and shook his head. He was sick of people telling him that he would never be good enough again to be an agent for the Preventers. That was his life. If he was never going to be any good to anyone again, why bother with any of this? "I'm going back in the field," he asserted. "I don't think you'll ever be able to pass The Twelve again," she retorted, her tone firm although her eyes were apologetic. "I can!" "Fine, than prove me wrong." He crossed his arms in front of his chest. "I will." "Good." She nodded. "But prove me wrong tomorrow. We're done for today." She smirked at him and motioned for him to get back into his wheelchair. "Fine," he bristled. It cost some time and effort, but eventually he was seated in his wheelchair again and he rolled out of the room, ignoring her goodbyes. Even by the time he arrived back at his apartment he was still all riled up and he ended up punching a hole into the wooden door of one of his kitchen cupboards and he swiped a stack of plates off the counter, letting them shatter on the tiled floor. Then he spent the next hour struggling to clean up the mess he had made of his kitchen. It had been three months since his last surgeries and according to tests the implants in his brain and the receivers of the prosthetics were functional, but his progress was still negligible and his impatience was crippling him more than anything. The physical therapists hadn't been of much help. They just kept telling him that he needed more time, but he didn't want more time. Time was wearing him out. He was going crazy being confined to his wheelchair and locked in his apartment all day – being locked in his body. His sleeping wasn't getting any better either. He'd either get only a few hours each night or nothing at all, making the days last even longer and he couldn't stand it anymore. It embarrassed him, but he still called Duo every single night, even though the man had stopped answering long ago. Heero let the phone ring endlessly until the call was automatically aborted. On two occasions he had the driver that had come to pick him up from physical therapy bring him to the house that he had shared with Duo. Duo's car had been in the driveway both times and Heero had waited outside for nearly an hour, calling Duo's name and making his chauffeur climb the steps up to the front door to ring the bell. Duo never showed his face. Heero wasn't sure what to make of Duo avoiding him like that, but more and more he started to suspect that – just like Heero had become a burden to the agency – he had become a burden to Duo; the man didn't want to see him anymore because he was of no use to him in his ruined body. Heero didn't need much from him, he just wanted to hear his voice and have him lull him to sleep and maybe tell him what he is doing now and what has happened to the team. He tried talking to WuFei about it – and Quatre and Trowa whenever they visited – but no one would tell him anything. They were shutting him out. If Duo and the team were being deployed on missions again, that was need-to-know and Heero was just a civilian now that he had been grounded. He still wasn't allowed to read Duo's mission report either, to help him fill in the gaps in his memory. He took a shower because the small efforts of the day had made him sweaty and he could smell it on himself. Before going to bed he ate half of a microwaved meal. It cost a lot of willpower to force himself to eat; he couldn't stomach much but he knew he had to fuel his body to regain his strength. Still, he could tell he was losing weight, he could see it in his face and the way his hipbones protruded when he was lying on his back. With that in mind, he forced two more bites into his mouth, but after two full minutes of chewing it until it has a disgusting consistency, he knew he couldn't shallow it so he spit it back into the plastic container that he threw away. It was only ten o'clock by the time he lay prone in bed. He had switched off the light on the bedside table, but it wasn't dark in the bedroom. Streetlight poured in through the window – he kept forgetting to close the curtains and it was too much effort to get out of bed to close them. He thought of Duo, as he thought of him often, but seemingly more and more every day. He missed the sound of his voice and the touch of his fingers, tracing scars that marred his skin. He missed his lips capturing his in a kiss. When he was with Duo, Heero could forget himself – forget about the wrongs he had done, forget about his shortcomings and forget about old aches and pains in his body and just enjoy his body instead. He wanted Duo to make him feel that way again, to help him enjoy this body. He needed it more than he ever had, because he had come to resent his body with passion. He hated how helpless and weak it was. He hated that he had no control over it, even though he never used to hate it when Duo would make him lose control. He loved it. He loved how Duo would take over and take all responsibility and burden away from him. If he couldn't keep himself from crying out, that was okay, because Duo made him do it. If he couldn't stand up on his shaky legs, that was okay, because Duo made him do it. If he couldn't hold off his orgasm any longer, that was okay, because Duo made him do it. He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. He felt his penis beginning to swell in his loose boxers. The fabric tickled his sensitive skin. He rubbed his fingers left to right across his abdomen, skimming the waistband of his boxers. He thought about Duo's hand and how to mimic it. Duo's touch would be stronger, he realized and more decisive and deliberate. Duo always knew exactly what to do, there was never any hesitation - very unlike Heero's own touch. Wanting to imitate having Duo's hands on him, he delved his right hand into his underwear and wrapped it around his erection, while with his left he pinched a nipple. He bit his lip to stifle a moan, but he wouldn't be quiet with Duo, he wouldn't be able to, although he did try. Next time the pleasure arced through him, he released the moan, but it didn't sound right and he furrowed his brows at himself. He pumped his fist up and down his length and abandoned his nipples to tease the slit at the tip of his cock while he worked himself over. His face was screwed into an expression of concentration. It couldn't have come at a worse time, but his toe was hurting again. It was throbbing and the more he made his heart race as he jerked himself off, the more it hurt. Duo would be able to distract him, but Heero wasn't so skilled and before long, his toe was all he could think about. He tightened his fist around himself, desperate to wring an orgasm out of himself. Masturbation had been a pain ever since waking up from his coma. He used to be adequate at helping himself to a swift release, before Duo came along, but all he could think now was how his own touch wasn't good enough and how pathetic it was that he had no other choice, because Duo no longer had any interest in touching him. The few times he had managed to make himself come the past few months, it had never actually felt good, the way a climax used to be – and the way he needed it to be. At most it was just a relief that it was over and that his body hadn't failed him in yet another way. Heero gritted his teeth and kept stroking himself, but his body betrayed him in an intimate way when his cock went soft in his hand. He let go of himself and pulled his hands out of his underwear. He released the breath he didn't even know he was holding. His face was burning. His chest heaved with short, stuttering breaths. When he swallowed it hurt, because his throat was parch dry. He squeezed his eyes shut. He could cry if he would let himself, but he never let himself. It was a night like any other. He ended up at the window in the living room with his phone tucked between his ear and shoulder, listening to the repetitive tone. After a couple of minutes, the call was aborted and the dial tone sounded. He went back and checked the alarm clock. It was four AM. The next time he looked, it was seven thirty and he was grateful that he must have gotten some sleep in the meantime. On schedule he arrived back at the Preventer building at noon and he navigated his way through the corridors. Two agents bowed their heads as he passed them by. He knew them, they were from Team Four and they had always been afraid of him. It seemed they were still afraid. He rolled into the practice room to find it empty, but he spotted a note on the massage table that he had occupied the day before and went over to check if it was a message for him. Meet me downstairs, the note read, followed by three wavy lines, directly below each other, which he assumed to mean Doctor Verreaux was waiting for him to join him at the indoor pool on the ground floor. He sighed irritably – couldn't she have given him a head's up sooner? – and he headed back to the elevator that he took down to the ground floor and he followed the smell of chlorine and the sound of splashing to the double doors at the end of the hallway. It wasn't the first time he had been there since starting his rehabilitation, but if Verreaux had told him sooner that she was planning aqua-therapy for him, he could have told her that one of the previous therapists already tried that with him and it didn't work. The space sounded hollow; every sound bounced off the tiled walls and floor. There was one large pool for regular training, where three agents were racing each other in a butterfly stroke, and two smaller basins for rehabilitation. Doctor Verreaux was wearing a modest, navy blue bathing suit with the Preventer logo on her chest. Most of her hair was under a white cap, but a few curls peeked out and framed her face. Without her hair around providing balance, her features seemed too big for her small face: her round, green eyes, her button nose and her full lips, which formed an even bigger smile when she noticed his arrival. "Heero, there you are." She waved him over. He rolled closer to her with a sour look on his face. "I've already tried this with Doctor Hannigan." He needn't add that the attempt had failed miserably, that fact was readily apparent considering he was still wheelchair-bound. "How often?" She had a smirk on her face. "You said you read my dossier. Shouldn't there be a note of it?" "There was. It said you tried it twice and then threw a fit." "Well…" He objected to the phrase "throwing a fit", but he didn't bother arguing semantics. "It didn't work." She shook her head, making those few wayward curls dance. "For all your stubbornness, you do give up on things easily." "I'm not a quitter," he snapped, insulted by the implication. "I'm efficient. When something doesn't work, there no point to continuing." "Heero, anything we are going to try is going to take more than two sessions. I know you are impatient – most of all with yourself, because you hold yourself to such a high standard – but you need to try to be patient with yourself and celebrate every small victory along the way." He pursed his lips. He didn't like having to give in, but he didn't know what else to do either. "You didn't give me any notice, so I don't have a bathing suit with me." She cocked her head and simply smiled at his petty tone. She took two steps to a duffel bag on a shelf and produced a plastic package that she threw into his law. She then pointed her thumb over her shoulder. "Dressing rooms are back there." He glanced down to confirm she had gotten him a pair of Preventer-issue swim trunks, the same kind Doctor Hannigan wore during their two sessions in the pool; navy blue, loose-fitting, with a white drawstring around the waist and the logo on the right trunk. "Go on," she urged. Grumbling under his breath he steered the wheelchair into the men's dressing room. It took him over ten minutes to strip out of his clothes and put the bathing suit on, but he wasn't about to feel guilty about keeping her waiting. It was her own damn fault for springing this on him. He rolled back out with a scowl on his face and followed her directions to one of the small basins. The basin was a small rectangular, about four feet wide and nine feet long. It had adjustable bars on either side for support and the bottom was a treadmill. He maneuvered the wheelchair next to the basin and put on the brakes, but he had no idea how to get in. Hannigan had to pick him up and put him down on the edge so he could slide in and it had been a horribly embarrassing experience. Before he could utter a protest, Doctor Verreaux hooked her arms under his armpits and lifted him out of his chair and onto the cold floor. When he looked at her to glare at her, he noticed her face was red from the exertion, she was only a small woman after all. Adding insult to injury was the fact that the three agents were just getting out of the pool and had been looking their way. Their faces were unreadable, but Heero was humiliated that they had seen him so helpless. He made a hurry of scooting to the edge of the basin, but he had to wait for Verreaux to get in first so she could help him. She elegantly lowered herself down onto the floor next to him and slid into the lukewarm water where she got into position, her arms outstretched so she could steady him. The three agents were still lingering by the pool and stealing glances their way. With clenched jaw Heero pushed his hips forward and let himself sink into the water, the heavy legs pulled him in. The feet landed on the bottom and he grabbed the submerged bar to keep himself from toppling forward with the momentum. The water came up to his midriff and supported most of it weight, leaving him without any discomfort in his thighs. Verreaux hands were hovering close to him but no intervention was necessary; he had managed to stand upright without her assistance. "That's really great! Well done," she complimented and her words echoed off the wall and interrupted the quiet conversation of the three men. "Could you stop that?" Heero hissed. "I told you: we are going to be celebrating the small victories. You might as well get used to it, because I'm going to be cheering you on every step of the way." "Great," he ground out. Verreaux waded over to the front of the basin, stepping off the treadmill. Heero adjusted his position, facing forward – facing Doctor Verreaux – and gripping the bars on either side of him. He could see his own, pale legs on a monitor to Verreaux's left, by the controls for the treadmill. An underwater camera would keep track of his movements, so they could study his progress – if there would even be any. "Ready?" "Hn." With a beep the treadmill was switched on, set to a slow speed. Heero walked awkwardly. His legs were stiff because he couldn't make his knees bend and he had little control over his ankles and toes. But as long as he kept himself balanced, he could walk. Just as she had said, Verreaux cheered him on, studying the jerky movement of his legs on the screen and regularly finding new ways to compliment him. He just tuned her out and focused on his walk. They spent an hour and a half in the pool and then she helped him out of the water and back into the wheelchair. Luckily, there was no audience around. He went back into the basin with her every day, for one- to two-hour sessions. After shorter sessions, they would do more exercises upstairs, which had him lying on the massage table again. Repetition was the key to success, she reminded him whenever he got impatient and irritable and over time the flexibility in and control over his ankles and toes increased, as she pointed out to him. His knees, however, remained locked. The hydraulics in the knee joints were more powerful and required a strong, focused brain signal to respond. Verreaux compared it to exercising a muscle; not until it reached a certain threshold could it lift a heavy weight. She kept telling him to visualize his walk and she always had the monitor turned away from him, so he couldn't fixate on the actual, retarded locomotion of his legs. The hint of shyness that she had displayed when they first met was soon gone and she became very adept at ignoring him whenever he was giving her his death death-glare and she always remained chipper, even when he was punching the surface of the water in frustration. He was in the basin again and he was starting to get exhausted, but he pushed through it, clenching his fingers around the bars on either side of him. She had turned up the speed of the treadmill to a walking pace that would have been more normal for him before, but now – after an hour and a half of walking through the water – he was having trouble keeping up. Verreaux alternated her gaze between his red face and the monitor and she was smiling. "How are you holding up?" She inquired. "Fine," he huffed. "Not tired?" "I could do this all day." Her smile brightened at his dry joke. "You're doing so great, Heero. I'm so proud of you." He rolled his eyes at her optimism. "Yeah, yeah, yeah…" "No, I mean it," she said poignantly. "See for yourself." She reached for the corner of the monitor and swiveled it around until the screen was facing Heero. He redirected his annoyed gaze from her beaming face to the monitor and his expression went blank with shock. The pair of legs he was looking at were moving perfectly, bending slightly at the knee with each forward step, feet landing heel-first and then the foot rolled nicely and the toes left the surface of the treadmill last. The movements were fluid and seemingly effortless. He looked to Verreaux again and her eyes were watery although her smile was brighter than he had ever seen it. "You're doing it!" She exclaimed excitedly. Momentarily his left knee locked up and his step faltered, but when he squeezed his eyes shut and visualized his walk again, like his therapist had instructed him, he got his stride back and when he dared to look at the screen again he could see that he was still walking normally. "Yeah…" He agreed breathlessly. "Well?" She prodded, disappointed by his flat reaction. She should have known better than to expect any show of excitement from him, she knew him quite well by then. "Isn't this amazing?" Was it? Three weeks of hard work and he was walking again; underwater, holding himself upright with his arms. If that was any indication for what was to come, he was only discouraged by it. He had put in so much effort. He had been exhausted every day, so much so that he managed to get a few hours of sleep every night. But all of his hard work amounted to something so small. He still couldn't even get up out of his wheelchair, or roll over in bed normally. His face twisted in anger. "This is bullshit." "What?" "This is fucking bullshit! Three weeks of this shit and this is it? This is supposed to make me happy? Make me proud? Do you have any idea who I am- who I was?! What I could do?! This is nothing! I'm still nothing!" He slammed his hand into the water. "Stop this fucking treadmill. Stop it, right now!" "Heero, you have to realize that this is only the beginning. It will get better." "When? A year from now? Two years? And then what? I'm supposed to be elated that I can break out in a light jog, or stand up to take a piss? What?" His anger made way for something else, something new, something he didn't know how to handle. He was trembling and hyperventilating and his skin was crawling. Verreaux didn't stop the treadmill, she didn't want to let him quit, but he was done with everything. He turned his body sideways and tried to lift himself out of the water, but his energy was completely spent and he was still weakened from a poor diet. He couldn't even raise himself onto the edge. With a beep the treadmill came to a halt under his feet before it would make him lose his footing. She approached him and it had him tensing up even further. She reached her hands out for him and he shrunk in on himself, pressing his arms close to his body and ducking his head between his shoulders. "No, don't do that. I don't like that," he declared and she damn well knew not to touch him more than was absolutely necessary – he had warned her often enough and he had warned Hannigan too, with his fists. But Verreaux didn't listen to him and didn't let herself get pushed away and she ended up enveloping him in her arms. He went rigid in her embrace. The only person he had ever allowed to hug him was Duo and he became more distraught when he tried to remember when that was last. He felt her skinny arms along his back and chest, her soft breasts pressed against one bicep, her fingers pressing into the other. Her cheek was on his shoulder and a curl tickled his ear – she wasn't wearing her white cap today. He squeezed his eyes shut and had no choice but to surrender. He wasn't going to hit a girl, the way he punched Hannigan to get him to back off when he was trying to help him put his pants back on. "This isn't me. This isn't me. This isn't me," he kept repeating. For the sake of his pride, he needed her to know that and he needed to remind himself as well. He was supposed to be strong, and level-headed and in control of his body, his mind and the situation. Her thumb rubbed back and forth on his arm and she held him tighter still as she promised him: "You will be yourself again." That was the first time anyone had said that to him since waking up from his coma, and it helped.
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