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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 V – Heero's POV He was being carried. … Exhausted metal groaned under too much pressure. … "CLEAR!" … "I'm going to put you under now." … "Sally is going to fix you up," Duo said. … The pain in his feet was excruciating, especially in his left foot. … "CLEAR!" … Duo was screaming his name. … Heero was screaming Duo's name. No. Not his name. "Don't!" He was screaming: "Don't!" … "CLEAR!" … "We're going home." … "CLEAR!" … "Please, don't!" …. Heero cracked his eyes open. His vision was blurred and the room was dark and it alarmed him that he was not able to investigate his surroundings. Where was he? Where was the nearest exit? What could he use as a weapon to defend himself? He couldn't even move. He closed his eyes again and took a moment to calm his mind. … The next time he opened his eyes, his vision was still unclear but he stayed off panic and focused on whatever he could deduce about his environment. It was daytime now. The windows were to his left. He was facing a white wall. No, it was the ceiling. He could make out the shape of rectangular light bars, but they weren't switched on. Two machines beeped on either side of him. One had a constant rhythm, beeping once a second, the other matched his heartbeat. He wiggled his fingers and felt the coarse material of the sheets of the medical center at the Preventer building. He'd been in their beds before. His body was heavy and tired, he felt like he was sinking into the mattress even though he knew the mattresses here to be hard. He tried to move but the most he could do was shift his arms. His thighs twitched with exertion. His mouth was dry and swallowing was painful, like swallowing shards of glass. He felt the crustiness on the inner corners of his eyes, alerting him to the fact that he'd been asleep for a long time. That would also explain the weak state of his body. He had a headache. His throat was sore. The IV in the inner elbow of his left arm irritated. His penis ached from the catheter inserted into the urethra. The big toe on the left foot throbbed. After blinking a few times his vision cleared and he could make out the individual panels of the ceiling, positively identifying it as the ceiling of the fourth floor medical center in the L1 Preventer tower. He turned his head to left and looked out the window. He saw the training field – a team running along the track – and trees and the inner wall of the colony. He twisted his head to the right and he saw a figure in a chair positioned closely to the bed. The long braid that draped over the shoulder and down the chest was messy but unmistakable. After another minute of blinking his eyes he could identify Duo's pale features and see that his eyes were closed as he slept; uncomfortably slumped in the chair, with his hands tucked into the pockets of his Preventer issue training hoodie. Heero was thirsty but he didn't want to wake his partner. The American had dark bags under his eyes, it looked like he needed the sleep. Heero looked down at the shape of his body under the itchy blanket. His legs were heavy and his toe throbbed painfully but he was able to ignore it. What he couldn't ignore was that he could barely move. It was disconcerting. His muscles had atrophied, indicating he had been in a coma for an extended period. His thirst had to be remedied and since he couldn't muster the strength himself, he knew he needed help. He resented that idea enough to remain quiet. He fought with himself and eventually acknowledged that his body required care and he had no choice. "Du-…" He tried but his voice was so soft he could barely hear himself. He cleared his throat, which hurt, and then tried again: "Du-… Du-o… Duo." The man stirred. His eyes slowly opened. Suddenly, Heero was happy to see him and he didn't even understand why. "Duo." His co-captain flinched and straightened up in his seat. He fixed a shocked gaze on Heero and a smile appeared on his face, yet he looked sad somehow, but Heero couldn't explain it. Maybe he was seeing things wrong. "He~y, buddy." Heero's mouth tightened at the nickname. He knew something was seriously wrong whenever Duo called him "buddy". "Pal" was fine, "Ro" was fine, "baby" was fine – "baby" was usually a precursor to something great, actually – even "asshole" was fine. "Buddy" was not fine. "How are you feeling. Are you in pain?" He considered telling him about his aches and pains and how heavy his legs felt, but it wasn't a priority. "Thirsty," he answered. His voice was so gravelly it was unrecognizable. Duo nodded. Before he got up he pressed a button and Heero resented it because he knew it meant the nurses would come in soon to bother them. Duo walked across the room to a sink on the other side and he filled a plastic cup with water and carried it over. Heero wanted to lift his hand off the bed to accept the cup, but even just raising the limb a few inches off the mattress made him tremble. He hated his helplessness, but Duo never made him feel bad about it. A nurse popped her head through the doorway. "You-… Oh, he's awake." Just like that, she was gone again. Duo pressed a button on the remote for the bed and held it down to raise Heero up into a seated position. Once he was upright he put the cup to Heero's lips and let him drink, taking the cup away between gulps to force him to go slow and take breaths. "More?" He asked, retreating the empty cup. "Yes." He was sounding better already. The other agent got up again and repeated the process. Halfway through the second cup, a doctor and two nurses interrupted them and Heero was surprised when he recognized the doctor as Sally Po. Just like "buddy", that was a bad sign, he knew. She smiled and came to stand at the foot of the bed and waited for him to finish his drink. "That must feel good." Duo put the cup away on the bedside table. "Yes," Heero replied. She stared at him, scrutinizing him for an uncomfortable period of time. "You look good." "I doubt that very much." He could smell himself and he assumed he looked as bad as he smelled. "You look relaxed; rested," she clarified. "I should be, considering how long I slept." Sally quirked an eyebrow at him. "Did you have time to talk with Duo?" She looked at the other agent, who shook his head. "No. I don't know how long I've been out, but I can tell it's been a while. You're not going to make me sleep some more, are you? I don't want to sleep any more" He tried to joke. He was never good at being funny, but Duo enjoyed his efforts. He always smiled at him. He wasn't smiling now. Sally, however, did smile. Duo tried a joke of his own: "I don't want you to sleep any more either. Contrary to popular belief, you are actually better company to be around when conscious." The man still wasn't smiling. The way his mouth screwed up, wasn't a smile. It was a grimace. "What's the last thing you remember?" Sally asked. Heero was quiet as he took his time to search his memory. Everything was a bit jumbled up. He knew bits and pieces – words, feelings and sounds. He couldn't discern any chronological order to them, or even what was real and what was part of comatose hallucinations. His last, clear memory was… "You're cold and wet," Duo pointed out, his voice laced with concern. "Nnnn, I'm sorry." He tried to push himself up and get away from Duo so he wouldn't have to deal with a wet mop of hair on his chest, but he honestly couldn't move. "Go to sleep, Heero. It's okay." Heero blinked and hoped he didn't blush. He couldn't tell her that, she mustn't know that he had been sleeping with – and 'sleeping with' – Duo; he would get grounded. He traced his steps further back, to the first non-incriminating point he could remember. "Duo helping me finish my mission report for F-177 and then going home, to my apartment." He knew to lie about that last part. Duo and Sally shared a look that made Heero both curious and concerned. "Is that bad?" He wondered self-consciously. "… Maybe it's for the best…" Duo mused aloud and he looked down into his lap. "I failed a mission," Heero surmised and he clenched his hands into fists. Duo reached for his fist and covered it with both hands, stopping it from trembling. "You were brilliant," he insisted. "I failed you." Heero's entire body went rigid when he remembered an upcoming protection detail. "Relena." One of Duo's hands moved to his shoulder to put him at ease. "She's fine. We weren't assigned to her detail." "What happened?" Heero demanded. He needed to know what had gone wrong. Whatever mission they had been assigned to, it had failed. He needed to know what he had done wrong. Duo's jaw clenched shut. "Let's not focus on the past right now," Sally suggested with a tone that left no room for argument. "You are going to need to focus your energy on moving forward. You have a long process of recovery ahead of you." He shot a look her way. "Recovery from what? How long was I in a coma?" "Eight and a half weeks," Sally replied bluntly. He nodded. "I've been in a coma before," he stated. It had been during the war, after he had opted to self-detonate to settle a conflict, and Trowa had been taking care of him afterwards. "Not this long, but I know I'll recover quickly." "You have more than muscle atrophy to deal with. The rehabilitation will be intense. It will demand a lot from you, both physically and mentally." "Why? What's wrong with me?" "Nothing is wrong with you," Duo rushed to say. Sally seemed reluctant to answer Heero's question, which made his heart race and the monitor beeped erratically in accordance. "Both-…" She shook her head at herself and steeled her expression. "Both your legs have been amputated at mid-thigh." The monitor beeped faster. No. With shocked eyes Heero looked down at himself, only to be confused by the sight. Just as earlier, when he looked down his body, he could see the shape of his torso, his legs and his feet pointing up under the blanket. Not only could see his legs, he could feel them too. He could feel the pain in his toe. "That's not funny." "I'm sorry, Heero," she said, but she wasn't apologizing for a crass, misplaced joke. She grabbed the blanket and pulled it down his legs, all the way down to bundle it up at the foot of the bed. White bandages were wrapped around his thighs, but stretched out before him were two normal looking legs; with golden-toned skin and dark hairs. Looking at them closely however, Heero realized they didn't look like his legs, which was an odd realization, and there was something off about the toes, in the way they were tightly sandwiched together. No. "The skeleton of the prosthetics is Gundanium," Sally explained. "Both your femurs have been replaced with Gundanium implants and they protrude out the stumps so the prosthetics can be attached and detached. The shell, which gives the legs a natural shape, is comprised of panels of a carbon fiber and titanium hybrid, with openings at the back of the knee and around the ankle joints to allow for full mobility. The shell is covered with a synthetic skin, dyed to match your skin tone and with real human hairs hand-punched into the cover to give a realistic look and authentic feel." No. "They are the epitome of the current medical technology. As you know, I've been working on improving prosthetics for soldiers and field agents in particular for the past four years and trials with earlier models have yielded great successes. Once you complete the rehabilitation course, these legs will function just like real legs, with the same mobility and precision as any average person." As any average person. No. He stared at her, watched her lips move with calculated precision and tried to focus on her words as she spoke fast and monotone, like delivering a rehearsed speech. Or more like a sales pitch. "We have planted an action- receptor in the primary motor cortex, specifically in the area responsible for leg muscle control, which we identified for you specifically through a brain mapping procedure. The action-receptor is a glass tube the size of a grain of rice, lined with electrodes. Over the course of the past seven weeks, you're brain cells have grown into the tube, connecting the neurons with the electrodes. With extensive practice, the motor cortex will adapt and through synaptic firing the brain will be able to activate the electrodes and cause a corresponding motion in the prosthetics." No. He looked at Duo, but his partner wasn't even paying attention to Sally; he looked like he had heard the lecture a million times before – and that it still made no sense to him. "It's state of the art, only the best for our Preventer agents," Sally assured him. "We've had great success stories with these leg prosthetics and the action-receptor technology is so accurate that even one of my patients who has been fitted with a lower arm prosthetic last year has regained complete motor control; his handwriting is exactly the same as pre-amputation." She continued on excitably until Duo shot her a look that somehow caused her to fall silent. The two of them regarded him expectantly. Duo was holding his breath. Heero studied the motionless, lifeless legs. He wanted to move them, but he couldn't, he could only pull at them, but they were heavy and that hurt. It hurt in his pelvis as well, at the hip joints, where the Gundanium bone implants had been attached. "It will take a while before you can move them, but you will," Sally said, reading his frustration. "How long?" "It's different for every individual," she disclaimed, before she informed him: "Our other patient with double leg amputation was able to walk after two months. But his amputation was below the knee. That's… quite different. Double the joints replaced means more than twice the challenge. The ankle is a passive joint, on top of that and-" "No," he shook his head as she misinterpreted his question. "Not how long until I can walk. How long until I can go back into the field? Whatever mission we've failed, there is obviously a lot that needs to be set right." Sally turned to Duo for guidance, but Duo dropped his head down and his eyes wouldn't meet anybody's. She said cautiously: "Let's take it one step at a time, okay?" Her attempt to placate him was agitating and offensive. "You gotta walk before you can run." "How long did it take that patient to get back into the field?" "Heero…" She sighed. "He didn't go back into the field. He can't." No. "Alright." He pursed his lips. "How long did it take any of your other patients?" He needed at least some kind of timeframe to estimate his own recovery – which was usually half the time it would take anybody else. Her gaze flitted to Duo again, but he was of no help. "They-… They're all grounded. None of them have been able to get cleared for field duty." No. "Did they even try?" He asked with a scoff. "Some of them. They couldn't pass The Twelve." He hardened his gaze at her. "But you've been working on making prosthetics for agents and soldiers specifically. What good are these prosthetics if we can't go back into the field with them?" "In spite of the breakthroughs we've had, further development is still necessary and that takes time," she defended, her words were quick, from nervousness or irritation, Heero couldn't tell. "The prosthetics provide our wounded agents with quality of life, it is our way to repay them for their sacrifices. Of course my hopes are that someday the technology will have advanced to a point where agents could get back into the field if that's what they want – after such trauma," she stressed. "But we're not there yet. The prosthetics function at 100% of average human ability, but a Preventer agent needs to function far above of what a regular person is capable of and the technology just isn't there yet. The legs are heavy, causing an enormous strain on the body if you were to push it the way an agent is required to push his body and your reaction time is a crucial couple of milliseconds slower because the signal has to pass from the action-receptor to the prosthetic's receiver." "I'm strong enough and I'm fast enough," Heero asserted. He didn't like her looking at him like she pitied him; like she pitied him for believing in something that was supposedly impossible. "I can do it." She shook her head. "I know why you would believe that right now. But you will soon understand the limitations of your body. This is no longer the body of 'the perfect soldier'." No. Duo finally joined in on the conversation again, only to look at Heero with pained eyes and all he said was: "I'm sorry, Heero. You have no choice but to accept it." No.
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