"Shadow Man"

Written By: Kaeru Shisho

Disclaimer: I don't own any part of Gundam Wing or its characters, nor do I make any monetary profit off this story.

Rating: NC 17

Warnings: Yaoi, AU, angst, sap, romance, drama

Pairings: 1x3, 2x4, 5xC

Summary: Hardly more than a shadow himself, Trowa glimpses the shade cast across the concrete of another young man, who is about to make a fatal mistake.

A/N: This story takes place in a universe more like ours today, where the colonies exist, but not in space, and where the world is on the cusp of change

" Shadow Man"

Chapter 4

In the background, there beeped the familiar sounds of working monitoring devices. In the foreground, I was staring at the back of Wufei's head, watching his ponytail wiggle as his head shook.

"Who knows if he's ever going to be normal again?" he said. "You have to get on with your own life and responsibilities."

Once again, he'd pressed me to return to work "for Cathy's sake." I just hated it when he used her to guilt me into stuff, even stuff I knew I should be doing. I blew up- proof that I'd been under a lot of stress lately over the fallout from the accident. "Just leave me the fuck alone!"

That brought not one, not two, but three staff assholes-they referred to themselves as a "resident", an "intern", and a "nurse practitioner"- into the room to haul us both away.

The older one ripped into me first. "What has happened to this young man is a terrible tragedy. Stop, break down, yell, cry, whatever. But, do it outside the room."

He was followed by the intern in full-blown support mode. "Keep in mind that as tough as you think things are for you, that boy in there is the one fighting for his life. So, suck it up. Your positive attitude, love, and compassion are the best medicine he can get right now."

The younger female addressed Wufei more than me, saying, "We believe that the patient can hear you, even while in a coma. The last thing that person needs to hear is people speaking negatively about their prognosis."

The first one left us in the outer waiting room with this last thought, "As bad as you think your friend in there has it, there are many others who have it much worse. At least he is still alive."

I almost asked how he measured being alive and a vegetable to be better than dead, but decided not to get into a philosophical discussion with someone who's sworn job it was to maintain life.

Wufei apologized profusely for us both then left me to stink up the place with my sour mood. I was worthless helping Heero, so what the hell was I doing here, I wondered, not for the first time?

I sat alone, watching the workers flow in and out until they stopped watching me. I noticed that after a while I'd become invisible, part of the furniture or a fixture, like a coat rack. That's when I stood and reentered Heero's room to sit some more, and watch. I felt relieved that they let me back in to see him, so apparently my previous outburst from the day before had been forgiven.

At school, I'd watched him out of the corner of my eye and from beneath my bangs, while he practiced on the field. Soccer mostly. Once, he'd ripped off his t-shirt after scoring a goal. I remembered getting hard over that. Now that I had time to stare, he was so covered in bandages that there was nothing of him to look at.

Not to mention that there was nothing arousing about the hospital.

"Sorry for shouting," I told him as he lay there so still. "And just for the record, Chang's wrong. You will come out of this okay."

Then his eyes opened. Then they closed.

It happened so fast I couldn't believe it hadn't been my imagination in overdrive again.

I'd nearly convinced myself it had been an illusion, when a minute later they stayed open longer. He stared at me and I smiled, just in case he was seeing me. I wanted to shine with positive attitude. He blinked, beautiful dark blue irises flashed from under his black eyelashes, and then his eyes closed again.

I could read the monitors by this time. He was okay and returning to sleep. But he'd awakened and I'd been there to see it and annotate his log. "Eyes opened for half a minute and blinked-TB."

The next day I arrived a little late. I'd put in some time with the circus, which felt pretty satisfying. I'd also decided to talk to Heero, whether he was awake or not, just in case it could do some good. I'd been haunted all night by the idea of him being trapped in his head, of being aware and imprisoned with nothing to distract him.

"So, I ah…" I paused considering what to say to this near stranger, but remembering that he wasn't probably alert enough to actually recall what I said, I just started in on the events of my day. "I fed the lions today. They know me and let me scratch their ears. I've been told I'd qualify to train for the lion taming act, if I wanted."

There. I'd said it. I'd told somebody about a course of action I was supposed to take. I studied the tubes running from his mouth; I didn't expect him to talk. One was the ventilator, helping him breathe still, and others were for feeding, I'd been told. I felt lighter. It seemed that once I got to talking, sharing my thoughts, it became easier.

"I haven't told anyone, but I don't want to train for any more acts. I do the acrobatic stuff 'cause I like the high wire, and the trapeze is like flying. What I really want to be is a fighter pilot." I looked over my shoulder, but we were alone. "My sister, Catherine, wants me to stay with the circus so the army won't get me. She thinks she can hide me there. Yeah, well, maybe she can. What I haven't told her is that if the war comes here, I want to enlist and become a pilot."

A few minutes later his eyes opened and seemed to focus on me, so I raised a hand in a kind of wave and said, "Hi."

He blinked. We stared a while longer and then his eyes closed again. I opened an old car magazine and scanned for something interesting to read just to pass the time. "Here's an article on rebuilding a turbo engine." I read it aloud for a while then set it aside before my throat hurt too badly.

I might have nodded off, because my head jerked at the sound of a scuffle of feet and the opening of the door.

"It's ten o'clock, Mr. Barton."

Time for me to leave, then. "He looked at me again," I reported.

"That's nice. I'll make a notation on his chart. He's sleeping deeply now. You can go home."

"Okay. Yeah. Later, then."

The next day I caught up on my chores and made my sister smile by showing up to a practice. I even ate two meals before finally taking off to the hospital. I felt apprehensive when I got there, not knowing if I hoped he would be unchanged and that I hadn't missed anything, or if I hoped he'd be awake and talking.

I needn't have worried, though. Heero looked about the same, with some variations. Multiple IVs still hung by the bed so he'd get plenty of fluids and his meds. He was doing okay with the liquids; I could tell from the heavy container hanging on the bed frame, which had to be draining a catheter. I recognized the blood pressure cuff on one arm and the machine that would kick in at regular intervals to automatically take a reading.

Bandages swathed his cracked skull and more covered his broken nose, but the feeding tubes had been removed from his nostrils and he'd been taken off the ventilator, so his mouth was free.

His neck was encased in stiff foam-like material that ran down across the top of his chest and around one shoulder. I hadn't noticed that before. There seemed to be some new way to stabilize another broken part of him every day.

One of the IVs tapped out and the alarm went off. I was cool and just sat back and let the staff do their thing changing bags, which was a far cry from the first weeks when I thought he was dying whenever the signals rang and I got so excited I had to be walked out.

After they left me alone again with Heero, I looked him over until I'd satisfied myself with his stable status. Then I sat and tried to remember what he looked like. Not short or tall. He was about my height. Really fit. He played sports, mostly soccer. I'd watched him play a few times. Rain flying off dark hair, flashing, dangerous eyes, taut muscles, and teeth gritted in an expression of anger-incorporating all the imagery you'd think up if you were creating an icon for the determination to win.

I knew so little about him or the kids he hung out with. He and a shorter, blond rich kid, were the scoring forwards. The little blond admired him, I thought, but I didn't really know that for a fact. The braided runner was a mid-fielder off the bench. That was the guy who'd said "hi" to me a couple times. Heron had been a sports jock with a girlfriend, but this was Heero, and the girlfriend had been a sham. This was a suicidal, abused guy I didn't know.

After ten minutes of silence, his eyes opened.

"Hi," I said.

His eyes seemed unfocused, so I stepped closer, right up to the side of his bed. He followed my progress.

"I, ah, I'm Trowa. I came with you, here, to the hospital." Not that I expected him to make a speech or anything, but I thought I should try.

His lips moved, but I couldn't hear any sounds. The act must have taken all his strength, because his eyes shut me out again and he lay unmoving for the rest of the afternoon. I made the apt notation on his chart, and then I left.

I returned in the evening for my Heero Yuy devotional. "Hi, it's, ah, me again."

His eyes remained shut. He didn't give me the glimmer of blue or the flutter of lash this time. Okay. Yeah. I could work with the strong, silent type. He was a good listener this way and I found myself telling him more and more crap about myself.

"So I practiced a new aerial routine and aced it. The others hate me when I do that, master something on the first try, while they keep screwing up. If it weren't for Wufei and his near perfection to compete with, I'd just not even bother to show until performance time. So, I was thinking you'd like to share a caravan with me, when the time comes to get outta this place? Space is pretty tight, what with Wufei and me sharing one bunk and Catherine on the one above, but I'll think of something. It'll be summer and warm so we could sleep outside, maybe. Under the stars?"

There was no window to the outside here. I wished there was so I could look at the sky. You could stare and see infinity.

"Outer space- that's the place to be. Everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Far from here."

(o)

The next day the nurse practitioner, whose named I'd learned was Ann, handed me a cup of ice chips. "I noticed that you wrote on his chart that you saw his lips move?"

"Yes. I said something and he was looking right at me and it was as if he was trying to talk. That was my sense of things."

"You have good perceptive skills. This time, give him a few, a very few, of these and see if it's dryness that kept him quiet before." She smiled at me. "You never know."

"No, ah, sure. Thanks. I'll try."

It wasn't until nearly time to go that Heero's eyes opened. I'd finished a story about the first time my sister accidentally nicked me with a knife, an unbalanced one, in a knife-throwing act. "The bandage over your ear made me think of that. Oh, hi."

The ice was more mush than chips by that time, but I gave them a try. "Want a drink?"

He blinked, which I took as 'yes', and so I tipped the lip of the cup to his lips. They parted slightly, so I tapped the side of the cup with a finger and watched two slivers of ice slip past and a drizzle of water. I took the cup away and crouched close.

"It's ice and water. No booze. Sorry." I smiled briefly and I think, I think, his eyes widened ever so slightly more.

"Th…s."

Now I interpreted that as "thanks, buddy, for the drink."

"You're welcome."

The door opened with a whoosh. It was Ann, again. "It's ten… oh! He's awake!"

"Had some ice, too."

"Was it good?" she asked the still form. Her cheerful brightness made me wince. "Trowa's been telling me all about your improvements. He's here most of the time."

His eyes slid over to look at me and he blinked.

"Yes, that's Trowa. Wonderful, Heero! This is wonderful progress."

Progress? And then, instead of feeling elated, like I felt I should, I got anxious. She was calling him "Heero" and he wouldn't understand why. I hadn't prepared him for his new identity, and now that he was on the brink of communication. I worried about what he'd have to say.

Whatever it was, it wasn't going to happen tonight, though. His eyelids lowered over the blue eyes and he passed back into that deep sleep of the unwell.

(o)

The next day both Dr. Resident and Dr. Intern bounded on me the moment I showed up. Dr. R appeared serious. "I understand the patient was responsive yesterday."

"He's been res-pon-sive for weeks, just more so the last couple days." I meant to rub that in their disbelieving, know-it-all faces.

"Don't be too disappointed if he is less so today. One step forward, two back with head injury cases."

Me? Disappointed? I'd already come to the conclusion that my life, so far, all about living with disappointment. "Don't bother lightening things up for me," was what I said to him.

I let them precede me into the room. Once I saw that Heero was asleep, I turned on a heel and marched back out. No reason to hang with Dour and Sour, so I treated myself to lunch. Ham on rye, green salad, smoothie, oatmeal cookie.

That evening, I told Heero about the tiger I had to put down. His angry glare seemed to become more sad with the telling.

"She was an old lady and the tooth infection had got out of hand. She couldn't eat without teeth, not red meat like a tiger should. Know what I think? I think she just wanted to die and would have in the wild, but without enemies to track her down and kill her, she just had to stop eating. I couldn't take her suffering that way, though, and no one else would do it." I aimed a pretend gun at my forehead. "Right between the eyes. She never knew what hit her. It was over instantly."

Heero blinked. He blinked again and again.

If he meant what I thought he did, there was no way I was going to suggest I'd let him take the easy way out. I wasn't pulling the plug on him. I'd been tested earlier, when he wasn't communicating, and I hadn't done it then, so now that I knew he was capable of thought, I wasn't even tempted.

I shook my head. "Doesn't work that way with people. We got laws and doctors and," I waved a hand at the tangle of apparatus maintaining his vitals. "And all this crap to make sure people get fixed."

I swear, if looks could kill I would have been incinerated by the glare he gave me.

His lips moved slightly, "F-," ending in an angry grimace.

"Yeah, well. You can punch me out later when you're stronger."

He shut his eyes and closed the door on that conversation, so I left. It wasn't until I was back at my trailer that it occurred to me that no one may have told Heero how he could recover fully, and promised myself that I'd do that the next time he seemed alert.

I should have thought of that before.

(o)

It was a day later that he forced words out. I had to credit him for pushing himself to improve, in spite of wanting to die. Or maybe I had all that wrong. It wouldn't be the first time I'd mistaken someone's motives.

I greeted his open eyes with a "Hi."

"Ooo-?" It came out more like a grunt, but I interpreted him generously.

"Me? I'm Trowa. There's no reason for you to remember me, (and I hoped he wouldn't). I was there when you, ah, fell off the roof, which is why you're here."

"Nuh." He shook his head a little. "Oo-me?"

"Oh, who are you?" Okay. Showtime. Think! "You're Heero Yuy?" It came out a question. Shit, I had to sound like I was more confident of my facts than that. "Yeah. Heero Yuy. A relation, kinda. You came looking for your, ah, cousin, Wufei. He's like a brother to me here at the circus. Anyway, guess you were goofing around, fell, and… yeah."

"No."

There was no mistaking that word. I didn't blame him. I didn't buy that pile of crap either and I certainly couldn't sell it to him lying there all vulnerable. But I really had no choice, did I?

"That's how it looked to me. The fall."

He shook his head and glared at me. "No … idiot."

At least, I was pretty sure he called me an idiot.

"No m-m-."

"No memory? Can't remember much?"

He closed his eyes momentarily. Shit. Lucky break for me. It made me feel really bad for him, though.

"It might all come back. You can recover completely (I hoped.)" I couldn't promise him it would be soon. I could hardly meet his eyes. "I wish I knew more about you to tell. You just showed up at the school, like I said, to see your cousin, but he didn't go there." The logic as to why Heero would have gone to the school and not to the circus directly didn't seem to make sense anymore, so I made up more story, hoping his ability to reason wasn't too sharp to point out the holes. "I was there and looking for you. I guess you'd called him or something, your cousin, Wufei, so I knew to look for you."

"H-how?"

"How did you get messed up?" I guessed. "You fell off the roof of a building. Tall one. I think you were trying to jump to the next one and missed."

His eyes closed.

"Yeah, it wasn't good." I remembered to add, "But you'll get better and be fine…in time."

That information was all he could handle for the time being, because he slept through my evening visit.

(o)

The next day I thought I'd be creative and bring Wufei. I needed backup and it was time to pull in all the actors. I knew Wufei hadn't been avoiding Heero. He'd been covering for me, doing my chores, as well as his, when I wasn't there.

"Yes, he's talking, sorta. He's asking questions and I know he needs a face to attach to your name."

"Fine. As long as this doesn't take too long."

I muttered something that made him stop and look at me.

"I didn't catch that remark."

"Sure you did."

"Listen, I don't mean to sound as if that I don't care. I'm glad to hear he's improved."

"Good. Tell him that," I said and held the room door for him.

Heero's eyes opened as we entered.

"Hey, Heero, I brought company. This is that cousin of yours I've been telling you about. Wufei, meet Heero. Heero, Wufei."

"Hello," Wufei greeted the glassy gaze. With both hands, he made a tent, joining the fingertips in a peak.

To my way of thinking, his little hand-tent was symbolic of a desire to crawl away into a small, dim place away from Heero's blank stare. Maybe he noticed this too, when he caught me watching him, because he broke the tent apart.

"Um," I guessed I was to take the lead here. Me. The talker. Go figure. "Hey, says here you drank some shake on your own, well, through a straw, yeah, but, ah, that's something."

I could have seen a blink in reply. Little did I know that this was the start of Heero's "down" mood swing. Wufei was little help.

"I thought you said he was talking," my big helper whispered none too quietly.

I shrugged mostly to get him to move away. "So, did I already tell you about the horse that refuses to run clockwise in the ring? Counter-all the time-or she bucks. I'm supposed to convince her otherwise. Yeah. Like I've got special horse sense or something."

"You have particular aptitude for communicating with the animals- that's obvious," Wufei declared. "Whether you agree or not, it is an almost uncanny ability to read their body language and react in a manner they understand." Looking down, he must have seen that unconsciously he had made the tent again, because he his face looked suddenly irritated. He pressed his palms down on a chair back and didn't look up.

Heero's eyes moved slightly, following whichever of us was speaking. I went on as usual, rattling on about the circus, and his eyes bored holes through me as he lay there in silence. I tried to get him to say something, but he didn't even grunt this time.

"Don't feel bad if you don't recognize your cousin (You've never seen the guy in your life. And don't you think I felt guilty as hell pulling off the phony relations bullshit on a head case?). It's been a few years. I bet you've both changed a lot." Oh, fuck! I actually did say that, too, and with Heero in traction and covered head to foot in bandages, sheets, and artificial contraptions. Fucking fuck.

Wufei made a point of checking his cell phone. "It's time for practice. I must go." His black, beady eyes settled on me. "So should you."

"Yeah." I'd done enough harm for one morning. When I turned back to Heero, he'd closed his eyes, effectively, shutting me out again. "I'll be back tonight," I promised, though he might have taken it as a threat at this point, and then we left.

One step forward, another one back, I guessed.

(o)

That night I was met by more silence and a narrow, blue beam of irritation, not that I blamed him. I'd be pissed at the universe, too, for putting me in that state when I'd expected to die.

I felt like turning around and leaving, but I stayed anyway, dragging out the pain, probably, reciting more about my boring day, and ending with and obligatory, "Wufei says 'Hi'."

His eyes closed, and I took that as "don't let the door hit you on the way out," and exited on cue.

(o)

The next day my visit was pretty unsatisfying as visits went. If all I had were his eyes as windows to his soul, then I think I liked him better when they'd been mercifully shut. None of that searching my face for remembrance, something I knew he must have desperately craved, and yet selfishly hoped he wouldn't. I didn't want him to recall the "circus freak" in school that he'd passed by like most everyone else.

I tried to muster some emotional context for what he must be going through and strangely became mired in a flood of my own feelings about him. It felt oddly titillating and I welcomed the diversion from my normal emotional void. Well, not void, but avoidance.

When I compared myself to others at school, mostly eschewed out of hormonal adjustment and lusting after everything female, I had to admit I felt fundamentally flawed. Oh, I'd shared a few kisses, engaged in some awkward groping in the dark, but not much and not repeatedly with the same person. Mostly, I fought down my interest in my own sex to the point of killing off nearly all my lust entirely.

I didn't think I was missing much and I knew I was being far safer that way. Homosexual teenagers were treated not much better than us circus freaks, and combining both attributes, well, I didn't want to find out where that might place me.

I gave into my baser instincts, when I'd watch the ball games, and mostly just Heron. Those times I'd admit to his athletic cuteness, toned body, wild hair-all of which I wanted to touch and, well, yeah-

It was better all that hottness was under wraps, that he wasn't visible now. There was little to remind me of the aggressive runner, not even dreams. I was, in fact, not even troubled by nightmares. No reoccurring falls, no replays of a body plummeting to the ground. No blood.

All I had were those accusatory eyes. All I had had were the eyes. Now that he could speak, though, I'd learn more about what was going on inside that damaged head of his. And I was fucking terrified. I still visited. I didn't give up on him.

I was a fool for pain, I guess.

(o)

Over the next couple days, his voice returned slowly for whatever reason, although it was mostly one-word orders, grunts, and garbled noises. When asked if he wanted to see Wufei alone, he said, clearly, "No," so I didn't invite him along.

By the end of another week, he grew comparatively loquacious, but not particularly friendlier. I came in one evening tired from a grueling workout catching and training a new recruit to our trapeze act. What I wanted was to sit and maybe talk or read a little to him about engine repair, but no mental gymnastics.

Yeah, well, tough fuck. He was awake and opened the conversation with, "You look like shit."

That he spoke first shocked me for a second. I nearly told him that he looked no better, but stopped myself just in time. "Um."

"What's your problem?" he asked me. Snarled at me.

"What do you think of the saying 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder?'" I asked him. I was trying to be funny.

I could see the sneer materialize in his eyes first. I'd gotten good at interpreting him from just his eyes' expression.

"Fuck you."

Still, the "sneer" hadn't prepared me for an out and out attack. Hadn't I been there every day for him, his only friend in the world? His remark cut me in a funny way. I didn't take time to measure my response. I just shot back, "Okay, but you'll have to get a whole lot stronger first."

I watched his pupils enlarge, he couldn't control that response, and then his face turned away. "Go away," he told me.

"All right, since you asked nicely, I will. 'Night."

And I left him to molder in his own fuckulence, and me in my swampfest of guilt. Some friend I was turning out to be.

TBC

Chapter 5

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