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"Music and Notes" Written By: Stone Angel
Disclaimer: I WISH I was making money off this.
And I wish I owned the characters. But, sadly, they're just my playthings
and other people who are richer and happier than I can claim otherwise. Pairing: Heero and Duo, Duo and Heero, and any
combination therein. Category: EXTREME ANGST! Rating: R for language and angst. Warnings: As stated above, EXTREME ANGST. POV, sap, language, blood, deathfic. Summary: "After the war, Heero and Duo live
together, but Happily Ever Afters aren't as easy as they seem." This fic is very sad so please do not read it without tissues. If you did not just click the Back Button at the top of your page, thanks. ^_^ If you manage to finish it, PLEASE send feedback. It is much appreciated. ~Leia
"Music and Notes"
There are times when I wish that I had never gone home that night. Times when I sit and think, if I had just stayed away, everything would be fine now. But then, I snap myself out of it and I realize that that isn't true and could never be. I had to go back. There was no other way. I walked into the apartment and grinned. Heero could be romantic when he tried. The whole apartment was cleaned and the lights were dimmed. The main source of illumination was the large number of short, white candles that adorned nearly every surface in the place. The floor was scattered with red rose petals and the candles and petals were more concentrated in a trail that led down the hall. I heard running water and smelled my favorite scented bubble bath and I smiled. "Heero." I called as I took off my jacket and hung it by the door. I didn't get an answer. I checked the roses I was holding to make sure they were perfect and followed the candles and petals down the hall. I stopped right before I got the bathroom. The carpet there was wet. It was soaked with water, so much so that when I stepped, the water was squeezed out of the carpet like a sponge. Why was the carpet wet? "Heero?" My heart began to pound. The bathroom door was closed save for a crack to let a small sliver of light past to hit the soaked floor and opposite wall. "Heero?" I pushed the door open. I saw his reflection before I saw him. The full-body mirror on the opposite wall showed the bathtub that was overflowing, the bubbles remaining in the tub while the water streamed out from under them, over the sides, and Heero who was next to it. He was lying on his side on the floor, away from the water that ran along the wall straight into the hall, his back to the mirror. "Heero!" Dropping the roses, I ran forward, slipping on the tiles because my shoes were wet from the carpet. I ran to him, falling to my knees right before him and turning him over to face me. His eyes were closed and he had a little blood on his lower lip. I looked lower and a sound of pure pain was ripped from my throat. He was bleeding heavily under his clothes from a wound on the left side of his chest. Only now I saw the pool of blood on the floor that was growing steadily closer to the water that ran into the hall. "Nn... Nooo..." I moaned as my vision blurred with tears. "Heero. Heero! I'm here, baby, wake up." I tilted his face to me, rubbing a thumb over his cheek. He was still warm. "Heero... Heero..." I held him, trying to get him to wake. "No... No... Come on, love. Don't do this. Come back. Come back to me..." I held him tightly and pressed my crown to his, squeezing my eyes closed against the tears as I sobbed. I pressed a soft kiss to his lips and then held him close, rocking back and forth as I cried. "Heero... Heero... Heero..." Things are kinda blurry after that. And it all seems rushed in my memory, like the next few hours were put on fast forward, but I know that right then, those hours were the longest hours of my life. I know I sat there for a long time, calling his name. Apparently, one of the neighbors heard me screaming, or the water leaked into the apartment below or something because the police showed up a while later. I don't know how long. I didn't hear them come in. I know I fought when the two of them pulled me away from him. They thought that I was his attacker until another cop that had caught us in the bushes a year ago came in and recognized us and informed them that I was his lover. They called an ambulance and tried to revive him with CPR and I almost killed them when I saw how roughly they were treating him. When the paramedics arrived a few minutes later, they immediately stopped the police and tried to use paddles. My knees gave out at that point and I fell to the floor, clutching at my head and hyperventilating. How could they do that to my Heero? After a minute, the three paramedics looked at each other and stopped trying to revive him. That was the worst part. The part where everyone was silent and glancing at me, and I knew. I knew he was gone. I just sat and stared at him through my tears. This wasn't happening. This wasn't real. This was a nightmare. And I was going to wake up and Heero was going to tell me that everything was all right. I've never woken up from that nightmare. I didn't wake up when they questioned me about how it happened. I didn't wake up when they asked if he had any family they had to call. I didn't wake up when more people came and took him away. At some point, I was in the hall and a policeman was explaining what I had to do, but I wasn't really listening. "Hey." I looked up to him from where I had been staring at the blood on the floor. "You have... You have a little blood on your lip." He said while gesturing to my lip. I blinked. What was he talking about? I licked my lips unconsciously and tasted copper. I think his expression was disturbed, but I was too out of it to understand, much less care. It didn't matter. How could that matter? He continued. "Do you have someone you can call?" Howard. I had to call Howard. He had to help me build a new Gundam so I could find and crush the piece of shit that did this to Heero. I nodded. I never got to kill him. There was an investigation, but it didn't go on very long. It was over the next morning. K-9 units found the guy and he admitted to everything. Craig Whitaker. Some supreme piece of shit who had been a soldier along with his brother, but his brother didn't make it. Said brother apparently met with Heero at some point out there in space and didn't live to tell the tale. So, he had spent years tracking Heero down to kill him. When he finally found him, he broke in. Heero probably hadn't heard him over the bath that he had been running for us. He found Heero alone and somehow managed to kill him without Heero being able to stop him. His complete and utter luck. Before I could return the favor, he killed himself in jail. That hurt. I should have been the one to take his pathetic life. But I had other things to take care of. I got the Coroner's report. Howard had had to read it and tell me what happened, I couldn't even touch it. All that I heard him say was that it had been a knife and it had pierced the heart. A quick death. In the police report, Whitaker said that he had thrown it from the hallway just as Heero was turning around from lighting a few more candles to turn off the bath. The Coroner's report confirmed it. From what Whitaker told them and what I told them, they thought that it had just happened a few minutes before I got home. A few minutes. People think that life changes gradually, like kids growing up and going away to college and stuff, and that is true. But the things that change life the most drastically, the big things, they happen in the blink of an eye. A few minutes is all that it took for me to have not been there when Heero needed me the most. I could have stopped it. And even if I couldn't have done that, I could have died with him. Or, God, even said Goodbye. I broke down then, in front of Howard, and I cried. I cried so hard. And it still wasn't over. The next day, I had to plan the funeral. In the war, I had once asked Heero what kind of funeral he would want or if he wanted one at all. He said that he wanted "something simple". That was all I got out of him about it. I picked out a casket, chose a good cemetery, picked the next day to do it and went about calling everyone I thought he would want there to make sure they knew. News travels fast unless you need it to. But everyone had already heard. The day of the funeral was... It was like it wasn't really happening. It was like it was happening to someone else that I knew really well. Not me. Quatre was the first to arrive. He was crying. Trowa had a single tear hanging in one eye and he was trying to console his lover. Wufei looked like Hell. Like he had been drinking all night. I didn't invite Doctor J. Not only wouldn't Heero have cared that much if he was there, but I didn't want him there. It seemed too... Inappropriate. Relena was there. She was crying softly to herself. Dorothy was by her side. Noin was there. She held her chin high, but I could tell that she was on the verge of tears. Zechs was there by Noin, looking somber. Hell, even Cathy showed up. And Cathy never really acted nicely to Heero after he got better and Trowa went back to war with him. Howard was there of course. But what really amazed me was that a handful of ex-Oz soldiers came to pay their respects. They had seen Heero fight before and had admired him as a fighter and soldier. I guess it's true what they say. You never really know how many friends you have until you are dead. And then there was me. I held a dozen red roses for him. For the dozen red roses I never got to give him. The service was short, as I had asked, and ended in the evening with the sun low in the sky. I thanked everyone for coming. I told them that it meant a lot. It didn't really. I waited there until everyone had gone and I sat on the odd green material they always put down around the grave at a funeral. I knew he was in there, in the box in the dark hole in the ground, but I couldn't really believe it. I still felt like he would be waiting for me at home with his little half-smile. But he wasn't. He was here. Now. I knew I had to say something. Something I should have said to him when he was alive. But I didn't really know what to say. So I just said what was in my heart, clumsy as it was. "Heero. You know I love you. Wherever you are, you know that. Right? You know. I love you, Heero." I wiped away a tear that fell onto my cheek. "I'll always love you." I dropped the roses onto the casket and they thankfully stayed there. I looked to the simple headstone that I had asked them to put there ahead of time above the grave. The block of granite was simple but elegant. It read his name, his years, a short blessing, and "Beloved". And nothing more. He would have liked it. A gentle breeze like the one that had touched us the night we first kissed blew past me, tickling my cheek and once again making a toy of my braid, and I tilted my head back only slightly. I sat there for a few moments more, not wanting to leave, but unable to stay. I couldn't stay. Even after everything, I knew that I would lose it if I watched them throw dirt on him, bury him forever. After those few, but long moments, I stood. Looking back to the roses on the casket, I wiped away another tear. "Goodbye, Heero." And I walked away as the sun set. * * * That was a year ago to the day. I go by the cemetery sometimes, but I never go near his grave. The headstone... It says his name. It makes it too real. And it's too much for me. It's true. No one gets a happy ending. And even those that try so hard to make one, don't always succeed, even when they think they will. Everything ended that day a year ago. Heero's life, and mine. I just stopped after that. I still work at the docks. I still go to school. I know that he wouldn't want me to give up and die. But I stopped caring. About anything. And everything. It doesn't matter. I can't make myself really care about anything anymore. Other than work and school, I don't really do anything. I mostly use my free time to sit and think. And that brings me to the conclusion of the story. Not too long ago, I got to thinking about music. Music is when the right notes are played together to make something beautiful. I had something beautiful with Heero. ...And lost it. And life without Heero is the difference between music, and only notes.
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