Chapter Text
Heero sits on the edge of the bed, his hand on mine, tracing the outline of my knuckles like he’s memorizing the shape of me all over again. He doesn’t say anything, he never needed to. His silence has always spoken louder than words ever could. It used to drive me mad, all that quiet, but right now it’s the only thing keeping me grounded. That, and the weight of his fingers wrapped around mine.
I hated that he was here.
I hated that it had come to this, that I’d been so fucking weak. That I’d slipped up, been caught, beaten, and paraded in front of all those cameras. No beaten is too kind of a word for this pain. It was more like torture. And I hated myself for it more than anything. But worst of all, I hated that he had come for me. Because part of me had believed that no one should.
The pain hadn’t faded, not even close. My ribs were a pulsing mess of fractures and breaks. Every breath was a struggle. Sometimes, I couldn’t breathe, it left me on the verge of passing out. But the pain kept me here. Lashes across my back felt like they were done with barbed wire, each placed with precision. But I felt a sick satisfaction in the fact that I hadn’t screamed. Not once. My face was swollen, and I could feel the skin around my left eye tightening, the bruise pushing the lid into a permanent half-shut squint. Every inch of my body screamed, but it was nothing compared to what was happening in my chest.
Because he’d come. Heero had actually come for me.
He still gave a damn, and I couldn’t believe it. Maybe all those things he’d said before I was taken weren’t just the cruel dreams of a desperate soldier clinging on, trying survive. Part of me wanted to believe that maybe, when he said he loved me, he had meant it.
But the relief turned to panic just as fast. What if he’d come for the mission, not for me? What if it was to silence me, to stop them from turning me into propaganda? I had no illusions about what I was to the world. A symbol. A threat. A liability. And Heero had always been the one sent to eliminate liabilities.
They had captured a Gundam and its pilot. That wasn’t just an accident. It was a play for power, a show of strength. OZ wanted to use me. Twist me. Turn me into a spectacle. A reminder to the colonies siding against us that this was what happened to traitors, to monsters. To boys who flew death machines and called it justice.
So, when I’d seen him, standing in that hallway outside my cell, gun raised, his expression carved from stone, I’d thought it was over. I manage to stand, pressing myself up against the wall, chest heaving from pain and fear, convinced I was about to die. I didn’t even beg him not to do it. I begged him to. Just to end it. End me. I couldn’t live with this humiliation.
And he almost did. I saw it, the flicker in his eyes, the twitch of his finger against the trigger. Torn between orders and something else.
That moment stretched longer than time should allow. My heart pounded in my ears, louder than any footstep or alarm. But then his hand dropped. And he came to me instead.
Even without words, I understood what he was telling me.
The rest of the escape is just flashes of blurry, broken, full of screaming muscles and pounding footsteps. I remember Heero’s arms around me, half-carrying, half-dragging me through corridors filled with smoke and chaos. His voice, sharp and clipped in my ear, guiding me like I was still in the cockpit. The cockpit of a Gundam now turned to ash. The way he pressed me behind him when guards rounded the corner, as if his body could shield mine from bullets.
Even in low gravity, the pain was relentless. Every jolt was like being set on fire. Every breath a reminder that I was broken in more places than I could count. I nearly blacked out trying to crawl into the astro-suit, my fingers trembling too much to close the seals, braid tucked against my back like I could keep it from being snagged on the world. The helmet felt like a coffin. But Heero was there with his steady hands guiding me through the darkness.
He didn't say a word. Not because he didn’t want to, but because he couldn’t. Our radios weren’t linked. It was too dangerous. The risk of interception was high, and OZ had already made a spectacle of me. Heero couldn’t take any more chances.
Now, inside the shuttle, drifting between stars and the wreckage of my own body, I felt it, his hand brushing against mine, through the thick gloves of our suits. It was clumsy, insulated, awkward as hell. But it was unmistakable. Intentional. His gloved palm pressed against mine, the gesture slow and solid. He didn’t squeeze. Just stayed there.
I blinked hard, helmet display swimming as my vision blurred. Tears from the feeling I’d been too wrecked to believe in anymore, that someone still saw me. That someone had come. And that someone was Heero.
I was a ruin, and he was touching me like I was still real and worth something. Everything I couldn’t believe of myself.
Slowly, painfully, I shifted my hand beneath his, trying to press back, and it took everything I had.
My helmet was too heavy, but I leaned anyway, dragging it toward his. The glass stopped just short of touching his own. That was all I could manage before my body screamed at me to stop.
I didn’t need to hear him speak. I could feel it in the way he hadn’t moved his hand. In the way he was anchoring me there, even now, when I could barely stay conscious.
I’m here.
I came for you.
You’re not alone.
A broken sob rattled in my chest, sharp enough to make my vision white out. I gasped, head lolling forward, and the inside of my helmet fogged over in seconds from the ragged burst of air.
Tears floated free now, drifting across my eyes in the weightlessness. I shut them tight.
He didn’t let go.
The docking clamps engaged with a hiss that vibrated faintly through the shuttle floor. I barely felt it over the raw, intense pulsing pain that surged through every inch of my body. We were down. Docked. Safe. At least, that’s what I kept telling myself. But the word didn’t mean much anymore.
The shuttle door opened with a rush of pressure equalization, and light from the hangar spilled in, too bright after the dim, suffocating air of space. Heero stood first, as always, his movements precise, and measured. Missions always affected him like that. Made him coil like a spring. Not letting one ounce of pressure in his chest out until it was over.
He reached for me, and I hesitated. My whole body screamed at me to stay still, to not move another fucking inch. Every shift brought fire. But Heero’s eyes, visible now through his faceplate, sliced through the hesitation. He crouched in front of me and slowly, carefully, unsealed my helmet.
The rush of air hit my face like a slap. I gasped, lungs seizing, the pressure change colliding with cracked ribs and deeper wounds. Something inside me crumpled.
He didn’t flinch. Just steadied me with a hand on my shoulder and started undoing the seals of my suit, slow and methodical. I tried to help, but my fingers trembled, numb and useless. The outer layers peeled back to reveal blood-soaked undersuit. Dark and crimson, patches still oozing fresh blood. Any healing was ruined by my body moving, no matter how careful I was. It ached with bruises which had bloomed like angry flowers under every touch. I could feel how my shirt clung to the shredded skin, sticky with sweat and blood and everything else they’d left me with.
My braid was matted against my back, soaked red. I could feel the pull of it with every movement. I turned my face away. Shame twisted through me. It was worse than I remembered. I felt like a corpse in a pilot suit.
But Heero didn’t flinch. Not even a breath of disgust. Just slid his arms beneath me like I wasn’t what was left of OZ’s favourite play thing. Like I hadn’t been tortured.
The second he lifted me, I screamed, hoarse and ragged, pain tearing through me like lava. My back arched in reflex, white-hot agony radiating from the welts. He stopped instantly, adjusted his grip. I could feel him trembling. Just a little. Just enough. Like he knew what they had done to me, but was afraid to believe it.
I didn’t mean to lean into him, but I did. My forehead dropped to his shoulder, eyes shut, mouth open gasping. I could barely breathe. Every rib protested with each inhale and exhale. Every inch of skin screamed.
The corridor from the shuttle bay to the safehouse med room was short, but it felt like a crawl through hell. My world narrowed to Heero’s heartbeat thudding against my ear and the way his arms stayed locked around me even as I twisted in his grasp. My body was shaking too hard to stop it.
He didn’t say anything. Just kept going, step after steady step.
He laid me down on the examination table, the edge of the vinyl slick with antiseptic. I hissed as my back brushed against it, every lash line screaming anew. My vision went white at the edges, and for a second, I thought I might pass out.
“Don’t,” I rasped. My voice was hollow.
He paused, hand hovering above the torn remnants of my shirt. “I have to,” he said quietly. “Duo—your back—”
“I know,” I ground out. “But just—fuck—go slow.”
He nodded. Then he started cutting away the ruined fabric.
The first thing to go was my shirt, or what was left of it, stuck to me in patches, crusted with blood and sweat. Every tug, every lift, was agony. I bit down on the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood.
When the last strip of fabric was peeled away from my back, I heard his breath catch. Just for a second.
It must’ve looked bad. I didn’t need a mirror to know. I could feel every welt, every jagged stripe torn into me. The lashes had split skin. In some places they’d gone deeper, carving grooves that bled again now that air touched them. My whole back felt like it had been flayed raw and doused in lemon.
He didn’t speak. Just opened the med-kit. It had to be done. He had to switch off his emotions and focus on the mess before him.
I felt the antiseptic before I saw it. The sting was white-hot. I arched off the table, a strangled sound escaping my throat.
“Shh,” he said, his voice low. “I know. I know.”
The cloth was gentle, but it still felt like being scraped open. Heero cleaned every wound one by one, hands careful, steady. The deeper ones he sealed with steri-strip patches, applied with precision that made my heart ache. Because I’d felt what hands could do, when they weren’t there to help. When they’d pressed me against restraints and struck me over and over until the world went sideways. Now, he was trying to undo it. He was trying to give me something else.
I could feel tears sliding down my cheeks. Not from the pain. Or, not just the pain.
“You weren’t supposed to come,” I whispered, throat thick and raw.
His hands paused just long enough to acknowledge the words. Then he went back to work, smoothing gauze over a slash near my shoulder blade.
“You could’ve been caught,” I said. “Or killed. Why?”
“For you,” he murmured.
I shut my eyes. Bit back a sob. He shouldn’t have said it. Shouldn’t have meant it. I didn’t deserve it, not after what they did to me, not after the way I broke, the way I begged for it to stop.
The way I had begged for death.
He saw it. All of it. And still, he still came. Came for me.
He started working on my arms next. The bruises ran from elbow to wrist, mottled and deep. Some were boot-shaped. Others the product of fists, or restraints pulled too tight. Parts raw from my struggle against them. My skin was a map of everything they’d done to me. And somewhere under it all, the urge was already rising. The itch in my nerves. The whisper that I needed to take a blade to my own flesh just to make it stop. Just to feel something I chose.
He didn’t flinch when I curled my hand into a fist, nails biting into skin. His hand came down gently over mine, thumb stroking slow, grounding circles over my knuckles.
I turned my head toward him, ribs shrieking in protest.
He was already watching me. His eyes softened when they saw mine, full of something that shouldn’t have survived this war. His gaze dropped to the old scars on my forearms, now exposed without the tattered remnants of my shirt. He didn’t look away. Didn’t pity. Instead, he reached out and touched one lightly, reverently. “Still here,” he said softly.
I let out a shuddering breath. My whole body shook. And for the first time in days, the need to cut lost its grip on my throat. Not gone. Never gone. But quieted. For once I was relying on him and not the feeling of a blade across my skin for clarity or punishment.
He wrapped the last of the gauze around my arms, steady hands working while his eyes never left mine. I gripped the edge of the table, blinking back tears.
Every inch of me hurt.
But Heero was here.
And somehow, the worst part of it wasn’t the lashes or the bruises or the shame, it was the tenderness in his hands. Because he touched me like I wasn’t a weapon. Like I wasn’t broken. Like I was worth saving. And all I could hear was him. His breath. His voice. The steady cadence of his heartbeat beneath the silence.
I needed him close. Needed it more than any pain meds, more than sleep. Like air, like gravity, he was the only thing anchoring me to this world.
Putting on something as normal as a long sleeve shirt hurt more than I could have ever thought. Heero’s gentle movements as he pulled the material to slide in arms now wearing the bulk of bandages. My half-undone blood-soaked braid being gently pulled through. The material catching on the swelling on my face as he lowered it. Everything hurt.
Heero’s arm wrapped around me, steadying what my broken body couldn’t hold. His other hand slipped beneath my knees, and even though the motion made agony spark sharp and fast through my ribs and shoulder, I didn’t stop him.
Didn’t want him to.
“Just breathe,” he murmured, his voice low, almost afraid to break whatever thread was holding me together.
I clenched my jaw, swallowing a cry as he carried me to the bed. I wasn’t light. I wasn’t easy to hold. But he never faltered.
The mattress dipped under us, and even the small shift of laying me down made me shudder in pain. But I kept my fingers tangled in the fabric of his shirt, refusing to let go.
“Heero,” I whispered.
His eyes met mine instantly. Alert. Focused.
“Don’t go far.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, and he didn’t. He settled on the bed beside me slowly, careful of every movement like I might shatter under his hands. Maybe I would’ve. But not with him here.
I turned toward him despite the screaming protests of my body. Felt the lashes pull open, the bruises ache with the pressure, and my ribs screaming, but I didn’t care. I needed to be close. Closer.
My hand found his chest, fingers fisting into the front of his shirt like it was the only thing tethering me to the moment. I pressed my forehead to his collarbone, and when I felt his hand come up to cradle the back of my head, I exhaled for the first time in what felt like hours. Like the rest of the world was shut out and it was just the two of us.
“You’re hurting,” he said quietly.
“I’ve been hurting,” I murmured, my voice raw and dry. “But this—being with you—it helps.”
I felt his hand still on the back of my neck, gentle and grounding.
His lips brushed my temple, careful of the bruises. I shifted to meet him halfway, pain flashing hot down my spine, but I didn’t pull away. I kissed him, just the corner of his mouth, tentative, asking.
He answered with a real kiss. Slow. Careful. Like we had all the time in the world, even though we both knew we didn’t.
I gasped when my ribs twisted wrong, and he pulled back instantly, searching my face.
“Duo—”
“I’m okay,” I lied, because it wasn’t about being okay. It was about being here with him.
He adjusted, slipping his arm beneath me so I could lean against him without straining too much. My body screamed at the movement, but the warmth of him, his skin, his breath, the weight of him beside me, was worth every second of pain.
I turned my face into his neck, breathed him in like I’d forgotten how.
“I thought I’d die in there,” I said, voice muffled against his skin. “Wanted to.”
His arms wrapped around me tighter.
“But you didn’t,” he said matter-of-factly. Like it was the only thing that really mattered.
I blinked fast, breath hitching. The pain was still there. The memories were still there. But so was he.
“I’m scared,” I whispered.
His hand tightened at my side, gentle but firm. “I know. Me too.”
And he didn’t let go.
We stayed like that, tangled in the dark, broken and hurting and too afraid to move. But he was there. His breath against my cheek, his fingers at my waist, his presence steady as the heartbeat I wasn’t sure I’d ever hear again.
I was still bleeding. Still shaking. Still scarred inside and out.