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Standing Spirit
At first, the busy paramedic took no notice of the slim figure standing off to the side of the wreck, occupied as he was with getting the victim out of the mangled heap of metal that used to be a car. Before it had crashed at about 60 miles an hour into a pickup truck, that was.
As he got the driver's door open with a screech of protesting metal, he whistled in gristly admiration. This had to be the worst accident he had ever seen in his long career, blood splashed liberally over the remains of an expensive dashboard. The poor teen didn't look more than 15, though it was hard to tell with the disfiguration the crash had caused. A bruise completely sealed shut one eye, and multiple cuts adorned his cheeks, forehead, and chin. His short, shockingly ragged hair was matted and tangled with blood, indicating evidence of at least another head injury. The worst visible wound seemed to be a long gash that trailed from the corner of the unbruised eye to his jaw. Almost like a tearstain, the man reflected absently.
Then he caught sight of the spreading shadow on the boy's dark-colored clothing and swore. In the weak light the flashlight sent into the car from the position it had been set on the ground, he hadn't noted the sheer paleness of his skin. Carefully extracting his charge from the car, he laid him out on the ground a careful distance away from the accident for a quick cursory once-over. What he saw caused another string of oaths to erupt from his mouth.
He was alive. He wasn't going to be, very soon. Hell, he wasn't even worth speaking about in future tense.
"That bad, huh?"
He jumped in surprise at the unexpected voice. Low and husky, it was strangely sad and resigned, an eerie combination. Turning as best he could while on his knees, he pointed his flashlight at the speaker and saw that it was the person he had seen briefly before. Dark eyes glittered in the glow of the flashlight, as the powerful beam cast distorting shadows over his face.
When the boy repeated his question, he nodded slowly. "Afraid so, kid. Doesn't look like he's going to make it." He paused, looking at the youth. At first, he appeared to be a girl, with his heart-shaped face and long braid of dark hair; the deep, rich quality of his voice had proven that wrong, though. Long bangs covered the upper half of his face and shadowed the rest as he directed the light elsewhere. Briefly he wondered why he was here, then dismissed the question as being irrelevant for the moment.
There was a moment of silence, as the boy looked over the figure sprawled out on the ground. The man swore yet again. Dammit, where was that other ambulance? The first had long since driven away, containing the—still alive— driver of the truck.
"So, are you a friend of his?" he finally asked, looking for any way to pass the time. The boy smiled softly, pain flickering around the edges of the expression. His reply was soft.
"Yeah, I guess you could say that."
Another few minutes of silence. It grated on his nerves, to see the teen just standing there, looking at his friend like that. Like he was vaguely interested, but with nothing more other than that detached sadness. It made him wonder if they really were friends, or the boy was just saying that as to not look like a jerk.
"His other friends are going to be upset, you know."
The abrupt break in quiet startled him. Turning to look once more at the young man, he raised an eyebrow. "You'd think that it would be natural that he would be mourned."
"Oh, he will be . . . just not in the usual way." The other chuckled softly. "And the sadder thing is, he's not going to be mourned in the way he wants by the one person who means the most in the world to him."
He cast a startled glance at him. "But why on earth not?"
The dark eyes were cloudy, and the boy hesitated. As the worker began to withdraw his question, sensing his obvious pain, he said, "He was rejected tonight by the one he loves. That's why he was driving down the road at such a speed. Normally, this never would have happened to him."
"Aa." He could sympathize. "Love is often said to be a double-edged sword."
"Hai." The boy smiled, and there was an irony there disturbing in a face so young. "And it is, isn't it."
To get his mind off of his seemingly unwarranted uneasiness of the teen, the man asked, "So, did you follow him here?"
There was an instant of hesitation, before the braided boy nodded slowly. "Just as a friend, I guess you could say."
Anything else that was going to be said on his part was obscured by a sudden harsh, bubbling breath from the form on the ground. Underneath the man's fingers, his pulse lethargically slowed, then stopped. He turned to meet the boy's attentive gaze and shook his head.
"I'm sorry."
The boy nodded once, and his expression was mournful. "He got to confess his love before he died, at least. For that, I'm happy."
The rescue worker didn't say anything, and the boy didn't seem to expect a reply. "So stupid . . ." he whispered, as if to himself. "Now he hurts another with his own carelessness. Should have been watching the road, but either he was crying too hard or he didn't care. Can't decide which."
The older man blinked in surprise. "How do you know this? Were you in the car with him?"
The youth nodded, much to his confusion. "But, you're completely fine! How did you make it out?"
The boy's expression went completely blank. His eyes seemed to stare into space as he walked over and kneeled next the opened car door. Reaching into the dark interior, he extracted a long, bloodied rope of hair, roughly severed at one end and tied off with black string at the other. It was slowly unraveling, the loose definition of the braid almost lost. He laid it on the ground next to the lifeless body.
And as the hapless rescuer stared in shock, the boy slowly started to fade from sight, beam of the flashlight seeming to bore into him like a knife blade. Soon, it shone straight out of his back to illuminate a tree behind him.
The light caught a small jewel falling from one eye to trail down his transparent cheek, mirrored in blood on the face belonging to the body on the ground. As the tear fell to the ground, he vanished entirely, leaving that sorrowing voice to whisper on the wind:
"I didn't."
~owari~
Notes: *sigh* And to top it off, it's cheesy. *wail*
I wasn't trying to go for mistaken identity like I usually do in fics like these. It's just that if Duo-the-accident-victim still had his braid, the rescue worker would have made the connection between him and Duo-the-spirit way too fast. After all, that braid is his one distinguishing physical characteristic. Though somebody said that the pilot in the car was Quatre. That hurt. >.<
I want to shoot Heero. And the worst part is, I wrote this monster, and I still want to shoot him. *sigh* Even I think that I'm really sad sometimes.