Kismet
~~~~~~
by Wystii & CC

Disclaimer: Characters are from Gundam Wing. I own nothing and there
are no expectations of monetary profits from this venture.
Warnings: Implied male/male relationships. Alternate Universe.
Pairing: 5x6x5 - simply because it hasn't been decided who's on top,
yet. ^_~
NOTES: The story starts in December AC200. Zechs is written by CC
while I'm writing Wufei.
Thanks to Bronze Tigress for beta-reading this story.

Part 1: Zechs by CC
Part 2: Wufei by Wystii
Part 3: Zechs by CC



Part 4: Wufei

Wufei's hands were just touching the ceiling panel when the first
explosion occurred. He felt the hold on his legs shift and tighten as
the elevator shuddered. Stretching upwards, he braced himself, palms
flat to the side of the panel. As his knees pushed against Zechs'
shoulders, he hoped the larger man still had his back solidly
supported by the wall. The entire elevator jerked upwards with a
second bone-rattling bang. The hard push of his arms barely kept his
head from connecting with the ceiling. He heard the loud crack of bone
hitting the wall and he was sliding downwards with Zechs to the floor.
With the loosening of the hold on his legs, Wufei spread his thighs
apart, hoping to land with his feet on the floor to either side of the
torso below him. His hands reached forward to where he thought the
wall might be in an attempt to control their fall. He didn't hear the
third explosion. It was an abrupt change in their downward momentum,
the elevator seeming to tilt towards his spread fingers followed
immediately by a complete lack of gravity. Falling was no longer an
issue. Wufei hooked a foot under Zechs and pulled, wrapping his legs
around the man as soon as he could. He reached down then as they
tumbled, but it was a controlled spin meant to keep them close to the
middle of the elevator. His fingers dove through silken strands of
hair until they connected with a firm chin. From there it was a quick
easy trace to the shoulder while his other hand cradled the back of
Zechs' head. He frowned at the warm dampness he found there. The
unconscious man was in his embrace with only a slight shift of his own
body, the movement slowing their tumble.

The failure of a colony's artificial gravity signaled a disaster of
epic proportions. Wufei breathed deeply, but couldn't smell anything
beyond the man in his arms and the rusty tang of fresh blood. There
were worse ways to die, he decided. It was surprising how well their
bodies fit together despite the difference in size. If the colony had
broken apart, there would be a noticeable loss of air. Elevators were
by no means airtight. In the complete darkness Wufei gently probed the
wound on Zechs' head and used his palm to apply pressure to what he
thought might be the source of the bleeding. Warm, even breaths on his
neck assured him of the other man's continued survival. His hip bumped
against a wall and he felt around with his free hand to find some kind
of hold. The railing was almost in his grasp when a high pitched
squeal pierced his eardrums, making his vision swim with bright colors
in the darkness. Wufei tasted bile in the back of his throat. A loud
'thunk' preceded the return of the colony's gravity. They were falling
again. Wufei rolled to try and land on his side, but only partially
managed to get his body under Zechs before they hit the floor. His
shoulder connected first, then his elbow before Zechs' weight pushed
him onto his back. Wufei grunted with the impact as pain shot across
his collar bone, then down the length of his arm. He bit his bottom
lip until he tasted blood to keep from cursing Barton ancestors for
whatever was going on.

Voices. Wufei thought he heard voices - urgent, frantic voices.

"Zechs?" Wufei said, sure that the man in his arms wasn't listening.
"Next time, we should try this position on a bed."

An ever-widening line of light fell across their entwined bodies as
the elevator doors were pried open.

"Without an audience," Wufei added as he carefully unwound his limbs
from Zechs'.

***

The ceiling was a stark white, the lights too bright and the noise...
the sounds of a hospital emergency room too loud. Wufei closed his
eyes against the chaos and wished he could close his ears, too. It was
probably a good thing that he couldn't since it was never safe to
completely relax in unfamiliar surroundings. A dull ache throbbed
across his left shoulder and all the way down the splinted arm
strapped tightly to his chest. Flexing his hand barely changed the
quality of the ache; neither did slight changes of position. The
painkillers were performing well even though he could have done
without the accompanying drowsiness.

While it had been crowded around the elevator, with firemen,
paramedics and hotel staff working to get them out, there was little
to indicate the panic that would have resulted from the loss of
gravity in a colony. Nothing outside the elevator seemed to have been
affected by that brief weightless period, no furniture out of place or
fallen over. Surely there had not been enough time to fix the
resultant mess of zero-g in a colony in the period it had taken to get
them out of the lift. The emergency area of this hospital was not
pushed beyond its capacity as it should have been if the colony had
lost its gravity, no matter how briefly. However, such a malfunction
would have to be colony wide and not only inside a single elevator.

Zechs was on the bed next to his own. A thin curtain separated them
and Wufei had spent the last hour half-listening to the bustle behind
that impenetrable wall while a grey-haired doctor splinted and
strapped his broken bones. There was talk about multiple, but simple
fractures and the importance of keeping his shoulder and arm
immobilized. He was waiting for his discharge papers and prescriptions
although they were insisting that he should have someone pick him up.
Surely he could simply get a taxi back to his hotel. These medical
personnel simply wouldn't accept that he might be here on vacation,
alone. He would have admitted an acquaintance with the big blonde in
the next bed except that the conversation in the elevator led him to
believe that Zechs might be investigating something under possibly a
different identity.

Wufei sighed. He wanted to be sure Zechs was alright and at least
obtain some contact details. That probably meant a wait, either on
this bed or in the lounge outside. Words like concussion and
observation had drifted his way while all the bustling was happening.
He opened one eye, then another. There were no signs of movement
beyond the curtain and he ventured to say aloud, "Are you awake?"

"Hmm... Where the hell... are we?" Zechs sounded groggy and grumpy.

Wufei smiled and replied softly, "Hospital. I'll wait for you. What's
your name?" He had to ask, just to be sure and it was not an unusual
question for two men who had just met in a faulty elevator in case
anyone was listening.

Zechs murmured, "Bernard Weridge," and nothing else. Wufei waited for
a while before getting off his bed to peek behind the curtain. The
handsome blonde was fast asleep. He resisted the urge to step closer
and touch the white bandages... It was just the bandages he wanted to
check. He turned around to go back to his bed and came face to face
with a nurse staring at him. He felt his cheeks heat up. Trying to
stop it only made them feel hotter. He cleared his throat instead.

"Are those my discharge papers?" Wufei asked, hoping to distract her.
The woman was still staring at him uncertainly.

"Oh! Those aren't ready, yet. We're having problems with your address.
Are you sure it's correct?" she asked.

"Of course it is." Wufei frowned at her suggestion of his incompetence.

"Is there someone who can come to pick you up?" This was the third
time someone had asked Wufei that particular question. He sighed. What
made them think he might change his mind if different people asked him
the same question?

"No. I'll call a taxi when I'm ready to go," he repeated his previous
answers.

This woman was particularly persistent. "What about your next of kin?"
she asked with an attempt at an apologetic smile on her face.

Wufei saw right through it. He tried not to snap at her, asking
instead, "Why would you need to know my next of kin? I'm not about to
die from a few broken bones."

"How do you intend to pay your bill?" she asked, dropping the pretense
at niceness.

"I'm assuming the hotel with the broken elevator will cover your
costs. I'm sure such places have insurance policies that cover such
events," Wufei replied, moving away from the curtain and closer to his
own bed. He felt an exhaustion that he wanted to blame on the drugs in
his system.

"We still need a point of contact for you before we can release you,
for such insurance purposes," the woman insisted.

"I gave you an address and a phone number that you can call me at once
I get there," Wufei said in his most patient tone when dealing with
imbeciles. He watched as the woman squared off her shoulders to brace
for some kind of confrontation.

"That address is three blocks from here and it's a parking lot," she
informed him. "The phone number doesn't exist in this colony's phone
interchange."

Wufei stared at her for a full minute and she stared back. She
appeared convinced of what she was telling him. Perhaps... He reached
into his back pocket for his wallet in which was the keycard with the
apartment complex's details. Getting it out with only one hand was a
challenge, but achievable.

"Get it off that yourself," he said as she accepted the card from him
and compared it to the one written on his chart.

"It's the same invalid address," she said softly, frowning. "Is there
anyone we can call?"

"I have another phone number," Wufei admitted, pulling out another
card from the wallet on his bed. "He's a friend of a friend who lives
on this colony." The nurse took the card from him and wrote the new
number on the chart before returning both cards to him.

"I'll try this number," she said, returning to the nurses' station.

Wufei took his time putting the cards back into his wallet. The ache
in his shoulder was becoming noticeable and he climbed back onto the
bed. How could the address on his keycard be wrong? He had used that
very card to find the apartment yesterday. He glanced at the woman on
the phone in the nurses' station. She wasn't talking, but listening
intently instead. She soon hung up and started walking towards his bed
again.

"Your 'friend of a friend' has never heard of you," she informed him
as soon as she was close enough. "Is there anyone else?"

"My new best friend from the elevator?" Wufei suggested waving at the
bed beyond the curtain. "I'm only here on vacation," he told her.

The frowning woman almost laughed at him and Wufei scowled at her. "No
one just visits a colony for a vacation," she said.

There was no need to justify his activities to her, but she seemed to
be genuinely trying to understand his situation. He found himself
saying, "I'm colony born, but I work on Earth. I get homesick so I
vacation in space."

"Why come here? Why not just go to your home colony?" she asked.

"It was destroyed during the war," Wufei admitted before straightening
up, resolute. "Why don't you just fix up my paperwork anyway, so that
you can free up your bed and I'll wait in the visitors lounge."

"For whom?" the nurse asked. "I can't let you go until I have a valid
point of contact for you."

"For Bernard over there," Wufei said with a wave of his hand at Zechs'
bed.

"We're going to admit him for overnight observation as soon as a bed
upstairs becomes available," she said, hanging up Wufei's chart on the
end of his bed. "It's a slow day. You can stay here for a while
longer. Perhaps when he is coherent enough to sort out his details, we
can let you go. How's the shoulder?"

"Worse than it was," Wufei admitted.

The nurse nodded. "I can help with that in about an hour or so."

Wufei sighed as she gave him a more natural smile and left him alone.
Something was wrong here, but he couldn't check out the discrepancy in
his address until he could leave. During the old days he wouldn't have
hung about to argue with a nurse. He wouldn't be in a hospital without
planning to escape from it. As tempting as it was to merely close his
eyes and sleep or meditate to pass the time, he didn't dare let down
his guard to such an extent. The wrongness of it rang all his internal
alarms in ways that he hadn't experienced since the wars. But he could
sit and wait with his guard up. Some skills a person never lost no
matter how circumstances changed.

As promised, the nurse returned some time later with more pain
medication for his shoulder. He thanked her and palmed the tablets
while drinking the water. The last thing he needed was to be drowsy in
a potentially dangerous situation. Physical pain he could deal with,
and the throbbing ache down his left side would help keep him awake as
the hours slowly passed.

The young uniformed man approaching the nurses' station caught Wufei's
attention immediately. He looked like a young Trowa in a Preventers'
uniform. When the young officer strode purposefully towards his bed
with a very Trowa-like set to his jaw, Wufei schooled his face into a
calm, neutral expression. The wrongness that had been niggling at him
for hours blossomed into full clanging alarm. This was Trowa, he was
sure despite the impossibility of it -- a Trowa who hadn't yet grown
out of the awkwardness of his height, a Trowa Wufei remembered from
Mariemeia's attempt to conquer Earth. The uniform was similar enough
to the ones they had worn while in her army. That was years ago. They
had all grown up since then.

"You claim to be Chang Wufei," the young officer said in an eerily
familiar voice. There was outrage and affront in the green eye that
could be seen behind the long brown fringe even though his face was
studiously blank.

"I suppose you call yourself Trowa Barton, Nanashi," Wufei said behind
his own expressionless mask. That stopped the young man in his tracks.

"Who are you?" the young Trowa asked.

"Chang Wufei of L5, pilot of Nataku and Altron," Wufei replied,
watching closely for a reaction. The young Trowa just stared at him,
speechless.

Wufei sighed and slid off the bed onto his feet in case he needed to
move. Even with a shoulder strapped, he could put up a good fight
should he need to.

"The Trowa I knew never joined the Preventers," Wufei said.

"The Wufei I knew died last year," the young man stated.

~*~