Alone

Disclaimer: Yeah, like I own anything. Pfftt.... :P

A/N: Thanks again for the lovely reviews! Whee! They're sooooo fun to read, I'm glad ya'll like the fic. So since I got so many, here's another chappy. Kinda short, but the next one will be longer - expect it maybe Wednesday? ZANI: I don't think I'm allowed to post links here so if you want to email me I can send you a few Wufei yaoi links. My email is in my profile. There aren't many, sad sad sad world that it is. That's kinda what inspired this fic, I was thinking, 'why is Wufei always left alone?' and so it began... muhahaha... eh, yeah. Oh, and just so no one will flame me - I think Wufei's cute. Ya'll think Wufei's cute. But in this story Wufei doesn't think he's cute... or even attractive. Issues, he has *issues*... Happy Reading!

~thoughtfulness~
'thinking'
*emphasis*

CHAPTER THREE


Wufei crouched low on the branch, hidden by foliage as he watched the group of mercs beneath him. He ignored the cold, the abject misery of his body - he’d been waiting for this meeting. He wouldn’t miss it for anything. His dark eyes roamed over the group, never quite settling on anyone while he filed their features away in his memory. He knew that a direct stare would be sensed by these highly-trained men. He especially memorized the tall man in the dusty suit who looked like he’d rather be anywhere else. His pale, aristocratic face was pained as he sat on a makeshift seat provided by one of his men. He looked vaguely familiar, but Wufei couldn’t place him. Had he seen him before? Maybe just his picture...

This was Boss Man. Wufei automatically used the term he’d heard the mercs use for him. Boss Man, the reason for the mission. Identifying him meant Wufei could go home. Could have a hot soaking bath and sleep for a week. If this mission took him out in a fight he would have welcomed it - it was what he had expected, almost hoped for. But he had no desire to die tired and dirty, of a creeping sickness that his body was too exhausted to battle.

He suppressed a desire to cough and slid a hand around his side. That rib was his worst weakness right now. Fractured it may have started out, but every time he had to pull himself into a tree, or dive down a hill to escape detection, or swim across a river to get to his next target, that rib turned into a red hot poker of agony. He knew he was forcing it to fracture again and again, sending the breaks deeper every time, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. It was already bound tightly in the remains of his spare shirt. He had no soothing ointment, no painkillers and no time to rest and let it mend.

And this place - he was torn between love and hate for it. It was beautiful, so beautiful. Even tired and hungry and in pain he could appreciate that. He had a deep fondness for beautiful things. But it was so hot during the day, the moist air thick and hard to breathe. Nights were bone-chilling cold, and he had little shelter and no protective clothes. The rations he had brought were long since gone. He’d been given enough for two weeks if he’d eaten sparingly - and oh, hadn’t he done that? - he was reduced to scrounging for whatever fruit and roots he knew were edible. There wasn’t a lot of it.

He’d lost weight over the last eight months anyway, but this mission was wearing him down to skin and bones. He’d been scrubbing his face in a small spring yesterday, paused to watch a flurry of birds go by. When he’d seen the monkey they were fleeing from, he’d turned back to continue washing and froze when he saw the reflection in the still pool. His face had managed to keep a little roundness before, even with what he’d lost - now it was gaunt, eyes hollow and sunken, cheekbones and jawline razor sharp. His hair was much longer than before the war’s end, touching the bottom of his shoulder blades now, and hung in heavy, matted locks around his skeletal face, thick with dirt and debris.

He’d spent a few precious minutes with a broken comb, teasing out knots and tangles, ducked his head in the spring again and again until his hair was as clean and straight as it was going to get with his limited resources. He’d long since lost his hair tie, and cut a strip of his much abused spare shirt to wrap his hair back in something resembling a ponytail. He’d felt reasonably better - there was something about clean and neat that cheered him up no end. He knew he still looked like a death’s head. He could see every bone in his hands and his wrists looked unaccountably fragile - but he also knew he’d managed to put on a little muscle, that the vaguely defined abs he’d had before were now washboard tight, that all the muscles worked to near-perfection by his constant katas and sword practice had *become* perfection with swimming and hiking and tree climbing.

~If I get out of here, I’m keeping them this way.~ It would compensate a little for his natural plainness, he felt, in the astronomically unlikely event he ever found someone to be not-alone with. Unlikely, but his depression of the months before had faded over these past few weeks - the longer he surprised himself by living, the more his mood had lightened. He no longer welcomed death with every fibre of his being - only half of them now. He smiled a little in a moment of rare humor, and turned his wandering attention back to the group of men beneath him.

They were discussing manpower, supplies, contracts - out here in the middle of nowhere, where they were certain nothing would be overheard, they allowed themselves full reign. Top secret issues were dragged into the open with a feeling of perfect security, while a small body with a vast intellect crouched in the darkness above them and memorized every word they said.