They came quickly, and not painlessly. Through the years, he'd learned to control them, to fight back the wave of nausea and the tiny stabbing knives that always signaled the onset of one.
Visions, dream-like trances. In a way, he supposed that he had been the luckiest of all four of the former Keys--his problem was that he was totally incapacitated whenever they chose to haunt him.
He slumped back against the bed, head swimming. He could feel a pulse beating rapidly in his forehead, thump thump, thump thump. There was redness, sharply and vibrantly red like blood, that threatened to overtake him. His vision shut down.
Step one. It took longer and longer for his sight to return when the magic working against the Key decided to warp and take hold. And when it did, his vision was always blurry, always marred by salt-tears. He treasured every moment with Sarsis--it could very well be the last time he ever saw his mellowed lover.
He heard a voice, asking him if he needed anything, if he was okay. He started to speak, and then choked. Step two, he thought wryly as a flood of pain washed over every nerve, making his body arch against the bed.
Then his hearing was gone. Step three; he was now utterly lost to that sea of red, curving over him, washing over his mind, shutting down synapses, pausing electric impulses. And step four...
Pierce shuddered as the bed melted away beneath him, replaced with a river of red, of color, purely abstract, untouchable. His mind screamed; it was too much to understand. His mind was too small, too grounded in the physical, he would split, and he would go insane...
And then it all went dead.
It was perfect calm, perfect unity. Hindus call it Brahman, Taoists call it the Tao; either way, it was as if he was the universe, and the universe was embodied in two little arms and two little legs and a trunk of a torso.
But he was above that, and yet below that. He was in every living thing, every sakura blossom, every child suckling at their mother's breast, and he was in every dead thing, every rotting piece of carbon and dust.
He was the skeletons below the ground, six feet and deeper. He was the ash from a campfire, left to blow away into the coming storm. Pierce lost all sense of self--he wasn't *Pierce*, he simply was.
And then the vision began.
Somewhere in a small room, curled up around a tall boy with jagged brown bangs, a Gundam pilot froze, blue eyes going wide, hands frantically feeling for something...anything. Trowa was slowly roused from his deep sleep, and jumped as Quatre began to whimper, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes.
He rocked back and forth, eyes wide and unblinking, mouth open in surprise, neck taut with fear. Trowa grasped his hands in his larger ones, and began to speak soothingly, his warm tones washing over him like water over a mountain.
It was fragmented, disjointed, yet connected.
It was a glass goblet and eight crucibles.
Something, but not.
He strained to see beyond the images to the pattern.
*A young boy* named heero heero heero yuy born odin lowe jr. dead his father is dead and dr. j dr. j dr. j dead wing zero fear he's frightened lord have mercy dead
No! Pierce fought back the wave of information that flowed through him; see the pattern, he reminded himself.
*stood in front of man* dominic dominic dominic dominic laughed. as he pounded into him not heero, but him. you. you! he raped you! no. dominic.
*that fondled him* anger i'm going to kill this fucking bastard fucking bastard fucked he'd just fucked sandalith she was smooth like butter cream
*and laughed as he did it* heero heero there's a heero hero hero fucked him fucked you fuck you...
And then the image faded out and another took its place.
A young blonde boy, intertwined gracefully with his lover, moving atop him with gentle caresses and sounds of approval. She..who? Yalith! Yalith sat meditating on a pillow. A man with forked eyebrows sat on the edge of his bed, his young lover yawning in sleep beneath the sheets, and gave orders on his vid phone. The Palazzio. The Palazzio. The familiar blank stones and wide arches; exploding into darkness. Screaming. Screaming. Someone was screaming.
He...Pierce...took a deep breath and woke up.
The days went by slowly. His Master was less rough on him, though he never spoke a word to him in praise or in disfavor. He had never even seen his lover in the light; all he knew was the soft feel of his skin and the musky scent of gunpowder. And during the day he learned friendship, and peace, and love.
"I think I'm in love with you," Armand had confided one lazy summer afternoon as they swung in a hammock in one of the rose gardens. The scent of its fragrant blossoms was enough to send him into a half-asleep state, enough so that the words barely registered in his mind.
"Hello?" Armand asked, waving a hand in front of his face. Darius, feeling quite bold, caught the hand in his and kissed his wrist, sliding his tongue over his smooth pulse.
"Did you say something?" Darius asked, resting his head on Armand's chest.
"Just that I love you, baka," the other boy sighed softly.
He stopped breathing.
Slowly, so slowly, he turned his head up to stare deeply into his eyes. They held only frank regard and some kind of love, all encased in fear of rejection.
"Good," Darius said, and let his head fall back onto the other Key's shoulder.
"You're mine," he hissed, watching from behind the thick trunk of an oak tree. "Mine. I bought you. I own you."
His Key was carrying on an affair with another Key? That could not go unpunished...
Most definitely not.
Treize Khushrenada stepped out from behind the tree, straightening his collar absently. He'd been waiting for Darius to slip up. And when he did...
He smiled.
This was going to be most pleasureable indeed.
Wufei held a penknife out in front of him, black hair cascading down his shoulders, kissing the bronzed skin. With the other hand, he held a sheet over his nakedness, eyes blazing.
"You--you!" he sputtered. Treize sighed and plucked the penknife from his hand, tossing it somewhere in the corner of the room. "Get away from me!"
"Is it so hard to imagine--"
"Yes!" Wufei snapped, backing away from the former general of OZ that was moving forward, slowly as to not alarm him, but still advancing.
"--that two of the most beautiful people in the world should be lovers?" he finished, ignoring the Chinese pilot's outburst.
"I would never have!" Wufei snarled, hands clenching violently.
"As you and I both know," Treize said, smiling as one would to a furious child stamping their foot.
Wufei crumpled to the bed, one arm thrown unceremoniously over his eyes, which were surely leaking tears. Khushrenada sighed--for an almost grown man, Wufei had a strange tendency to suddenly burst into tears, probably a result of repressing his emotions for so long...
"Does honor really matter so much?" he asked, seating himself beside his lover's prone form. His eyes raked over the exposed flesh, wanting to devour the pebbled flesh, the smooth lines that rose and fell with every breath.
"It does," Wufei said softly.
Treize felt a sense of dread seize him. <You're not going to do what I think you are,> he told himself. <You're not...>
"Wufei..." Treize said. "I'm afraid I have...something I must confess."
The weeping pilot sat up and fixed his lover with a glare that rivaled Yuy's. "What?"
Swallowing hard, Treize began to speak.
End Part Four
Ariana
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