His face! His face...
It was terrible. It was something out of a nightmare. Dominic's eyes were gone, leaving empty, bleeding sockets in their places, and there were long red scratched down his cheeks. The man's entire face was black, as if he were slowly rotting away, and when he talked, a long black forked tongue darted out, bringing several insects out with it, and back in with a crunch. Large horns sprouted on the top of his head, coming to a deadly point, glittering in the faint light.
Duo felt his throat close up just as a scream threatened to tear out. Instead, he leaned down and frantically shook Heero. <Wake up,> he whispered, feeling tears stinging in the corners of his eyes. <Wake up, Heero. Dammit, baka, I need you.>
<He can't hear you.> Duo's head shot up as he felt Dominic speak directly into his mind. He looked up and saw <He's entered a deep catatonic state. Only I can bring him out.> He felt impatience beginning to fray at the edges of his common sense and snapped angrily at Dominic.
<Then do it, dammit!> He curled an arm around Heero's chest, eyes blazing with hatred. <Why won't you help him?>
<I'll help him,> Dominic replied. <On one condition.>
<What?> Duo's face was wary, but he felt Heero stir in his arms and pushed aside his own fears. <What condition?>
<You must leave the Palazzio immediately. You can't ever see him again,> Dominic sighed, scatching his forehead. <How terrible. But if you want him to live, you'll do it. You told him that you love him. Now, the real question is, how much? Are you willing to sacrifice your own happiness to save him?>
Duo stared hard at Heero's face. <Koi, wake up.> A slender white finger traced Heero's cheekbones, imploring. <I can't do this alone. You can't leave me like this...> To his own horror and shame, he found tears running clear rivers down his own cheeks. <Well?>
<I accept.>
Then Duo felt a sharp pain in the back of his neck, and he too went spiraling down into darkness.
He felt her as she screamed, her last coherent thought of a young angel with dark brown hair and bright blue eyes. "Heero..." The young Key traced his own mirror image delicately with his finger, frowning at his short blonde hair. "You shouldn't have cut it. It doesn't become you."
<Heero though that it looked good on you,> he reminded himself. <If he knew who I really was...>
His hand slipped down to his waist, and then to his back, where his own wings sprouted. "Treize," he breathed softly, resting his head on the cold mirror, breathing small white clouds over the sheer surface. He had given everything for the man...His youth. His body. His innocence.
His humanity.
He shivered as his shirt burst into a thousand scraps of white cloth, white feathers unfolding and stretching, out of use for so long.
Perhaps he had laid low too long. Perhaps if he had been stronger, if he had not been afraid, Yalith would still be alive. How could they finish without her? She was the link, the passage between the Palazzio and Darius...
Yet if he had not stayed hidden, he would never have gotten so close to the Pilot of Wing Zero. He could still feel those burning eyes, the frightened innocent inside of him baulking at the feelings rising inside.
"How funny," he murmured as his hair began to grow, first to shoulder length, then down to his waist, until he had a platinum blonde waterfall of hair cascading down his back, covering his nakedness, "that I have discarded one mask for another."
He glanced into the mirror once more, and instead of Ashura's innocent, if precocious, face staring back at him, there was Zechs Marquise. Infamous soldier of OZ, former lover of Treize Khushrenada. Once a killer, always a killer.
He had thought...
A new life. A chance to start over, without the Peacecraft family herding him into a life not of his choosing. And he had seen how that had turned out. L2, destroyed. He had been on vacation from the Academy and taken fever. He could still hear the woman's kind voice, filling in the gaping holes of his memory, filling in the places where he should have remembered a mother's kind touch. She had given birth to the real Zechs Marquise.
Treize had played him like a pawn. No more.
He stalked from his room, slamming the door so hard that the mirror and every other piece of glass in the room shattered.
"Meiran?" the girl asked. "I don't know any Meiran. Is she another one of the servants, perhaps? My name is Aiyisha." She then did a little curtsy, mouth curving into a rich smile. He heard a snort from Treize's vicinity, but ignored it.
Wufei stared for another moment, mouth working, then shook his head. "I apologize," he said stiffly. "Is there something you wanted?"
"Yes...Dominic requests both your presences in the Black Hall. Now." She motioned for them to follow her. "Hurry, he'll become angry if we are late."
Wufei looked curiously at Treize, who for some reason, refused to even meet his eyes. <I'll get you soon, Treize,> he vowed, and ran his fingers through his loose hair absently. "Are you ready, Treize?" he asked sweetly, doing a little bow of his own. The look on the general's face was almost worth it...
"Of course I am," Treize replied, and saluted smartly, spinning on one heel as he turned the corner, following Aiyisha down the stone corridor. The girl led them down several stairwells, deeper and deeper into the heart of the Palazzio, occasionally pausing to examine a stone or the way a torch was hung, as if it held the instructions to the place they were going.
Finally, they stopped at a large stone wall beneath an arch. She waved her hand twice, and the stone wall abruptly lifted into the larger wall encasing it. "They're here, Master," she announced, curtsying again, then moving to stand by a tall figure adorned in gray silk.
"Good," he said, petting her absently. "Prepare Duo and Heero." It was then that he saw Heero, lying unconscious on the floor, naked as the day he was born, legs spread, on top of Duo, who was also naked. Even in sleep, they held hands, clutching to each other as if against the tide.
She nodded, scooping up the boys in her arms, and walking out through some secret exit. Then Dominic turned towards them, eyes shooting dagger straight into his defenses. This man was powerful, Wufei realized. And not just physical power. He exuded confidence, strength, and something else. Something he felt when he was around Heero a lot; power untapped, perhaps? Something resting just beneath the surface, dormant and waiting...
"Good, Treize. You've done well." Wufei's eyes narrowed; Treize was working for this man?
"What's he talking about?" he demanded, looking alternately at a very guilty sandy-haired general and a smirking man who pulled a rose out of thin air and sniffed deeply.
"He's talking about you," a female voice said. He turned around yet again, only to find a shapely blonde emerge from the shadows. She wore a see-through white dress and two gold bracelets, though the plainess only accentuated her natural beauty. She was pretty in a very cold and impersonal way.
"Sir, the Gundam pilots are effectively divided. Shall we send out troops to Siberia?" The blonde's voice was like stone and as yielding. "Unfortunately for Darius, the ones he captured are the lesser of the five pilots in terms of sheer fighting ability. We should be able to overwhelm them and recapture the Keys."
"No..." Dominic considered for a few moments, then shook his head. "No. We let them come here, bring them in close, and then we crush them with one swift blow. It is the way we have always done things."
The girl nodded and melted away into the shadows, literally. Wufei stared at the place where she had been, but there was nothing, only cold air and stone.
A voice startled him from his private thoughts. "I have a proposition for you, Chang Wufei." He motioned to Treize, who stepped forward, still looking away. "The girl you just met..."
"Aiyisha." Wufei was not amused. Was it some kind of sick joke of Treize's, sending a servant that looked exactly like his dead wife? The Chinese pilot had waxed poetic on her beauty many a drunken night.
"What would you do if I told you that Aiyisha was Meiran?"
Duo was dreaming.
Water and fire.
Burned with fire, unlocked with water. He could see Yalith as she approached with the brand, mouth moving minutely, just enough to utter words. An incantation, he realized. Burned. Branded.
He watched as Heero slid into the water. Unlocked. Unwoven.
The scene switched and he saw Ashura, mouth working over Heero's body, healing him. Water. Unlocked with water.
Deathscythe in the hangar, green eyes glowing. Burned with fire. *Bound* with fire. Wing Zero, too. All burned, all bound.
Fire binds. Water unlocks.
Water unlocks...
Water Unlocks.
Duo woke up.
Quatre knew instinctively that something was wrong.
Darius paced restlessly in his office. From his own window, Quatre could see the young man walking back and forth, hands behind his back, head bowed as he thought. He could also make out the slender figure of Armand, following Darius, trying to calm him down.
Something was wrong.
The door burst open, and Pierce stuck his head in, eyes blazing. "You've been down a long time. Still know how to pilot one of these damned machines?"
"I think we do. Trowa?" The green-eyed boy nodded silently, moving forward in synch with Quatre's own steps. They followed Pierce down the hallway, and were led to the hangar.
It had been too long, and yet not long enough. The war still raged, and yet here he was, fighting a cause not his own, for people he'd barely known for a year, and all the while something inside of him was begging him to stop, to turn around and run back to his safe little mansion and his horde of motherly sisters.
He felt Trowa's hand on his shoulders, and smiled, knowing even as he did that some part of Trowa was smiling too.
And he spoke his famous last words, feeling somehow, that they should have been spoken under entirely different circumstances. Somewhere else, far away, fighting a different battle.
"To outer space, then." He nodded at a group of passing soldiers, making them all jump. "Everyone of us."
Nodding in approval at his choice of words, Darius watched from the shadows. It was good that they were gone; Pierce had said that the blonde one could sense the other Gundam pilots' pain. None of them had changed to their true forms in the days since Quatre had arrived.
Feeling his back trembling, he sighed and his body sagged, wings slicing his uniform to pieces, a few white feathers fluttering to the ground.
"You lie," Wufei snarled, dropping into a defensive crouch.
Dominic laughed. "I do not lie! Ask your lover, Chang. Ask Treize if Aiyisha is your wife." Wufei turned to Treize, eyes questioning. He had his answer when the older man turned away, as if burned.
"How?" His voice was nothing more than a faint whisper.
"I found her, catatonic on your homeworld. I had been...searching for some stolen possessions of mine when the assault occurred. She was the only one left, and badly hurt to boot." He smiled faintly at the memory. "She doesn't remember anything."
Wufei stared at his hands. "What do you want from me?"
"Your word. That you will not try to stop me. That you will not help Heero or Duo escape. Other than that, you are free to go. If you break your word Meiran will die a thousand deaths, each more painful than the last." With that, Dominic disappeared.
"You lied to me."
Wufei's voice was hollow with tears as he began to scream. "You LIED to me! I--hate--you," he choked out. "Now I want the truth, Treize. The fucking truth." His slender frame was shaken with tiny sobs as he sank slowly to his knees.
The sandy-haired man made no move to comfort his dragon. What could he say that had not already been said?
*The fucking truth.*
Very well. The fucking truth it was. He began to speak.
End Book Two, Part One
Ariana
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