Hi hi! More of the 13x4 for you all. Thanks again to Arashi for the
original challenge; I've been lax in getting his name up here for
credit ^_^
Warnings: language, lime
Notes: This is MAJORLY au. I think that's it.
Disclaimers: I have no claim period on GW. I am borrowing without
intent to profit in any way. Gomen!
He was Duo Maxwell again.
Hell, say it--Shinigami.
02 was afraid. He was scared, so scared that he felt it spread like ice from his chest to his fingertips. Shinigami. He felt it thrumming through him, burning against the chill and threatening to overwhelm senses that had lain dormant, dulled, dazed since the day he'd awoken to his life as a POW--the day he'd given up. 02 was dying a quick death now, drowning in all the memories that weren't little flashes or snatches of sight or sound--these memories, they were NOW's, slam-you-in-the-face-I've-done-this-before-been-here-felt- this, beyond any cognitive function. In a few more hours of this, 02 would be gone--probably until he saw Quatre again.
Duo winced. He didn't even want to think about that.
Mariemaia was new to it all. Her childlike curiosity was fearless. She was free. No one would ever cage her again, not his Marie.
And they were... Duo and Marie, moving together like the unit promising Death they could have been if they'd just met in a different time.
She walked ahead of him, checking the way, coming back to lead him by hand through the dark alleys where Zechs Merquise and White Fang hid. Duo stalked the shadows. His body swayed with the minute changes of air flow, detecting by slightest sound or smell his direction. He was hyper-alert. No one could have caught them unaware, not with Mariemaia running point, and Duo... falling back twenty years to the days of Shinigami.
Duo felt alive again.
Quatre looked at Treize seriously. "You really mean to go through with this?" he asked.
Treize was weary. He rarely talked at such length anymore, and he knew in his heart that he probably should not have now--but it was too many years, too many years of frustration and growing horror and self-loathing. Quatre at least had listened to him.
"Yes," he said, and turned finally to look back out the window. *My God,* he thought. *Is it truly night already?*
Quatre Winner was quiet for several minutes. Treize didn't mind. It gave him time to reflect. He'd been doing a great deal of that lately, especially since the reappearance of the girl who was nearly his daughter--but, thank the Powers That Be, was not; he quite enjoyed reflecting. He was getting old. Hell, he *was* old, and he wasn't the only one who knew it. The young bloods, the arrogant fresh- faced boys and girls who were slowly replacing the Old Guard, the Old OZ he'd known--he could barely stomach them. The World Nation was a joke; its infrastructure was crumbling from the inside, split by the material it had been made from and ready to fall.
Treize, because he was who he was and really for very little further reason, would topple it, and stand laughing over the ruins.
Once, he knew, as he linked his arms behind his back and smiled at the brightness of the lights on the lawn below, once, he would have had a noble reason--love of humanity might have prompted him, love of that exquisite aspect of humanity that demanded battle for the betterment of the defeated and victorious alike. That beloved shining gift of humanity might have prompted his planned coup, once. Now? Treize smiled to himself. He was disgusted with humanity. The colonies were a joke--they'd thrown away their chance for freedom by abandoning the Gundam pilots in the early days of the War, and thrown away the second chance that only miracle allowed by officially declaring White Fang outlaw. Ah, and it went beyond freedom, didn't it... Where might Earth and the Colonies be now, if they would only open their eyes and *see*? In one day thousands of forgotten prisoners were given their lives--and most of them, including, Treize knew, a certain blind ex-pilot, would just as soon preferred confinement to the nauseating reality.
No one fought anything anymore. They didn't fight for something better, and they didn't even fight for selfish reasons. Humanity had ceased to evolve. With eternal struggle for improvement, or even battle to destroy those who sought to gain solely for themselves, there was stagnation. And God help them all, they were wallowing in it.
Finally Quatre said, "I don't know whether to confine you here until Romafeller can send a task force to arrest you, or to give you the access to codes to every arms manufacturing facility I own."
"Precisely," Treize whispered.
End Part 7
(:./erin/20years7)
