21-Aug-2002
"Heero, it's... it's... "
"I'll have to mark this date down."
"Hmmm?"
"I actually made you stunned silent."
Heero watched as Duo took in the ornate silk shirt with the light billowy sleeves. A dark blue-colored silk sash would wrap around his slim hips and actuate his lithe form from over a pair of tight black pants that resembled what pirates used to wear in the 1700's. Gold thread and tiny silver charms hung from the shirt's hemline and twinkled very slightly in Heero's hands as he moved toward Duo to help him slip out of his own clothing so he could try them on.
Duo ran his fingers slowly over the fabric of the shirt and licked his lips at the idea of having it slide against his skin.
Heero chuckled as he slipped the robe off of Duo's shoulders and let it drop to the floor. "Hn. You need a bath first." He slipped his fingers in the front of the cotton boxers and gently tugged Duo forward before wrapping his arms around him and kissing him softly leaving the costume momentarily forgotten.
"I'm ready when you are, love. Just lead the way." Duo kissed him back just as gently while he ran his hands up and down Heero's back.
Heero led Duo to the bath; the water already had been run and was filled with fuchsia colored rose petals floating serenely on the surface. Duo sat on the edge of the tub and let his fingers slip into the warm water while Heero shimmied out of his boxers and made his way to where Duo was perched.
He brushed away a few strands of hair near Duo's ear before sliding off Duo's boxers and smiling at the slight flush to his face. "I'll wash your hair."
"Alright." Duo murmured as Heero slowly unbound his hair and combed it through his fingers.
"You are so beautiful." Heero breathed as he took Duo's hand and stepped into the warm water.
"You make me feel that way." Duo smiled and settled himself against Heero's chest. "You must have gone to great lengths to get that costume for me."
"It was worth it seeing your eyes light up like that. I hope everything fits." Heero began to massage Duo's scalp as he lathered the shampoo into his hair. "Did you sleep all right?"
"Umm humm." Duo purred as he closed his eyes and relaxed back against Heero. He was content enough to just stay there all day in the warm tub with Heero instead of venturing out into the festivities. The soft scent of roses mingled with the fragrance of the shampoo and was better than any aromatheraphy that Duo had ever tried to soothe his weary mind and spirit.
"Good. You needed some sleep."
That was certainly true enough. He hadn't been sleeping well at all. He frowned slightly; they were supposed to be on vacation. He felt Heero's hand brush against his chest and the weight of the small locket being lifted. When he opened his eyes Heero was staring at it with an odd, pinched expression on his face.
"What is this? Where's your cross?" He asked slowly and quietly.
Duo leaned forward a bit and turned to look at Heero fully. "I, uh... well I sort of... " He wasn't going to get into it with him. He had promised not to ruin their day by talking about ghosts. "Well shit. I'm not sure Heero." He finally said with a huff and began rinsing the soap out of his hair.
"What do you mean?" Heero asked sharply.
Duo frowned and turned back to face forward while he ran some conditioner through the mass of hair. "I thought we weren't going to get in to that today Heero. Just drop it and if you still need to know later, we'll talk about it. For now let's just finish our bath and get dressed to meet Trowa and Quatre, k?" He felt Heero shift behind him, then stand abruptly. "Heero?"
"I'll meet you downstairs when you're ready."
Before he could even register what the problem was, Heero had padded out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around him and slammed the bedroom door shut.
"Well shit." Duo splashed a little of the rose scented water with his fist before rinsing out the conditioner and finishing getting himself cleaned up.
"Duo? Don't you think you've had enough?"
Duo fixed Quatre with a heated look, or at least he thought he had.
"I'm over here Duo." Quatre gently turned Duo's face towards him so he could try to get a gage on just how much Duo had drunk so far. "Drinking yourself dead isn't going to get Heero to speak to you any faster. In fact, if my recollection is correct Heero refuses to talk to you when you've been drinking because of your temper. You can't resolve anything when you're like this."
"I do not have a temper when I drink." Duo growled out and was quite proud of the fact that not one word was slurred despite how he felt like the world had just begun a slow spin. "And I don't even know why he's so mad at me... again." He added with a frustrated sigh.
"I think it's because of your cross being replaced." Quatre gently maneuvered them out of the path of an oncoming troop of parade watchers dressed as butterflies.
"Well, I'd know that for sure what he's so upset about if he would simply TALK TO ME!" Duo turned and yelled at Heero who was about ten paces behind them with Trowa.
"Come on, let's go and see what's going on over there." Quatre tugged on Duo's arm and headed for a group of jugglers in brightly decorated masks performing across the street.
The Mardi Gras festivities were in full swing. The streets were jam packed with partygoers and paraders all donned in outstanding and often outlandish costumes of every variety. Quatre had excused himself for accidentally bumping into a man dressed like women as he tried to get he and Duo across the crowded street to the other side on two separate occasions.
Trowa and Heero had stopped to let a float go past and were now a good twenty paces behind them, but Quatre could feel the weight of Trowa's eyes on him and smiled at the reassurance that they weren't too far behind. They really couldn't get into too much trouble even with Duo knocking back drinks every half hour or so. He glanced back and saw the harlequin and the other pirate making their way towards them and smiled. Heero was dressed very similar to Duo only with a bright red sash and Trowa was wearing a black and white mask that was as frightening as it was beautiful. He was about to yell something to them to bring their attention to his new position when he felt Duo grab his upper arm harshly and spin him around to face the direction the jugglers were performing and away from Heero and Trowa.
"Quatre did you see that?" Duo whispered with wide eyes as he searched the crowd they were in frantically.
"See what?" Quatre looked around and then back to Duo's stricken face.
"I just saw a gypsy girl in the crowd behind the jugglers."
Quatre glanced over and saw a mix of people dressed in various things and even noted how cool the guy looked wearing the dragonfly costume was, but saw no signs of any girl wearing a gypsy costume. "I'm not surprised. There are quite a few people wearing costumes like gypsies, but I don't see any now."
"Quatre... it was her."
Quatre frowned fiercely and wept his gaze over the crowd again. "Duo, I don't see her. I think you need to stop drinking so much and try to relax. You're wound tighter than a spring." Duo released his grip on Quatre's arm and started to push his way through the crowd. "Duo! Wait!"
He tracked him with his eyes as Duo made his way through the mass of people until a man wielding a giant puppet in front of him cut off his sightline. He frantically glanced back to wear Heero and Trowa were talking to some young ladies halfway across the street about their costumes; seemingly oblivious about Duo taking off.
Duo got to the other side of the crowd of people watching the jugglers and found no trace of the gypsy girl he had seen from across the street. It was the very same one that had pulled him from the water, he was positive of it. Never in the rest of his life would he ever forget her face and how she looked under the water of the pool he almost drown in. Or the way Heero had looked either. He shuttered and staggered into a guy wearing a skeleton costume.
"Hey watch it, man."
He shoved his way past, ignoring the glares he was getting from people as he scoured the crowd for any sign of her. Then, just as he thought that Quatre was right and that it was the combination of the stress over Heero being angry about the charm and all the alcohol he had drunk, he spotted her again leaning against a lamppost and smiling warmly at him.
"Wait! I'm coming to you, just wait there!" Duo frantically squirmed his way past more people trying to get to her and even hopped up on his tiptoes a few times to keep her in sight, but by the time he got to the lamppost she was halfway up the block in front of him. "Damn it!" His head was swimming and all around him the sounds and colors of the festival blurred around him. When he looked up from where he had been holding on to the lamppost like a man drowning, he saw her wave him on as if to follow her. So he did.
"What do you mean he just took off after her?" Trowa asked trying not to sound like he was scolding Quatre.
"I tried to keep him here, but he's stronger than me and damn ferocious when he's been drinking." Quatre threw back with some heat and glared at Heero as he rubbed his upper arm.
"What?" Heero glared back and crossed his arms over his chest defiantly.
"When are you going to get it through your thick head that what is happening to him is real?" Quatre growled out as Trowa stepped between he and Heero. "You're being so damned selfish!"
The tension that had been building between Heero and Quatre ever since the fight in the garden after coming back from the pool finally snapped. "I'm being selfish? I am?" Heero laughed a bitter, nasty laugh. "He's the one being selfish. He's the one always getting into trouble, always getting hurt. Embarrassing himself at political functions and art reviews, isn't he?" He glared at Trowa who just held his hands up in a gesture of surrender. "Well? Isn't he? I'm the one always picking up the pieces and trying to keep him on track. And you say I'm the one being selfish." Heero pushed past Trowa so he could stand nose to nose with Quatre. "You just feed it. You feed into these delusions. You keep him thinking that this is about some kind of haunting, when it's not. This isn't real. It's in his head!"
"Heero, I thought that you agreed that it was possible that Duo was being haunted. You said so in the library when I told you about the family bible I found."
Heero spun back at Trowa. "I told you I would believe whatever made him well again. I would go along with all this to keep him safe. That's what I told you in the library."
"But what about all the mysterious deaths? And Duo's cross gone missing?" Quatre countered.
He ignored the question about the cross only because he couldn't come up with anything that could explain it that made logical, rational sense. He suddenly wished that Wufei was with them so he wasn't the only one trying to keep some sense of reality. "I have no doubt that people died here or in that family. That's what happens. People die. People do not come back from the dead to haunt their killers or their loved ones." Heero's voice dropped so that it was barely audible over the laughter and excitement of the partygoers around them. "If they did than I would never sleep again; haunted by all those I have murdered."
"That's it, isn't it Heero? You're terrified that if you allow yourself to believe him that somehow your demons, your ghosts, will return to haunt you someday." Quatre finally realized why Heero kept wavering back and forth between believing what they were telling him and not. He was afraid.
All the anger drained from Heero as he nodded tightly in response.
Trowa put a hand gently on his shoulder and looked at him with a level gaze. "What is happening to Duo has nothing to do with you. It doesn't have anything to do with Quatre or me either. He's... sensitive to these things I think. Like Quatre's space heart. It's not explainable, but it's real. You don't have to be afraid of it to still love him."
"I'm just so tired of things trying to take him from me, Trowa. So very tired."
"Come on, let's find him before he finds himself in trouble."
That got a hint of a smile from Heero. "What do you mean, before? I'm sure he already has found it. He wouldn't be my Duo otherwise."
Duo had tracked her down narrow streets, far from where the Mardi Gras celebrations were being held and found himself feeling very self conscious as he paced lightly down the cobblestones streets. Each time he thought he would gain on her, she would slip around a corner and he would have to wait for some slight noise or movement to guide him in the right direction. He finally came to a gravel path that led to a huge irongate. He took in his surroundings as he paused to catch his breath.
"Aw come on lady, are you kidding me?" Duo's eyes took in the graveyard and fought the urge to turn tail and run back to the parade.
The girl just continued to thread her way down the path and around the raised graves.
He jogged up to where she had just gone around the corner of a huge mausoleum and found once he got around it that she had disappeared yet again. "I'm not playing ghost in the graveyard tonight honey." He laughed nervously as he made his way around the other side.
"Who'dare?"
Duo jumped at the gruff voice and just about fell over a low stone. "Jesus Christ!"
The big, burly man looked at him thoughtfully and then grinned a wide smile. "Is our savior, true."
Duo regained his balance and gawked at the man, who obviously worked for the cemetery by the way he was dressed. "You be from the parade now, huh? No party here, boy. Just graves." He laughed taking in Duo's costume and wide-eyed expression.
"I'm... I was looking for a girl." Duo stammered feeling oddly chilled despite the warm night.
The man laughed out loud again and leaned his shovel against a nearby grave. "Aren'ta we all?"
"No, no... she came through this way just a second ago."
"I didn't see no-body come tru'ere." The smile slipped as the man took in Duo's somewhat rattled appearance. "Ya'll right now boy?"
"Yeah... I'm fine." Duo slumped against one of the stones and looked at the freshly finished one the man had been placing.
"She was a good girl. Youngin'. Died too soon." He said as if to read Duo's mind.
"What cemetery is this?" He asked and then frowned at the man who looked like he was expecting something. "I'm sorry... my name is Duo. I guess I took a wrong turn."
The man smiled again and nodded. "Albert. And this is Lafayette. One'a the oldest cemeteries 'n da city."
The man seemed pleased to have company and was quick to tell Duo the history of the cemetery and why the graves were all above ground because of the sea level. He went on for quite some time about the famous people who had lived and died in the French Quarter and that many of them were buried in the very same cemetery Duo now found himself in. It had survived fires, floods, plagues, war, and the march of progress.
"That makes sense then to be buried above ground like this." Duo said conversationally; feeling a bit more level as the alcohol finally began to be absorbed into his system.
"Ah, true'dare. Imagin' listenin' to a coffin of ya loved one gurgling and hissing as it sinks to it's rest, before they figured out de bodies be back up with the first rain or flood." He laughed. But for Duo, it was a gruesome thought.
"Albert, may I ask you a strange question?" Albert nodded and after Duo had taken a deep breath and fingered the silver charm for a bit he spoke again. "Do you believe in ghosts?"
Albert let out a bright laugh and slapped Duo heartily on the shoulder. "De ghosts are part'da this place, dat be true, boy. When de body dies wrong, or violent, and isn't placed in it's rightful place, de spirit wanders 'dis world seeking, but never finding it's rest."
"Never?"
"Ah, well... sometime the spirit will rest when it finds what it be searching for. Like dis girl here." He pointed to the grave he had just sealed. "She be lookin' for her little dog when she die in a fire. So I buried it wit' her to bring her rest and to keep her from wandering de earth."
"Oh. I see. So ghosts that wander the earth are looking for something they lost."
"Meybe." He grinned. "Or meybe they just want someone to know what happen to dem when they lived. Or when they died." He added thoughtfully.
Duo shivered feeling even colder as he leaned against the stone crypt behind him. "Well, I should get back to the main drag. My friends will be worried." Duo pushed off and turned to go the way he had come when he found the man taking hold of his hand and turning it open palm side up.
"Take dis wit' ya. Ya gunna need it if ya find de girl." The man winked and placed an old coin and a small bottle of perfume[1] into Duo's hand before taking his shovel and walking around the side of the mausoleum.
"Wait! What's this for?" Duo hollered after him, not able to get his brain to engage his legs as quickly as he would have liked. He hurried around the side of the great stone building but when he got to the other side no one was there. He ran all the way around and found the only thing in the graveyard was the sound of crickets and his own harsh breathing as he stood alone in moonlight. When he glanced to the stone he and Albert had been talking over, he finally noticed the carved inscription on it.
"Louise Clare Baptiste. Beloved Daughter. Born 1789. Died in the Great Fire of 1794." He looked to the stone grave beside it and read: "Albert Francois Baptiste. Loving Husband and Father. Born 1759. Died 1801." He glanced to the small trinkets in his hand and shook his head in disbelief. "I said I didn't want to play ghost in the graveyard." To no one in particular.
To his amazement a bright laughter answered him cutting through the quiet of the graveyard.
End Part 12
Note:
[1] These were often made as tokens to the dead and left on their gravestones to keep their spirits' happy and from feeling the need to wander the night. Especially during Mardi Gras and Halloween.
Author's Note: If anyone is interested in reading about the ghosts of New Orleans or about the history of the city you can check out this site that has some great information: www.neworleanscvb.com
(:./ebony/pool12)
