09-May-2001
Note: The arc is currently under a massive revision, and will be under revision for at least another four to six months, so there will be some discontinuities until I can get everything fixed.
Author: Dan
Genre: epic AU
Pairings: NA
Disclaimer: not mine, don't sue.
Warnings: AU, a positive plethra of OCS, high
supernatural and yech factor, angst
Further Note: terms from such literary gems as Laurel
K. Hamilton are used and then twisted beyond all
recognition.
My wolf agreed with the words Trieze spoke in my half-remembered memory. My beast knew that life was a cycle, and that if I wanted to stay on top of it I would have prove myself dominant. Sometimes that meant killing things. People. That bothered the human part of me, a lot. Before, I had run from that eloquently spoken fact, now I was just bothered. What had happened to me?
Duo was watching me with that sharp intelligence. "What do you want to do about the rogue vamps?"
That was a loaded question if I had ever heard one. I looked at my hands. In the back of my head was a voice that screamed for bloody vengeance. Revenge for being abused, revenge for the attack on what was mine, revenge for being passed around like so much meat. Maybe that voice had always been there, but it was only just lately that I had started to listen to it. I shook my head to clear it away.
"Relena?" Heero's voice was more nasal than I remembered it being, and there was a tinge to his scent that said he was worried.
"Thinking, that's all," I muttered, and waved away their attention with an errant gesture.
"You do that way too much, Geri," Aidan commented. He grinned when I glared.
"Geri?" Heero's face betrayed confusion; it was the first time that I had ever seen that look on his face.
"I don't have the patience for a vocabulary lesson; ask Duo later." I didn't want to be here, didn't want to watch them cuddle on my couch, didn't want to be trying to figure out a way to get us all out of this mess alive.
"You're thinking again. Geri." Aidan sounded quietly serious. It made me look at him hard. "Mind telling us what's got your attention?"
"Trieze, and this new Master of the City," I said. "I think that they might be the same."
"A distinct possibility," Aidan agreed. "But that's not what's got you wrapped around the axle."
Heero blinked at the phrase, and Duo quietly explained it in his ear. Sometimes I forget that English is not Heero's first language. Aidan nudged me, making me blink slightly owlishly at him. "If it is Trieze, I'm wondering what he's planning."
"My cousin was ever the schemer," Dorothy said. It was then that I remembered that Dorothy placed flowers on his 'grave' on the first of every month. It made me wonder what she was thinking. She'd retreated behind her mask of faint amusement. I guess I'd have to ask later. My hand stole across the gap between us to grasp hers. I felt her long slender fingers curl around mine, and it made me smile.
"Do you think he wanted you to be like this?" It sounded as if Duo couldn't find a gentle way of saying lycanthrope, so I said it for him.
"To be a werewolf?" I asked. Heero jerked like he'd been stung, and I smiled in slightly malicious humor. Even to me the smile felt bitchy. "No, I don't think he had anything to do with it, at least not directly."
"Why?" Heero had rallied rather well. He was not taking my change of character well. I was beginning to think that he needed a princess in an ivory tower to rescue just as much as I used to need rescuing.
"Because the vampires that attacked us today said 'their master,' not 'the master.'" I shrugged one shoulder. "Seems like a small difference in semantics, but from what I've heard of vampires, they like stuff like that."
Aidan nodded briefly. I got the strong impression that he really did not like bloodsuckers. "Yeah, they seem to."
"We can always ask Wufei." Dorothy and I shared a small school-girlish grin. We'd been getting lectures on the preternatural; his wealth of knowledge on the subject was impressive. It hadn't made much sense until I'd discovered Duo was a necromancer. Wufei had probably started doing research for him.
"Yeah, Wufei would probably know," Duo agreed solemnly.
"Aidan, how exactly do we go about setting up a meeting with the MoC?" The 'we' was an exclusionary one that made Duo frown, but he didn't argue. Aidan's lips twitched at my abbreviation.
"We need to ask our Ulfric." That meant another conversation with Victor in less than week. That thought made my head throb a little.
"Joy," I said. Aidan gave me a sharp look. As much as he seemed to like me, I realized that he was extremely loyal to Victor--and it was more than just loyalty to his king, it was something deeper. It made me wonder. I spread my hands in a gesture of appeasement. "Sorry."
He nodded once. "I'll ask tomorrow morning."
"Thank you." We watched each other warily. As long as I refused to accept my beast there would be a tension between us, a type of hostility with no focus. It almost made me sad; it made me regret something that I couldn't quite put into words.
"Are we going?" Heero had figured out enough to make it a question.
"No--as scary as you can be, Heero, you are still only human." I brought my knees to my chest and let my hair slide down around my face, I watched Duo. "But maybe Duo. We need to look scary, and I'm willing to bet money that a necromancer would be scary to a vamp."
Duo made a small protesting sound until Heero shot him a look. He wasn't about to let me go in alone. If he couldn't come, he'd send a substitute. Duo's gaze was perfectly blank when he looked at me. "Just tell me when."
I stared at Heero hard enough that it made him blink. "I don't want you involved."
He nodded. "I don't think I want to see what you've become any more than you do."
I think I liked it better when he wasn't eloquent.
I had rather thought that the conversation was over on that note. There was nothing more to be said, from the way that I looked at it. I'd said what I thought, what I was planning on doing, and that was that. I had thought that Heero was the type to leave it alone after that. I was wrong. I wasn't the only one who had changed since the end of the Eve Wars.
He came into my office three days later, while I was going through the motions of reading the report my brother had sent me on the Mars terraforming project. It had become difficult for me to focus on these things, especially after becoming a lycanthrope. Besides, Sylvia pored over all this stuff and organized it for me anyway. It was like all I had to do was talk, just mouth the words. It wore away at something that I couldn't define.
"We need to talk," he told me in his rather direct way.
"It would be a first," I replied without much rancor. He gave me a look that said he knew what I meant and didn't appreciate it, but could understand so he would let it slide. I didn't remember him being the patient type, but a few years of living with Duo would teach a person patience. "What do you want to talk about, in particular?"
"In particular," he said with what could have been a smile, "Trieze, lycanthropes, and what you're planning on doing."
"You're worried for me; oh, Heero, you do love me," I gasped out, and fluttered my eyes in a rather melodramatic fashion.
"Hilde is having a negative influence upon you." He seemed tolerantly amused.
I shrugged in what I thought was a communicative manner. I guess the kinder, gentler Heero unnerved me as much as the leaner and meaner Relena unnerved him. It was easier to look at him though now that the stars in my eyes didn't blind me. He was still handsome, but he didn't make my body tighten the way that Aidan did. Somehow that didn't even seem important.
"At the moment I plan on doing nothing." I watched as he looked at me in a way that said that didn't believe me. His face had become more expressive, comparatively speaking--though still not nearly as expressive as Duo's'. I decided to expound upon my previous statement. "At the moment there is nothing that I can do. We are playing an elaborate game of chess, according to Aidan, and right now it is their move."
Heero nodded. I waited. He waited.
"Is there something more that you want me to say?" I asked him.
"What will you do in this meeting, Relena?" The quiet tension in his tone made me serious.
"It depends on what they do," I replied. My face went very hard. "We might kill them, we might help them kill someone else, or they might kill us. It all rather depends."
"That's a lot of mights."
"Life is rather uncertain, that is for sure." I smiled my best politician's smile, which looked damned pleasant, but didn't give him anything. He gave me a hard look before standing up. His movements were smoothly graceful, but just humanly graceful. There was no magic in them. It was almost odd to watch him after being around Aidan for so long.
"This has been insightful."
"Our conversation has been as enlightening as they have always been," I replied. The sarcasm between us was almost funny. Almost.
Aidan slipped through the door that Heero had kindly refrained from slamming. He looked at me as I sat behind my big and impressive desk with my head in my hands, hiding. I didn't know why, but Heero made me regretful, and I didn't even know why.
"Victor says we're having 'dinner' with the vamps tonight," Aidan said quietly. If he had been anyone else I would have said he was being compassionate. "Are you up to it?"
"Doesn't matter much if I am or if I'm not, now does it?" I asked with such bitterness that Aidan looked startled.
"We can reschedule," he said, as if it were nothing. Then he grinned. "We're not like your politicians; clock time doesn't matter very much to us."
I thought about that for a moment. "No, I suppose it doesn't. For either set of monsters."
"Will you stop calling us that?" There was something in his tone that made me watch his eyes. There was something in them, like an old and remembered pain. "Just because we're not human doesn't mean that we have to be monsters."
"You're right," I apologized. "You're absolutely right. I'm sorry." Aidan sighed and rolled his shoulders as if to ease a tension riding in them.
"Just remember, before you go saying stuff like that, that most of us are survivors of attacks as well." Aidan's eyes had darkened two shades of green. "You're not the only one who's been a victim, but that doesn't mean that you have to stay a victim."
I was aghast at myself for not thinking. Of course I was not the only one to survive an attack. I looked up at Aidan and something in his face softened slightly. He touched my cheek. "Later, Geri, we can share stories. But rest assured, most attacks were nowhere near as brutal as yours."
"Yours was, though, wasn't it?" I had to ask, even though the part of me that believed in such things like propriety knew better.
"Yeah." His eyes were far away and full of pain. The memory had never really left him, just like it had never left me. He gave himself a shake like a dog, or a wolf, shedding water. "But that's neither here nor there. Victor told me to tell you to dress up for 'dinner.'"
I eyed him with deep suspicion. "Why do I not like the way you say dress up?"
"Probably because I get help pick out the outfit," he said with the delight of a boy who's gotten the ice cream that he wanted. Problem was, I was the ice cream.
End Part 11
(:./dan/wolf11)
