DISCLAIMER: The GW characters are not mine. They belong to Bandai, Sunrise, and Sotsu Agency. This work is for entertainment only.
WARNINGS: Shonen-ai scenes, angst, MAJOR SPOILERS for the second half of the series.
They had taken the tour, thankfully without the French schoolgirls, and now Duo was dragging Zechs back to the Jewel House, to get a better look at the crowns. Wu Fei has begged off, saying that he needed some time alone and they had agreed to meet on the top floor of the White Tower, in one of the armor rooms.
"Honestly, Duo, I don't see why we have to go back to this place. You had plenty of time on the tour to look at the Crown Jewels. What else is there to see?" Zechs' voice held a long-suffering tone, but Duo ignored it completely. He was having far too good a time.
"Well sure I *saw* them. But I didn't get a chance to *pick* one," the braided boy said, a faint gleam of mischief in his eyes.
"Pick one?" Zechs asked. "Duo, I sorry to be the one to tell you this, but they don't sell replicas in the gift shop." Zechs looked down at the boy beside him, a look of mock sympathy on his face. "And before you even *think* of asking - no. I will not buy one for you." He punctuated the sentence with a knowing smile.
"Well, you're no fun," Duo teased and stuck his tongue out at the tall blond. "No, no, really I just wanted to pick out the one I think *you* should wear."
A frown that was half consternation, half puzzlement crossed Zechs' face. He leaned down and half-whispered, "Duo? You may not of noticed this, what the all the sightseeing, but I haven't worn a crown for a very, very long time. About 15 years, actually."
Duo was not one to be dissuaded easily. He stopped just in front of the entrance to Jewel House and folded his arms in front of himself. Looking up at Zechs with complete confidence he smiled. "Well then, dash it all, Zechs, it's bloody well time you *did.*" The two of them stared at each other for a moment, then laughed.
"Seriously, though, how do they feel when your wearing them?" Duo asked, eyes widening again at the opulent jewels before him.
Zechs frowned in thought. "Heavy," he said, "and tight. I think I only wore one twice and both times I remember having a dreadful headache afterwards."
Duo smiled up at his lover in sympathy and patted his back. "Poor Bunny, so it's true what they say - "Heavy lies the head that wears the crown."
"Yes," Zechs replied, "but what they never say is that it's the stupid crown that makes you feel that way, not any pressing matters of state."
"Still," Duo said determinedly. "I will find it. You will have your crown before I leave this room."
He wandered over to the next case and began searching in earnest, while Zechs watched him and muttered, "Lucky me..."
The search had been on for about 10 minutes when Duo stopped and bent down closer to the case in front of him. "Hey, Zechs! C'mere! I think I found your royal headpiece." Zechs cast a suspicious look Duo's way, but walked over and looked at the item in question.
The card before it read, "Imperial State Crown, A.D. 1937." It wasn't a large crown, there many others in the room that were bigger, but none that had this many jewels, including a large, bluish-white diamond in the center of the circlet. The rest of the base was encrusted with sapphires and rubies, and the arches gleamed silver, also studded with diamonds.
Duo's companion looked down at him archly, one platinum eyebrow raised."You must be joking," Zechs said evenly, pulling back at the sight of it. "Not only would I look absolutely ridiculous in that, but it looks as if it would probably snap my neck in two."
Duo laughed. "Naw, you're stronger than that, I know you are. And you wouldn't look ridiculous. You'd look very... *kingly.*" Try as he might, Duo could not stifle a chuckle, enjoying the image of Zechs that the headpiece conjured up in his mind. As he stared at it, he elaborated on the possibilities. "Imagine, Bunny - you've got this thing on, one of those cool capes with the spotted fur like this has. A throne room. Relena brought before you in chains, weeping as you order, "Off with her -" He had turned slightly and not stopped short in his royal drama finding that he was alone in front of the case. "- head," he finished pathetically, spotting Zechs disappearing out the door. Making a face at the man's retreating back. he got one last look at the crown and then headed after the blond. "Hey! Zechs! Well *I* thought it was a great scene... Hey, Bunny Prince! Wait up!"
Out on the Green, Wu Fei had watched the two walk off together. /Standing so close...What happened to Heero? He wouldn't like the way they're looking at each other. Not one bit./
It was an hour before they were to meet up again, and Wu Fei was tempted to leave right then and find his own way back to his hotel. But when he thought about being there, in the hotel room alone, he felt a shiver go through him. He had not slept well the night before, and that morning there had seemed to be a aura of foreboding in the room with him. No. He didn't especially want to go back to his hotel.
And if he was honest with himself, he wanted very much to stay with Duo for awhile. The long-haired boy might be overly-cheerful and sometimes not serious enough, but he had been one of the few people Wu Fei had met during the war that he was truly comfortable with. /But he's with Zechs/ the dark-haired boy thought as he settled himself in a loose meditative pose on the edge of one of the Green's stone planters. /And I have no place being around Zechs.../
At times, it had seemed to Wu Fei that the tall blond was the locus of all the pain he'd felt since Treize Khushrenada's death. Pain, and grief, too, all wrapped with a sense of insecurity in himself that had been devastating at times. Because somehow, some time in the sweet and hurtful past, he become aware of a comparison between himself and the true heir of Sank. He had spent much of his time brooding over that comparison, worrying at it with his mind until now he had lost all sense of who had made the judgment in the first place.
Had it been Treize, weighing the differences between his tall, fair former lover with the small, dark boy who had come after? Or perhaps Zechs himself, furious at Treize's infidelity, had spoken the scathing and judgmental words - words that Wu Fei had heard in his head practically since he's met the leader of OZ.
Looking out over the peaceful green space, he pondered the last alternative. Maybe, just maybe, the painful contrast between himself and Zechs Marquise had come from his own uncertainty about Treize's true feelings towards him. The familiar questions had always been just below the surface, begging to be asked but always denied. /How could Treize really want *me* after he'd had Zechs? Zechs - tall, beautiful, a shining warrior who gave Treize a hundred victories. Perfect, pretty Zechs... How could I possibly live up to the memory of *that?*/
A shadow fell over him, blocking the sun for a moment and he looked up. One of the Yeoman Warders had wandered over and had obviously said something to him that Wu Fei hadn't heard, lost in reverie as he'd been. "What?" he said, frowning up at the strangely uniformed man.
"I said, do be careful of the ravens - they've been known to bite unsuspecting visitors, particularly this fellow." The man cast a suspicious glance at a large, black bird that was perched on the planter about two feet from Wu Fei. "I saw him getting close to you and you didn't seem to notice him, so I thought I'd just come and give you a warning about him."
Wu Fei and the raven considered one another. "He doesn't look especially viscous," the Chinese boy said, subtly holding out his arm to the bird.
"Oh, I wouldn't do that, young man," the Warder said. "It's not one of the stories people make up - he really has bitten quite a few people."
Wu Fei said nothing just kept his arm slightly extended and watched the suspected biter carefully. As he did, the raven put it's head to one side, and then hopped closer to him, finally stepping up onto the boy's arm.
The Warder was half horrified, half fascinated. Not knowing exactly what to say, he simply watched, ready at any moment to make a grab for the bird. But Wu Fei did nothing with it, just let it rest there on his forearm.
"I read somewhere that there's a superstition about them," Wu Fei said slowly.
"Yes," the Warder said, his voice a bit weak. "Supposedly if the ravens ever leave the Tower, the nation itself with fall to ruins."
"Birds can't do that kind of thing," the boy said quietly. Birds bring people happiness - that's all." He felt lightheaded all of a sudden, aware of a strange hush that had settled over the green. He was focused on the bird, no longer aware if the Warder was still beside him. Then, out of the preternatural silence, he heard the faint twittering of song birds. Their sound became louder and suddenly it seemed to Wu Fei that he was being embraced from behind by a familiar warmth - that he was no longer alone. His whisper, when it came, was hoarse. "Treize..."
The sound of his own voice broke the strange reverie and Wu Fei blinked, looking around at the Green. Several tourists were taking photographs of the White Tower and the Queen's House, but the Warder, and the raven, were nowhere to be seen.
His flesh was crawling and suddenly he felt cold, very cold. As he rose and nearly ran from the Green, he found himself thinking how profoundly ironic it was that the only thing he wanted to do now was get back to the company of Duo and Zechs.
"Why don't you go on in," Duo said to Zechs. "I'm just gonna take a look around for Wu Fei." Zechs nodded and headed into the armory. Sweeping his eyes over the Green, Duo sighed softly. There was no sign of the dark-haired boy. Several tourists were being told about a particular raven by one of the Yeoman Warders and the only other person he could see was a woman sitting on a bench in front of the Queen's House, across the Green. Duo smiled at the sight of her. She was dressed in some strange costume, definitely a period outfit, all white with a bit of lace at her throat, and she looked pale and sad. He considered going over to talk to her, but then remembered that Zechs was waiting upstairs. He turned to look up at the White Tower where the armory was housed, then back to the Green briefly. The woman in white was nowhere to be seen.
He frowned a bit, puzzled by the sudden disappearance, before shrugging his shoulders and heading up the stairs to find his lover.
Outside, a tour group was just arriving in front of the Queen's House. Wu Fei came around the corner of the building, sighing gratefully that the Green and the White Tower, where he was to meet the other two, were finally back in sight. When he had fled the grassy area earlier, he's run towards the Outer Ward of the complex and gotten lost. Now, at least, he could find Duo and they could leave. As he headed out across the Green, the tour guide behind him was answering a question about ghosts at the Tower. "Oh yes, madam," he was saying with great seriousness, "the Queen's House, behind you, is considered to be the most haunted part of the Tower. Some guards have claimed to see a lady in white wandering near here. They say it might be Anne Boleyn."
Zechs and Duo had gone through two rooms of armor and were entering a third. "You know something, Bunny?" Duo mused as he stared at a suit of armor made for Henry VIII. Zechs, standing nearby, glanced around the room briefly, sighing in relief that they had the place to themselves. He was going to have to remain vigilant in his battle against the use of the Public Nickname. "What is it, Duo?"
"Well, it's kinda cool - these suits of armor? They're almost all about my size. Guess it used to be knightly to be a shrimp. Zechs smiled at the braided boy, intently focused on a gleaming shirt of chain mail.
"You're not a 'shrimp', Duo. Please don't talk about yourself that way."
Duo looked over at him. "But I *am* a shrimp," he said, and then, slightly more melodramatically, "I'm... *resigned* to it now."
The tall blond walked over to stand behind the boy, and slid strong arms around him. Taking advantage of the the deserted room, he nuzzled Duo's cheek and purred, "Well if you *are* truly a shrimp, may I pour drawn butter over you and savor every bite?" He ended this last sentence with a small nip to Duo's neck.
Duo closed his eyes in pleasure at the low voice, and its sultry words. Smiling wickedly, he turned in Zechs arms, facing the man, and ran his hands up the broad chest, slipping them at last around Zechs' neck. "You always know just what to say, don't you," he murmured, staring into eyes of azure blue, unable to pull himself out.
Zechs closed his arms tightly around Duo's hips. "Not always," he breathed against the boy's mouth, "but I try my best."
Duo couldn't wait any longer and tangled his fingers in white-gold silk, pulling Zechs down into a passionate kiss. Coming from the hall outside into the room, that was how Wu Fei found them.
Shock paralyzed him only briefly. The two of them seemed to have no idea he was there - as if the world had ceased to exist outside of their deep embrace. Wu Fei beat back a precious, now infinitely painful memory of feeling just that way. He closed his eyes and the sight of them and backed blindly out the door - running into a group of tourists on their way in. By the time they'd all apologized and gotten themselves straightened out, Duo was standing next to him, asking if he was ready to leave.
Wu Fei hesitated, not knowing what to say. He was still feeling the effects of that unearthly embrace on the Green, and the idea of being alone made him shiver. But how could he face them now? /Duo... how did this happen? You... with him, of all people. I don't understand this at all.../
"Wufie?"
He looked up into Duo's concerned face, the irritating nickname Duo had always used with him now making his eyes prick with tears. Staring into the wide, violet eyes, he realized he had to ask for help. "Duo... we need to talk. Just the two of us. Is that possible?"
"Yeah, sure," Duo said slowly. "Let me talk to Zechs, okay?"
Wu Fei watched as the braided boy approached his companion. A few minutes later, after Zechs had looked over at him once, the tall blond headed out the door of the armor room and Duo came back. "Are you okay to walk?" Duo asked gently.
A quick frown of irritation crossed the Chinese boy's face. "Of course I'm okay to walk - I'm not sick!"
Duo grinned. "Oh, yeah. That's the Wufie I remember. Well, Zechs suggested that you and I walk back to where the car is. He's going to get a taxi and he'll meet us at the car. So c'mon - let's go!"
Wu Fei felt stupidly grateful towards Duo and, much as he hated to admit it, Zechs as well. He headed off after the long braid that was disappearing around the corner. "Hey - wait for me. And don't call me 'Wufie.'"
They walked out of the dim rooms and into the hazy sunshine of the London afternoon. "So, what's up?" Duo asked. "You're acting - well, I hate to say it - kinda strange, you know?"
"I... I didn't expect to see Zechs again," Wu Fei replied. "It's been a bit of a shock."
"Oh, well, I'm sure whatever when on between you guys - and I'll remind you that you *still* haven't told me what that was, and don't just say he killed someone again 'cause he's not that kind of person - anyway, whatever it was I'm sure you guys can work it out. Maybe you should just talk to him." Duo looked over at his friend, hopeful that his suggestion might be taken.
"I can't talk to him," Wu Fei said bitterly. "Besides, no amount of talking would change what happened. You can't go back and change the past."
"No, you can't" Duo agreed. "But you *can* change the way you handle it. You can always reevaluate what your doing - decide to do things differently."
Wu Fei mulled Duo's words over for a moment as they rounded a corner into the busy avenue they would follow back to the car. "Is that what you did?" the dark-haired boy said tersely. "Is that why you're not with Heero?"
Duo stopped walking for a moment and turned to Wu Fei. "As a matter of fact, yes, that *is* why I'm not with Heero. Why is that bad?"
"You were the one who wanted him for so long, Duo. You waited and waited for him to get over that girl and he finally did and now you've left him?"
Duo stared at the other boy for a moment, then shoved his hands in his pockets and began walking again. "I had good reasons for what I did, Wu Fei. And I can tell you one thing - it may have been hard but I'm a *lot* happier now."
"With him?" The Chinese boy's voice was bitter.
"Yeah. It's coming up on a couple of months now," Duo said, trying to ignore the biting tone in Wu Fei's voice. "It's been the most incredible time of my life. Does that bother you?"
The had come to a traffic light and were waiting for it to change. "I still don't understand what you see in him," Wu Fei replied. /Liar. You know perfectly well what Duo sees in him. The same thing Treize saw in him. Something you haven't got./
"Well, it's like I said in the cafe, you know? There are just so many reasons. But I'm sure a guy like you probably doesn't want to here me talking about *that* kind of stuff, huh? Really though, it's just that he's an amazing person -"
"What do you mean, 'a guy like me'?" Wu Fei cast a frowning, sidelong glance at his friend.
Duo blinked, momentarily confused. "Well," he said slowly, "you know - a guy who likes..."
"A guy who likes what?"
"A guy who likes... girls." Wu Fei continued to stare at Duo. "You know," Duo encouraged, "a guy who likes *girls*, as opposed to a guy like me who likes, well, *guys.*"
The frustration of it all was too much for the slender Preventer officer. He stopped and grabbed Duo's arm, turning the other boy to face him. "You don't know *anything* about me, do you?"
Duo looked briefly alarmed, then smiled, obviously trying to calm the glaring Wu Fei. "Hey, hey..." he said, patting the hand that was gripping his arm, "Calm down, all right? Maybe I don't know a lot about you, but you know, man - you haven't ever really offered a lot of info." Duo frowned again, leaning closer to the other boy. "Wu Fei, c'mon man - tell me what's going on. Why'd you get so upset at what I said?"
The dark-haired boy stared straight ahead of him, blind to the busy street around them. "I was in love once. After Meiran."
"Really?" Duo's look was puzzled. "Was it anyone I knew?"
Wu Fei had to laugh at the absurdity of the situation, causing Duo even more concern. The time had come. No one - not one of his fellow pilots, not Sally, no one - had ever been told of this and now, here he was, telling Duo in the middle of a crowded street, just outside of a tiny shop selling Wellington boots. The mundane atmosphere was almost too much to be believed.
"I don't know if you *knew* him, Duo. But you certainly knew *of* him. You tried to kill him for almost a year. It was Treize. Treize Khushrenada. I guess you could say I was sleeping with the enemy - quite literally."
The world had suddenly ceased making sense to Duo. He stood staring at the friend he thought he knew, whom he obviously didn't know at all. Certainly the masculine pronoun had caught him by surprise, but Duo had never been one to completely pigeonhole people, preferring to think of his friends as loose and changeable when it came to their personalities. But Treize... the man they had fought so hard against in the first half of the war... For a long moment, Duo simply couldn't find his voice.
"What part of it is shocking you most?" Wu Fei asked somewhat bitterly. "The fact that he was the enemy, or that fact that he had Zechs."
"Zechs...?" Duo looked over at Wu Fei, bewildered for a moment and then his eyes widened. "Ah - I hadn't even thought of that. Is that why you've been acting so weird? Because you both had the same lover?" Duo shook his head at the kinds of thoughts that were coming to him. "Were you... were you with him while he and Zechs were still together?"
Wu Fei started walking again, forcing Duo to skip a little to keep up. "No. That would never have happened," the dark-eyed boy said fiercely. "If Zechs hadn't left Treize, I'm sure he'd never have looked twice at me. No, I was the leftovers. I was the one who came after his golden boy. I was the one who could never live up to Zechs' memory."
Duo shifted his gaze to the traffic-clogged street. "God, Wu Fei. You must have really felt horrible, seeing him like that and stupid me suggesting you come with us. But I didn't know, and I just thought -"
"You don't have to apologize," the other boy said, somewhat stiffly. "You're right, you didn't know. How could you? No one knew but Treize and Zechs."
A frown crossed the braided boy's face. "Wait - in the museum you said something about Zechs killing someone you loved. You weren't talking about Treize, though. Zechs..." His voice trailed off when he realized what he was about to say.
Wu Fei knew what it was, even when it was unspoken. "Zechs didn't kill Treize, I did. Is that what you were going to say?"
Duo looked stricken. "Wu Fei - please..."
"No!" the black-haired boy shouted, making people around the two of them startle and then give them both a wide berth. Duo stopped in his tracks and stared at the angry boy beside him. The dark eyes held flashes of rage, but there was something else there, too. Sadness, Duo thought. Rage and infinite sadness.
"I might have been the one who destroyed his mobile suit," he was saying now, "but it was Zechs - *your* lover - who was responsible for Treize being in space at all! If it hadn't of been for him, and for Treize's blasted sense of honor, he'd be alive now." His voice, horse with emotion, was beginning to crack and though he fought them back, hot tears were falling down his cheeks. Then, all at once, the anger seemed to leave him and Wu Fei was left with only the sadness, the profound and all-encompassing sadness of grief. He had never told this to anyone, had never shouted out his accusations to a living soul, until now. And doing that had lanced the last and deepest wound he had gotten in the war. It was horrible, and so very, very painful, but it had needed so badly to be done before the actual healing could begin.
Duo seemed to sense this. He wrapped his arms around Wu Fei and let him sob and for a long time, the crowded street disappeared and it was just the two friends, one clinging, one embracing, both trying hard to dispel the ghosts of the war.
Duo's hand moved up to stroke Wu Fei's silky, black hair. "Shhh..." he said softly. "It's gonna be okay, Wu Fei. I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. It's going to be okay." They stood there, embracing, while the bustle of London's early spring afternoon ebbed and flowed around them. And neither one of them cared.
Zechs had gotten to the car, and was stretched out on the hood. He leaned his head back against the windshield, let his feet dangle off of the front end, and looked up at the ceiling of the garage, doubting. /This seems to be a curse with us. We run away to be by ourselves and at every turn the past confronts us. And why - tell me why, dear God, does that always come back to Treize for me? I couldn't escape the man when he was alive, and I haven't really escaped from him since his death. Those words still seem impossible, sometimes. Treize dead? No. Can't be. The man just simply wouldn't put up with it. Certainly not at the hands of that... that boy. He looked too small to be able to do such a horrendous thing./
Zechs felt a strange prick of tears behind his eyes. In the short months that he had known Duo Maxwell, these tears hadn't come at all. But before that weekend, when they had met in Sank, they had been his constant companions, threatening to overwhelm him at the slightest memory of his former lover. Now they were back, and if only he could he would beat them away with his bare hands, so painful was the memory of them. /Treize! You said we'd both make it out of the war! You said we'd be together, when all the insanity was over. Well where are you now, you bastard! Who told you that you could go away for eternity and leave me all alone? /
The tears came then, sliding down his cheeks in hot rivers - the familiar friends of depression. /I thought I'd finally gotten over this. Thought I'd left the past in the past. But one look at him... one look at that boy and everything came back. He replaced me so easily - gave Treize whatever it was Treize needed. Obviously something he couldn't get from me. Made Treize fall in love with him. And then the dirty little bastard drove a saber into his suit and watched as Treize - *my* Treize - was blown into pieces./ The blond man looked down at the ice-blue paint that covered his car, fingers brushing over it lightly. It had been a gift from Treize on Zechs' 18th birthday, the paint itself blended specially to match the younger man's eyes. /Treize's car, Treize's house, and now - Treize's lover.../
He sat all the way up, looking out at the hazy street beyond the dim cave of the garage. "What do you want of me, Treize?" he said softly. "You followed me around the Earth, you followed me into Space, and now you're here again and I don't know what to do about it!"
Zechs was about to put his head in his hand when something startled him. His breath - he could see his breath. He exhaled sharply and a cloud of water vapor dissolved before him. Frowning in puzzlement, he thought to get up and walk outside the garage to confirm the sunny weather when he felt a strangely familiar caress down the length of his hair.
"Ahh!" He spun around wildly, looking for the person responsible, but no one was there. The garage was quite deserted. He slid off the top of the car, wrapping his arms around himself for warmth, and walked quickly to the exit. He needed sun and noise badly.
On the third floor of the house in Berkeley Square, Mouse heard the footsteps of someone approaching. He peeked out of his room and saw a young woman, dressed as a domestic, standing at the top of the stairs and looking around uneasily. The staff didn't come up here all that often - didn't need to really. He was the only one here and he was always neat and tidy. But there was another reason they avoided it, and he knew it involved the people he could see. Others couldn't see they as he did, but many could sense that they were here. And most of those who did sense them were terrified of the top floor, just as he'd been when he first got here. As he watched, the maid opened the door to the bedroom and soon he heard the oddly comforting sound of a vacuum cleaner.
Closing his door again he wandered over to his bed and lay down on it, holding the notes he'd taken from his talk with the dead priest. He went over it again and again, so he wouldn't have to rely on the piece of paper. This had to work. He had to convince Duo to help him. A couple of his troubles would be solved if they could figure out how to speak to the lawyer. But there was something else, too; a thing he couldn't quite put his finger on. He only knew that in some way, something very profound was in the balance. And he had to get this one right.
End of Part 7
(:./kumiko/2road24)
