05-Feb-2006
Title: Leave Love Bleeding
Author: TB
Archive: GWA
Category: Dark... possibly angsty
Pairings: 2x4, 3x4, D+4
Rating: NC17
Warnings: violence, implicit NCS situations, language, incest
Spoilers: show and EW
Notes: The lyrics interspersed come from the following: Hemorrhage by Fuel,
Wait and Bleed by Slipknot, Prison Sex by Tool, Rape Me by Nirvana, and
Voodoo by Godsmack. The voice of Trowa was provided by Marsh, and for
the record, her Trowa is exactly how I picture him: a very sexy bastard who
only thinks he's in perfect control.
Summary: Six snapshots of Quatre from various POVs.
Duo pressed hot kisses to Quatre's collarbone as he unveiled it, popping each button of Quatre's shirt slowly and carefully. Restless legs bumped his as he slid down Quatre's body, running his lips down the line of taut abdominal muscles, licking two dusky nipples, touching his tongue into Quatre's navel. Quatre's hand worked between them, sneaking down to his own hardness and squeezing rhythmically until Duo forced him to stop. He pushed himself up on his elbows and draped himself over the other boy, holding him in place while he delivered his lips to Quatre's.
Quatre turned his face away, trying to make it look accidental, but Duo knew, and was confused.
'I'm ready,' Quatre whispered. 'Do it now. Please.'
'There's no rush,' he said, breathing it out into the shell of Quatre's ear, a delicate configuration of cartilage and nerves that produced a shiver that he felt reverberating from head to toes in the body underneath his. He did it again, just to get that same sensitive response. 'Your burly men out there won't interrupt us until evening.'
His answer was a breathy groan. He felt that musician's hand searching between them, trying to find completion. He grinned to himself as he relented, thinking that this strange Gundam pilot with his proper, polite ways was really just a bundle of contradictions and surprises. And all the more intriguing for it. He sat up, reaching for the container of hand lotion he had set on the bed-side table, when Quatre had accepted his not quite innocent invitation to hide from the worst of the mid-day desert heat together in his room.
Quatre followed him up, his palm open and hot on Duo's cheek, his mouth a source of sucking pressure applied to the thrumming vein in his neck. 'Do me hard,' he murmured into Duo's throat. 'Do me so hard.'
To think, just this morning, he'd looked at Quatre Winner and assumed he was a virgin. He pulled Quatre off balance to slide chest-to-chest with him, their sweat mingling as they rubbed together, Quatre's smooth pale skin against Duo's rougher, freckled body. The old wooden bed creaked beneath them as they shifted, and Duo grinned again when he thought of rich ancestors making sedate love on this same mattress, ploughing their partners with dull sobriety and never guessing what lay ahead in their genetic legacy.
Quatre tugged away long enough to strip his shirt and throw it blindly aside. He fumbled with the button fly of his trousers, and finally succeeded in shoving the khakis down, drawing his undershorts with them. Bare to the thighs, his erection bobbing boyish and slender and long between them, he reached for Duo again, nimble fingers made clumsy as he scrabbled for Duo's zipper. 'You're so big,' he whispered, the heat in his husky voice like a firestorm. 'You'll fill me so deep. You'll fill me so-' He hitched up silent when Duo slid a lubed finger into him, his body pressing in intimate contact all along Duo's, as if Quatre were made of something more flexible than flesh and bone; it seemed impossible that they could be touching everywhere they were, from forehead to thigh and with those strong violinist's fingers digging hard into the muscles of his back.
Then Quatre was gone, turning away from him and reaching for the headboard. He rose up on his knees and spread his legs as far as he could with his trousers only half-shed, and his bare shoulders bunched and writhed as he gripped the oaken whorls tight. 'From behind,' he ordered, his eyes closed, his head thrown back to expose his every vulnerability. 'Do it hard, do it fast.'
Duo hesitated. One finger for a few seconds was no preparation at all. 'Are you sure?'
One hand reached back blind, sliding along his lotion-slicked length, a callused thumb caressing his head and fingering the slit, slipping back to lift his balls. When he pulled, Duo had no choice but to follow, grabbing Quatre's hips as the other boy guided him home. 'Hard,' Quatre grated, bracing himself with both hands and locked elbows, and so Duo did, seating himself to the base in one great push, tearing through all resistance and coming to rest gasping into the damp strands of Quatre's sun-light hair. Quatre bucked against him, his moans electric, his whole body heaving.
'Daddy,' he whispered.
Memories are just where you laid them
Dragging the waters til the depths give up their dead
What did you expect to find?
Was it something you left behind?
Don't you remember anything I said
Dorothy propped Winner against the wall, not quite able to conquer his greater size even in zero-grav. His blood stained her fingertips when she let him go. It was a slick coating over the front and back of his neoprene flight suit. So far none of it was floating loose, but that was only a matter of time. She hadn't realised she'd stabbed him clean through until she'd brought his body down. She slipped his limp arm through the leather handholds lining the waist-high rail, balancing herself over him until she was sure he would stay where he was without drifting too much.
She had to force herself to remove his helmet, riding the waves the twisting motion produced in their weightless state. His skin was grey and waxy, his lips dry and slightly parted. Sweat plastered his yellow hair, only a little darker than hers, to his forehead, to the bruise-like shadows that surrounded his closed eyes. He looked dead. When she pressed cringing fingers to his artery, she was almost stunned to find a pulse there, thready and faint but unmistakable.
'Come in, Catalonia!' Quinze was shouting on her helmet comm. 'I need those mobile dolls! Catalonia!'
Somewhere else, somewhere nearby, perhaps, Zechs's hoarse shouts filtered on another frequency, his harsh panting obscuring whatever voices he may have been hearing. 'The Libra will be dropped on Earth!' he cried. 'It is the only way left toward peace.' There was a long pause. Dorothy could guess who he was fighting, but she made no attempt to fill the holes with speculation. Whatever Heero Yuy had to say would remain locked in Zechs Merquise in either victory or death. She released Winner's helmet with a little flick of her fingers, watching it sail across the MD operation center. It was hard in zero-g, but she managed to lower herself almost to the floor, wrapping an arm tight about Winner's body and tucking herself close to him. He was not warm, and she felt his chill leeching away her own heat. After a moment, she brought his loose arm about her shoulders, in a parody of mutual embrace. She wrapped her ankle about his, and they stayed locked together when she let go of the rail above their heads, suspended gently.
'The weak are created by the powerful!' Zechs shouted suddenly. 'The Earth was powerful and it subjugated the colonies to her whims. She reduced the colonies to servants, to prisoners!'
A distant explosion distracted her. Another of her mobile dolls, caught in stray fire, erupted, blazed, and rapidly extinguished in the cold vacuum. For a moment, her mind split into seven hundred and sixteen pieces, a fraction of her diverted to every remaining doll, now inert and useless in the darkness of Space. She fought hard to wrest control back from Zero, clinging to Winner's solid presence as it fought her back, yearning to re-enter the battle. The wet of his blood smearing her bare hands brought her home to her own battered mind.
Quinze was hailing her again. But he interrupted himself, speaking to someone unseen. Dorothy struggled to understand him.
'-how many times will you interfere with Operation Meteor before you're satisfied?' he snarled. 'If you hadn't modified the parameters, your pilots would have brought Earth to its knees within a month!'
A voice she had never heard before and would never hear again answered, just loud enough to be picked up by the microphone Quinze wore, the tiny circuit that connected her to one more doomed man. 'We thought Earth and her people deserved more than death and mindless destruction. If it costs us our lives, we will save them from it now.'
Dorothy listened to the single retort of a gun fired nine levels above her, on Libra's bridge. She listened to the massive concussion that followed, to the sizzle of the frequency that had linked them. She listened to the dead air, knowing that the bridge was no more- its staff destroyed in the blast. She didn't wonder what had happened, who the unknown voice had belonged to. She felt as if she were in a dream, something idle and disconnected, remote and unimportant. Merely too tired to wake.
'What is that?' Zechs demanded. 'Libra- she's falling?'
Winner shifted abruptly, a soft exhalation with the barest of moans escaping him. Dorothy reached for the rail to hold them in place as his movement sent them bumping to the floor.
'I was born to lead a life drenched in blood,' Zechs whispered. 'It's too late to evade my sins.' He drew a deep breath, long and steady. 'Let's finish this now, Heero.'
Dorothy sighed. She touched her chin, popping the lock that held her helmet tight. She tugged it free, and sent it after Winner's. The sudden silence was deafening, but she no longer wanted to know the ending. No... no, she already knew what it was going to be. She turned her face into Winner's clammy neck, and pulled his arm tighter about herself, lacing her strong fingers with his still ones. There had never been a boy to hold her like this, to offer comfort, closeness. If there hadn't been a war, perhaps she and Winner would have met someday, both of them noble in birth and upbringing, sophisticated, intelligent, charismatic. Born to lead their families into the future in a stately march of tradition and accomplishment. Both of them talented, cultured; she had heard him play, just once, in those short, peaceful days in the kingdom of Cinq, and the music he had coaxed from the brittle old piano had been like water running over stones in a garden stream, everything gentle and undisturbed, something natural and yet supernatural as well, beyond human understanding. And then he had looked up, and seen her in the standing in the doorway watching him. His hands, broad in the palms but slender and long in the fingers, with strong tendons standing out in the thumbs that easily breached octave reaches, had played on, even with his mind elsewhere. He had inclined his head, and asked her to join him. Dorothy had only smiled, too busy picturing those hands on the leather-wrapped controls of a Gundam, creating something beautiful with massive beam weapons, not delicate ivory keys.
If they had met without a war...
Careful not to jostle them, Dorothy brought his face toward hers. She touched her mouth to his, not quite able to summon the gentleness she suspected he would have liked, not quite able to yield, not even now. But as she gave him her first and last kiss, Dorothy was satisfied with her gift. It was all she had left to give him, in exchange for keeping him with her as they died.
She rested in the crook of his cooling body, and waited for Libra to go down.
You haven't learned a thing
I haven't changed a thing
The flesh was in my bones
The pain is always free
Trowa was just leaving the shower when he made it back to their flat. In jeans, an unbuttoned shirt of wrinkled cotton, his feet bare and soft from water, he met Quatre in the kitchen, fingers combing his hair idly. Quatre hated himself a little for finding Trowa sexy just then. He looked away, dropped his briefcase to the floor instead of placing it carefully under the table, and stripped his Preventers jacket onto the dining table instead of hanging it.
Trowa's eyebrows were up when he turned about. 'You have that look,' he said blandly. 'Like you're pissed off and too polite to do anything about it.'
'Do you have any beer left?' Quatre asked him, wrenching the large refrigerator door open and staring blindly inside.
'No. I could open a bottle of wine.'
Quatre had wanted something he could swill. He let the door fall closed, and pushed himself up onto the countertop. He'd never done that before, but he liked the extra height, the slight precariousness.
'Red or white?'
'Whatever,' he said shortly. With his toes he kicked off one shoe, then the other, listening to them land on the tile with a little clatter. The worn toes of his black trousers socks looked back at him. When a glass appeared under his nose, it wasn't wine- it was vodka, straight, and a lot of it. Quatre took it, but did not drink. 'You haven't asked what the mood is about,' he said.
'I figured you'd tell me,' Trowa replied. 'You always do eventually.'
He turned the glass a full three-sixty before he felt he could drink from it. He took a deep swallow, grimacing at the taste. 'I would like you to ask,' he said.
Trowa might have been smiling, he might not have; Quatre did not look up from the liquor. 'What's your problem, baby?'
He had had all afternoon to phrase it right, to narrow down the hurt to the one thing he thought he couldn't live without knowing. 'When did you sleep with someone else?'
Trowa leaned one hip against the counter not far from him, and crossed his arms. 'Is this a trick question?'
There was a distinct tremor in his hand. Quatre took a deeper pull from the glass, and set it aside as he jumped down from the countertop. 'I'm going to bed,' he said.
There was a short, surprised silence. 'I thought you didn't think we should go to bed mad,' Trowa said after him.
'That's why I don't want you to come.'
'Fuck you, Quatre.'
'Well, apparently not, Trowa!' He managed to stop himself from waving his arms about, but he couldn't stop the flush of anger. He wanted to slam something, but he'd never slammed anything in his life and he didn't know what normal people did for things like this. As soon as he walked into the bedroom, he was confronted by their bed, and that stopped him in his tracks.
Trowa didn't wait long before following with another sally. 'You always do this,' he called from the kitchen arch. 'You drop your little bombs and run.'
That stung enough to send him back into the living room. 'You want to talk about bombs?' he demanded, glaring at Trowa. 'Why didn't you tell me? Why did I have to find out from fucking phone transcripts?'
'Zechs,' Trowa said, as if he'd suddenly understood, but there was no sudden anywhere in his face, just closed and guarded. 'Is that it?'
'Are there others I should know about?'
'Apparently you shouldn't know about this one if this is how you're going to react to mission sex.'
That final phrase almost made him physically ill. He had to run a hand over his mouth. 'Mission sex,' he repeated dumbly. 'God.'
'Yes, Quatre. Mission sex. Some of us get to do the clean stuff, some of us get the dirty stuff.'
'Fuck you! You got back from Mars a month ago and you're still talking to him! I can fucking read!'
'Then why are we having this conversation?'
'I suppose that's a good question,' Quatre answered, abruptly exhausted. 'Maybe a better one is why I'm surprised. Or what I'm going to do now. I don't have answers for those, either.'
Tightness edged around Trowa's mouth, in his eyes. 'Whatever, Quatre. Whatever you want.'
'What I want is someone who tells me when he fucks around. Or better yet, doesn't!'
'It doesn't mean anything.' Trowa came two steps forward, just two. 'You're only on this rant because you didn't see it coming. If I'd asked permission would it have been any different?'
'When did you stop seeing him?' A horrible thought occurred. 'Have you stopped?'
'I'm still working him, but I'm not fucking him.'
He swallowed. 'Yes,' he answered the earlier question. 'It would have made a difference if you'd at least told me what you intended.'
'I did the job, Quatre. That's all. I don't even like sex.'
He knew with certainty that Trowa didn't understand what he'd just said, but it hit him like the impact of an explosion. It was a long time before he could find his voice, and longer before he could keep it steady. 'You don't think you maybe should have told me that before we started having it?' he asked quietly.
Something unreadable flashed over Trowa's face, before he retreated into the mask that shut everything out. 'Not really, no.'
The tremor was back in his hands. Quatre passed Trowa and returned to the kitchen, for the glass of vodka that still stood on the counter. Trowa did not follow, and Quatre drank the rest of it, shooting the final fingerlength and dropping his head onto his arms when the burn hit behind his eyes. He chased the thoughts that weren't quite thoughts, not really catching any of them. When he turned, he could see Trowa framed by the arch, like a statue in a temple.
'Do I repulse you?' he managed to ask.
Trowa's shoulders slumped just a notch. 'No.'
'Is it all sex? Sex with me?' He hesitated. 'Or sex with... I don't understand.'
Trowa faced him. 'Does it seem to you like I don't enjoy it with you?'
'I don't- I never thought that before,' he admitted, but image after image assaulted his brain, and he searched them all for the tiniest expression, for the slightest hint that Trowa hadn't- hadn't been there with him.
Trowa put a hand out. 'C'mere,' he ordered. And Quatre came, shuffling a little on the kitchen tile until he met the edge of the carpet. Trowa's fingers wove through his. His thumb brushed over Quatre's lower lip, and eyes the colour of agate gazed down at him through long lashes. 'This is not how we should be spending our evening,' he said, in that soft, husky voice that always made Quatre think of cognac and cloves, the voice Trowa used in bed.
It threw him into confusion. 'I don't understand,' he heard himself repeat, petulant as a small child. Trowa kissed him, his mouth dominating, seducing. Deliberately distracting.
Quatre pulled away, so quickly that his lips tingled. 'I want to talk about it,' he said forcefully.
Trowa sighed and let him go. 'Sure,' he said. 'Let's talk about it.'
'I- you have to explain- what you meant by that.' He waited for anything, but Trowa was only blank. He felt bereft when the taller man backed away, dropping into the deep cushions of the couch and leaning his head back to stare up at the ceiling. He watched Trowa's eyes close, and listened to the voice he knew so well fall into something tired and untouched, almost bored.
'Since I was a kid,' Trowa said, 'sex was a commodity. You traded for what you needed. I fucked Zechs because it got me where I needed to be.'
Quatre tried to absorb that. 'What do you think you're getting from me?' he asked tentatively, not sure he wanted to hear it parsed into unfeeling terms like those.
'It's different. You're not a mission.'
'What do you think I am?' he pressed, trying to pin Trowa into a straight answer.
'They don't have a good word for what you are.'
He didn't know what that meant. He stared at his toes, hurt, cornered. Feeling a pit of panic in his stomach like he hadn't felt since he was still a child. He pressed a hand there.
'What bothers you so much?' Trowa asked the top of his head. 'That I didn't like fucking Zechs or that I might not like fucking you?'
'Both!' he exclaimed. 'And that you'd go on doing that to yourself! To me! How am I supposed to feel about it now?'
'You're supposed to lie back and enjoy it like you always have.'
In that moment, Quatre knew what a rapist felt like. He had to grind his teeth against a surge of nausea. He somehow turned himself around, found himself facing the kitchen. Kitchens have water, he thought, and walked toward it. He wanted to put his head under water. He wanted to rewind the entire day.
'Stop punishing me for Zechs. Stop making yourself miserable because you're doing it.'
'You shouldn't have done it in the first place,' Quatre said. That was the one thing he felt sure of.
'It was the mission.'
'And you should have said 'no.''
'Jesus,' Trowa said, strain finally showing in his voice. 'I'm sorry your fucking feelings got hurt. This is why I keep things from you. The price of honesty is too damn high!'
That hurt. And maybe it had hurt Trowa to say it, because he looked a little stricken as soon as it left his mouth. Quatre had to work very hard to keep his eyes from tearing up, digging his fingernails into his palms until the pain overcame the burn in his eyes. 'I see,' he whispered.
Trowa sighed. 'I hate when you do that.'
'Then don't watch,' he said hoarsely.
He could hear Trowa swallow, watched his throat move. 'I can't take my eyes off you,' Trowa said, cracking just minutely at the end.
There seemed to be no time at all between the years it took to win his composure back, and the slide of Trowa's broad palm against his cheek. It was delicious, and it was cruel, and Quatre didn't have enough left in him to fight it off, this time.
'I can give you what you need, if you'll let me,' Trowa told him. 'I'm going to kiss you, and then I'm going to take you to bed. And you're not going to argue any more tonight.'
Just for tonight. Quatre could do that. There'd been a long time when he'd survived just one night at a time. He knew that if he strung enough 'just tonight's together, he could have a lifetime.
He would never know if Trowa meant it when he pressed his lips to Quatre's, but for one more night he could let himself believe.
I was so young and vestal then, you know it hurt me
but I'm breathing so I guess I'm still alive
even if signs seem to tell me otherwise
I've got my hands bound, my head down, my eyes closed
and my throat wide open
Rashid dropped twelve cardamom pods into the small wooden mortar, and ground the pestle against them, listening for the pop and crack and smelling the sudden gust of spice that always followed. Auda had already spooned loose tea into the metal pot and set it to boil over their little camp stove. When it began to steam, Rashid added the cardamom, and they sat watching it simmer, growing stronger and sweeter.
Auda poured the bubbling brown liquid into their best istikan, the one framed in real gold, as Rashid carefully measured a teaspoon of sugar into the glass. When the chai was ready, it was Rashid who rose from their seats before their tent to deliver it, walking with conscious care across the disturbed sands to the largest tent in their camp- the one that housed Quatre Winner. He ducked under the front flap, announcing himself with a low greeting, and was not surprised to find the young boy sprawled on the carpet with a notebook computer and several maps spread about him, despite the late hour.
'Some tea, Master Quatre,' he said, kneeling at the edge of the largest map.
Quatre favoured him with a smile that was like sunrise, sitting up quickly and reaching slender hands to accept the offering.
'It's wonderful,' he sighed a moment later, holding the istikan away from his lips to blow gently through the steam. 'Thank you, Rashid. You seem to anticipate needs I don't even know I have.'
'It is my duty and my pleasure,' Rashid answered, ducking his head to the compliment. 'As it is my duty and my pleasure to tell you to get to bed.'
This time he got a full grin, though it faded quickly. 'There's always so much to do,' Quatre said, his wide eyes dropping back to his work. 'I can see it stretching before me like a mountain range. A mountain of coordinates and a mountain of tip-offs and a mountain of tactical analyses.'
'We will be with you,' the Maganac told him seriously. 'The responsibility of leadership is yours, yes, but you must know that all the knowledge in the world will not save a life that is meant to end in battle tomorrow.'
'I'm not sure I believe in fate,' the boy admitted softly. His fingers twined about the delicate gold handle of his glass. His elbows rested on his thighs as if they were too heavy to be lifted. 'I'm not sure I believe that Allah would call a man home when there's still so much left to... left to do. To see done.' He looked up, and Rashid was reminded again of just how young his charge and his master was; there was fear there, and loss, and uncertainty begging to be banished. But as he watched, its momentary rise was conquered. Strength and determination replaced it, tamped it down and left it banked, vanquished for another night. 'I want all of you to live to see Space and Earth free of those who oppress us,' he said. It sounded like an oath, and Rashid knew that on some level, it was.
They sat without further speech as Quatre drank his tea. When the glass sat nearly empty and Quatre had fallen to chewing on a thumbnail as he stared at the tent's walls without seeing them, Rashid gently plucked it from his hand. 'What do you think of the reports we have intercepted about the new suits attacking Alliance bases?' he asked, interrupting that silent maelstrom of thought.
Quatre seemed willing enough to be distracted, granting him another tiny smile. 'If they are Gundams,' he said, 'I would like to meet the pilots. Think of what we could accomplish, if they teamed up with us. How much more hope we could bring each other. How much greater the odds of victory.'
Rashid had been fighting for longer than Quatre Winner had been alive, and since even before that he had not believed that there would be a triumphant end. He expected to die before he ever felt the brush of age and infirmity. He hoped to die with a weapon in his hand and a war-cry on his lips. But whenever he looked down at the guileless eyes of this boy-warrior whose soul was like rain after a century of drought, he almost believed that they could win. That they would win.
'You bring great honour to us all,' he said quietly, and he meant it. He had said it before and he would say it again, would do his best to beat past the prison bars Quatre Winner had constructed over his belief in himself. He rested his hand on Quatre's shoulder, and squeezed. 'You have no sentence to serve, no punishment to suffer out. Fight for others, Quatre, but fight for yourself as well. Survive tonight, tomorrow- survive all the tomorrows. I beg this of you.'
One day, he hoped, he would see agreement in that child's face that turned away from him now. But it was not this night, and when he left the tent, he left it feeling weary, and worried. He stopped between the tents that circled Quatre's, and looked up into the night sky, to the place in the distant stars that held Lagrange Point 4. 'Forgive yourself, Quatre,' he murmured to the deep night air. 'Whatever crime you think you committed there isn't worth the cost of your life.'
He went back to his own tent, and to sleep, knowing that Quatre would remain awake for hours yet, his head bowed over his battle plans.
Hate me
Do it and do it again
Waste me
Rape me, my friend
Relena Dorian, Vice Minister of the Earth Sphere Alliance, smiled politely at Quatre Winner as he escorted her up the drive and into the airy glass walls of his foyer. 'You have a beautiful home, Mr Winner,' she complemented him.
'I think we can safely address each other by given name,' he replied, winking just a bit. 'We're hardly strangers, Relena.' But they were, in the ways that mattered, and for all they meant to ignore it, that fact stayed large between them, in the way he hesitated to touch her, in her own uncertain posture when his butler arrived to take her coat.
'Perhaps a short tour?' Quatre announced when they were again alone. 'My father was something of an amateur art collector. He secured some very lovely pieces before he died.'
'I'd love to see them,' Relena answered, relieved to be back to the solid exchange of mere acquaintances. 'Did he favour a particular period?' she asked, as he gestured to the wide, ten-foot arch on their left, and led her through it, neither ahead of nor behind her, nor even quite beside.
'He preferred ancient religious calligraphy, but it seems he was more impressed with the investment to be made in post-colonial laser art.' They walked the hallway together, until they passed the portraits of men and women with a vague resemblance to Quatre and turned left into a narrow, but still sunny and airy corridor lined with framed art all set at the perfect eye-line. 'Images of Space,' he added, pausing before the first man-sized, gold-rope frame on their right. 'He felt they reflected the soul of mankind's endeavour to explore the unknown.'
It was, Relena thought, a beautiful piece. It was a reproduction of a blue print, complete with tiny arrows and a legend in the corner. The etching was of a dissected colony- L4, she was sure- and it was a thing of spun confection beauty, delicate and overdone. 'The artist was amazing,' she murmured. 'Are those- are those people?'
'Many of the engineers who constructed the colonies were killed by radiation,' Quatre explained, his expression unreadable as he gazed up at the massive picture. 'The Sudan-Chino government refused to acknowledge the problem until it was too late to save them. The radiation is a perennial problem on all L4 satellites. It makes child-bearing and hydroponics particularly unreliable.'
'Were any of them your ancestors?' Relena asked, fascinated by the tiny men no larger than her smallest fingernail. Had she been alone, she might have stepped forward to examine them closely, but with Quatre present, she didn't dare.
He wore a tiny smile when she looked at him. 'The Winner family prefer to build on the sacrifices of others,' he told her, and if part of her was shocked at his bitterness, the rest of her understood exactly why he felt it, and liked him all the more for the display.
'I think I'd rather see the calligraphy, if you don't mind,' she said, and watched him blink, then smile the first genuine smile of the day. This time, he walked with her, taking her via several shortcuts to a surprisingly comfortable study that faced the edge of the large gardens in the back. She glanced at the stately walks and well-trimmed hedges, the fanciful fountains and the greenhouses containing precious vineyards that produced the famous Winner Red.
At her elbow, Quatre said, 'I never drink it. It always tastes too sweet, to me.'
She found herself smiling at him. 'I prefer an Australian shiraz, myself,' she said.
'I believe I still have a few cases of Sevenhill Cellars. Perhaps for our supper?'
'Thank you, that would be lovely.'
He gestured toward the imposing cherrywood bookcase. His study furniture, like hers, was antique, the varnish smooth and deep with age, the wood brittle and dry as he opened it. With a small key, he opened one of the drawers, and drew it out to show her a cautiously wrapped pile of scrolls. He did not show particular care as he tossed aside the oilcloth and lifted one of them.
'Nastal'iq calligraphy by Mir 'Ali of Tabriz,' he said, unrolling it and turning it toward the light from the windows. 'Fifteenth century AD. It shows greater evidence of the tal'iq style than nashki. This is just a minor work, an excerpt of the Qur'an written for a courtier. My father never managed to collect any of Mir 'Ali's major pieces.'
Relena allowed herself to touch the edge of the parchment, since Quatre showed no great concern for it, and found it dry and thin. The ink had merged indelibly with the parchment a thousand years earlier, had spread just slightly from the crisp lines in some places; it was purple with age. The script itself was clearly masterful, each stroke confident and considered, the lines crossing the page at perfect angles. There was no stray or rushed mark anywhere. Relena imagined the courtier who had paid for this small scroll, imagined him sitting alone to contemplate it, to marvel at the craftsmanship and the awesome rendering of sacred words. Minor it may have been, but she could imagine it had been precious once.
When she signaled that she was done, Quatre rolled it again, and set it back in the drawer. He took longer selecting a new one, and Relena happened to glance up and discover the framed photograph that held a place of honour in the center of the middle shelf. It was a woman, she saw, blonde and slender and clear-eyed. 'Oh!' she heard herself exclaim. 'Quatre, is that your mother?'
He followed her gaze, and reached for the frame, handing it to her. 'Yes,' he said. 'Her name was Maysoon. It means 'beautiful face and body.''
'That was clearly true,' Relena said, and meant it. Though the woman in the photograph was not, perhaps, conventionally beautiful, there was a graceful air to her. Her neck was long and slender, her shoulders a little too delicate and small, her eyebrows dark and her nose too large, but somehow the flaws combined into a carriage that was queenly and feminine. 'She must have been a compassionate woman,' she murmured, inspired by the sheer personality captured in that single shot.
'I've been told she was. Everyone loved her.' Quatre's hands moved in the corner of her vision, as if he had shrugged. 'I never knew her- she died when I was born.'
'I'm sorry,' Relena said automatically. She had never known her own mother, or even found a picture of her- all of it had burned with the Sanq Kingdom. But she'd had an adopted mother who loved her, and who still shared a great part of her life. She gave him back the photograph, and watched him frown down at it, some strange, life-long puzzlement in his look, in his fingers that cradled the frame with far more care than they had the work of centuries. 'You have the same eyes,' Relena felt compelled to tell him. 'Exactly the same eyes.'
His adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. 'Yes,' he murmured, and set the frame back precisely in its place. 'Yes, I... look a great deal like my mother. My father... was always saying that.'
He stepped back when she might have reached for him, and closed the doors of the bookcase. 'Supper will be ready soon,' he said. 'May I escort you to the dining room?'
As she followed him once more, Relena thought they truly didn't know each other at all.
Candles raise my desire
Why I'm so far away
No more meaning to my life
No more reason to stay
Freezing feeling
Breathe in, breathe in
I'm coming back again
The door opened. They pushed Quatre through it, and Heero watched him stumble to his knees. Quatre managed to turn his shoulder forward just before he hit the wall, but Heero, blinking against the bright light from the hallway, could just see the wince of pain as Quatre tried to straighten.
His guards, his interrogators, followed Quatre in. One crouched behind the small blond, frisking him roughly for weapons it was impossible to have hidden. He groped hard at the front of Quatre's trousers, pawed up his chest, and shoved Quatre's face against the steel wall.
'Rest up,' their tormentor commanded. He stood, and nudged between Quatre's legs with his polished boot. He turned sharply, and the door slammed closed behind him. The sound of the mag locks engaging was like thunder.
Heero rose from his squat in the far corner, and walked slowly to where Quatre slumped, propped against the wall as if it were the only thing holding him up. Heero reached his bound hands to the back of Quatre's head, and with chilled fingers, carefully unbuckled the belt strapped tightly into a gag and leash around the other boy's mouth. He heard one tiny gasp as it fell free, but almost immediately Quatre returned to breathing through his nose. There was no longer enough light to see if there were blood or bruises. He stood still, the leather belt limp in his hands, as Quatre turned, sliding down the wall with his hands cuffed behind him. Lank hair, the golden sheen of wheat fields even in the darkness, fell forward like a curtain over his eyes and gentle cheeks.
It had been nineteen days since Quatre had destroyed a colony with Gundam Zero, and OZ had found nineteen different ways to thank him for it.
Heero crouched, easing his weight down onto his backside until he came to rest against the wall. He played the belt through his fingers, and dropped it at his side when he found he couldn't stand the feel of it anymore. He leaned, until his shoulder touched Quatre's, and they sat together that way for the rest of the night.
The End
(:./erin/bleeding)
