07-Dec-2000
Disclaimer: It's hard to type when your fingers are cold. >.<
RAAAAAANT: Everyone MUST see Tenshi ni Narumon!!!! If nothing else, it's got gay ANGELS!!! Bwahahahahahahahahahahaaaaa!! *cough*
I didn't really like Part 2, so I'm going to work harder on this one to try and make up for it!
Thoughts are in italics.
Pairings: 1+2/2+1, 3+4
Spoilers: none, of course
Warnings: AU, shounen ai
Archive: GW Addiction
(A week later)
He'd only slept a few hours that night, the clanking of metal on stone and the steady staccato of many booted feet in unison distracting him. Not because he couldn't sleep through noise, but because it was no normal battle exercise. It's time... He looked quickly at the position of the sun, judging it to be around five in the morning. Duo wouldn't be happy to be woken, but it had to be done.
He rolled swiftly out of bed, and quickly made it; He didn't move much in his sleep. Grabbing the bag, he took one last look around the barren room, which he'd barely decorated after endless nagging from Duo, and walked out, closing the door quietly behind him.
If anyone noticed the Captain of the Prince's guard striding purposefully through halls before the sun was even all the way up, they didn't say. He did notice, however, one soldier's eyes follow him all the way through his line of sight, and realized that he'd seen that same soldier spend all together too much time with Khushrenada, one of the more active against the King. Although on the outside he appeared nothing but busy, he was growing more nervous as the sound of soldiers rose, and wondered again how stupid and arrogant the King had to be to not notice the signs everyone else had.
He reached Duo's room quickly, and was glad to find the two guards asleep, even as he felt a brief flare of anger that they would let anyone so incompetent guard his Duo.[1] However, that made it all the more simple for him to quickly dispatch them, a rapid, straight fingered jab to the neck rendering them both incapable for several hours. And they would never remember him being there.
Duo, he realized with slight surprise, was already up and dressed, in one of the outfits he recognized from when he had first arrived, belligerently clinging to the last remnants of his former life on the street. He knew why Heero was here. He was leaning out one of the huge windows, the deep scarlet curtains draped half over his slender frame. He looked up as Heero shut the door with a purposeful noise, and his eyes were strangely scared. Oh yes, he knew why Heero was here.
"Ne, Heero... Look." His voice almost quavered as he pointed out the window, and for the first time Heero allowed himself to look at the assembling troops.
What he saw was beyond even his most frightening expectations, thousands and thousands of soldiers, under dozens of banners, filly the courtyard and stretched down the road and nearly to the village. For the first time, he allowed it. A deep, chilling fear flowed through him, making his limbs cold and swirling through his bran, disorienting him. He shook it violently away, at least for now. He had Duo to protect.
"Ikuzo," he said, unconsciously reverting to his native language, universal long ago but now only spoken in the outermost kingdoms, where he had been born. Duo understood him, though, and nodded once. Resolve strengthened him, and he banished the fear that he knew could be his undoing - and thus Duo's. He would not allow that!
Duo disappeared for a moment into the huge closet, and reappeared carrying a small bag over one shoulder. Heero nodded, and neither talked as they left the room, even as Duo's eyes widened and he dashed back to pick something up from under the bed, stuffing it into the bag before Heero could see what it was. He didn't argue, because whatever it was, he could tell it was important from the way Duo had been clearly shaken that he'd almost forgotten it.
He ducked almost immediately out of the main hallways and into the thin, dank passageways meant for servants. It hadn't occurred to him before, but he, at last, needed to arm himself. It had been nine months since he'd touched a sword - Hopefully he wasn't too out of practice.
Duo was too numb to even ask why they ended up in the armory, although he could see slight confusion in his eyes. He selected one quickly - he recognized it as one he'd used frequently - and fastened it quickly to the sword belt he'd taken off of one of the guards on his way from Duo's room.
"Can you use this?" he asked, holding one out to Duo. Duo shook his head silently. A person unskilled can be just as dangerous as a person who's trained for dozens of years... But he needs something. So he gave Duo the sword anyway, and warned him to be extremely careful.
From the armory Heero took them, once again creeping through the servant corridors, to one of the numerous secret exits of the castle. This one came out where there were only a few feet of grass before the moat. Heero hoisted his bundle, now including those swords he'd gotten them - Duo didn't know how to use a sword! The only sword he'd ever even touched was that one his father had to use to declare him his actual son or something. He smiled at the memory... That night had been the first of the many balls he'd been forced to attend, the one which had established the precedent of him spending almost the entire night at Heero's side, only dancing with this Princess or that soon-to-be Duchess when his father had forced him to.
"Duo!" He blinked at the sudden intrusion of the familiar voice, and was instantly reminded of the situation at hand, cold dread filling his thoughts once again. He followed Heero into the murky water, gasping as the sudden chill of it swirling through his clothes and to his skin. Heero looked back at him.
"Are you all right?" He nodded.
"Just... startled. Didn't expect it to be this cold." Heero turned back, and they continued in silence until Heero, with an only half-masked cry, sank disappeared with a sudden splash. Duo sat numb for a second, then threw his pack away and sunk under himself, searching for any part of Heero. He could barely see even with his eyes open, and so his searching arms ran straight into Heero's torso. he blindly grabbed on to some part of Heero's shirt, and thrust his head above the surface, which was not that far up.
As soon as his head was out of the water, Heero came back to his senses, his limbs moving of their own accord again as they tread water. Water flowed from his hair in rivulets, shiny tracks down his cheeks, dripping off his nose and lips.
"Stupid..." he muttered. "Of course... They couldn't keep the moat five feet deep all the way across," he berated himself.
"I've got to get my stuff," Duo whispered. Heero nodded. His own bag was strapped across his shoulders, even the sword fastened to it, where he'd taken it from his waist as they prepared to cross.
When he returned - his pack hadn't been far, tangled in some underwater weeds - Heero was still mumbling something about how he should have anticipated it.
"Come on," Duo said, still whispering as he decided to take the initiative. They reached the other side without any further incidents. Crawling out, Duo wrung as much water as he could from his hair, hoping it wouldn't be a cold day. Abruptly he stopped.
"Heero... Do you -" He was cut off by a sharp hand movement. Heero had heard the same thing he had, and was turned toward the sudden array of noise coming through the high walls surrounding the castle. The harsh beat of many soldiers' feet in uniform movement, a strange metallic noise he couldn't identify, even the clack of horse shoes on stone.
"It's begun..." Heero whispered, as the sun finally came over the trees bordering them, offering an unworldly credence to his words. Duo shivered, not from cold, and touched Heero's arm lightly.
"We need to..." He didn't need to finish. Heero took a final look towards the castle, and led Duo into the underbrush circling the larger trees, hurried by the growing sounds behind them.
They were on the western side of the castle, almost directly opposite from the main entrance, whether that was good or bad, he didn't know.
They had been walking, almost entirely in silence, for nearly twenty minutes when the soldiers first appeared. Neither were expecting it, so even as Heero was throwing himself - and Duo - to the ground, they were seen. One soldier shouted to the others, six in all, who quickly surrounded them. One of them, with more bars on his collar than the rest, walked in a slow circle around them, and Heero noticed one important thing... They hadn't yet taken away his sword. Whether because they hadn't noticed, or didn't think he could use it, was of no consequence. Either way, it would be their fatal mistake. But he couldn't move yet... They were in a position where they could harm either he or Duo, should he strike the wrong person first.
"My..." said the lead soldier scornfully. "What have we here? Some... servant, perhaps? Running away with his whore?" Heero blinked once, not able to keep the shock off of his face, before he finally recognized the uniform. These soldiers aren't even from this country! The uniforms could only be from the next door Sank Kingdom, led by Milliard Peacecraft, the distinctive epaulets even on the lowest of soldiers a dead give away.
However... Sank kingdom soldiers were some of the most disciplined he'd ever met... They'd never make such derogatory comments, even to prisoners. Before he could debate the topic any further, though, the lead soldier began speaking again. his booted feet crunching in the fallen leaves as he walked.
"Normally this would be of no interest to me... But these are different times, sí?" it was then that Heero noticed the man's accent, a deep Española[2] tint to it. His eyes narrowed as he remembered his geography lessons; Sank was far north from here, while España was in the south.
"A hora, we want to know what you can tell us." One of the other soldiers laughed.
"Digo que deberemos jugar con estos puntos!" The comment brought forth a round of raucous laughter and a chorus of 'sí!'
"Me gusta mucho el muchacho con el pelo largo!" one yelled boisterously.
"Lo puedes tener! Pero yo saco el otro!"[3] This was met by another round of yelling and arguing.
"Heero..."
"What?" he answered Duo without moving his head. Although the soldiers appeared to now be engaged in some sort of verbal battle, he didn't want to take the chance of one of them looking over and seeing hem discussing.
"They're arguing over who gets to... play... with us." He didn't stop to wonder when Duo had learned Española, as the matter at hand was more pressing. Although before he'd been wondering if he could get out of the situation without violence, this new information clouded his judgment totally, an unreasonable anger at the thought of those men... Not again! It won't happen again! He growled, a sound low and deep and totally unconscious, as he drew the sword from its place at his hip, the soft metallic hiss finally distracting the arguing soldiers. The leader shouted something in his language once again, but before any of them could draw, he was among them.
The water saturating his heavy woolen tunic and leggings[4] did nothing to slow his movements as he took the first down with a quick diagonal slice down the man's torso, from shoulder to hip. He ignored the blood that spattered on him as he shoved aside the man's body and quickly stabbed the next, pushing the steel all the way through before twisting it savagely to the accompanying scream. Removing it with a quick jerk, he sliced another's arms off at the biceps, leaving him useless and screaming in pain, if not dead. The fourth man too attack, however, was more skilled and better trained than the previous, not fazed by the blood and gore spattering Heero, his weapon, and the surrounding area, now by the wild look in Heero's eyes, or the inhuman growl, of an animal threatened with something it found extremely unpleasant and would fight to the death to prevent. He parried the first several of Heero's thrusts, until the two were face to face, steel to steel, circling slowly in the leaves churned red. Heero, pressing the offensive while he could, punched suddenly, then dropped and rolled, but the soldier reacted before he expected, and even as Heero was cutting his legs out from under him, the man had scored a long slash down his sword arm. It wasn't deep, but the pain of it slammed through him as his sword impaled the enemy one final time, slowing his movement a fraction. Four down, two to go... One of them was a simple kill, cowering on the ground as Heero advanced slowly, then quicker as he realized the other hadn't even a weapon, wanting to get it done quickly. It was accomplished with a swift hack to the chest, carving through ribs, lungs, and finally his final goal, the heart.
He whirled as he sensed the last charging him, had just enough time to note the bars on the color, four in all, two yellow and two red. The leader. Satisfaction mingled with the bloodlust, intertwining to single out one thing in his consciousness: Kill him. Bloodily and slowly. Make him feel pain for what he nearly did, so he'll know. However, this one was the best trained of all, as Heero's attacks became disjointed and hacking, he maintained his cool and calmly parried with economic movements, saving energy as Heero expended it wildly. He didn't know how long that man became the center of his world, how long it was before he'd exhausted himself making pointless moves that were easily countered, extraneous force that was used to overbalance him, his thrusts becoming erratic and slow. He was dimly aware of Duo's yelling, but ignored it as he ignored the pain of his arm, the multitude of small scratches and larger wound that crisscrossed his body. His universe was that soldier, until suddenly, with a casual, skilled flick of a learned swordsman, he was disarmed and backed against a tree, with the point of steel at his throat. The soldier laughed, a harsh echo that held no mirth.
"It was a bad idea to fight me, boy! I might have found some use for you... but we have nothing for impudent servants! So now you will... die..." Heero's eyes tracked the steel as it moved up, peaked at a point a foot or so above his head, too exhausted to move. It only dimly registered as the sword and man were suddenly gone, out of vision totally, the only sign they existed the noises of scuffle too far from his view for him to turn his head to. A single, guttural scream, but off almost immediately, and then someone was back. He weakly tried to protest, until the figure spoke.
"Heero! Heero, please! It's..." He couldn't make out what was being said, but he knew that voice, trusted the familiar timbre, and he surrendered himself to it, falling into Duo's arms as exhaustion and adrenaline letdown wreaked havoc on his body and brain. Neither he nor Duo noticed as he smeared blood into the others clothes and skin, mingling with the water to form a dim pink sheen. Neither noticed the sun dapple the shadows of the forest as Heero finally submitted to sleep, entwined with Duo, who followed suit soon.
TBC
Two parts in three days... That's a record for me! Even if they're two mediocre parts. >.<
Notes:
[1] That's really the first shounen ai reference in two parts.. ^^;;;;;;
[2] I didn't want to make something up totally, although I know the ‘Spanish' adjective is kinda strange. ^^;;
[3] Their comments, in succession: "I say we should play with these whores!" "I really like the one with the long hair!" "You can have him! But I get the other!" ^^;;;;;; Not very nice soldiers, I know. Had to employ a stereotype or two... It also illustrates one of my points (about Sank soldiers.) And I got to show off my awful Spanish!
[4] Now you know what they wear! And leggings are as near to spandex as I could get. ^^
Post-rant: Nubou Uematsu writes some GORGEOUS music!!!
Ryan Harbin
Please send comments to: rioroute_vilgyna@yahoo.com