Disclaimer: This is an AU from my own personal, internal mythological framework. This means elements were lifted from any culture that pleased me, and that nothing within relies on any specific pantheon or bestiary. As for what Trowa is, there are vague whispers from a mostly Celtic tradition that I kept in mind while writing. If you're really terrible curious, ask me and I'll eventually get around to telling you.
Warnings: Um, none?
Rating: PG or G, even
What is it: Melancholy sap with a folktale-ish demeanor
Pairings: Here I generally insert my standard "I don't write anything but Trowa/Quatre fics!" but considering what I'm about to send to my beautiful beta, I guess I'd better say: 3+4+3
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The wind whined its lonely song through the mountains. It was the only companion voice that Trowa heard for days on end, other than the gossipy chatter of birds or the hurried communication of flighty hares. On some occasions a deer would stop to pass along the location of new greens or a rare herb, and on others, Ural the graying grizzly would hold palaver. But mostly, Trowa only heard the voice of the wind, high above and low below, distant but close.
So it was understandable that his curiosity grew in that late spring, when every night he heard a faint and lost voice crying at the sun's setting. For several days he tried to dismiss it - a product of his imagination, perhaps he had spent too long away from the company of other men. But during the morning hours, when Trowa asked his heart if it was lonely for the camaraderie of humans, it would firmly tell him no. After enough days had passed, with the crying neither dying or intensifying, a constant, unreachable attendant to his dreams, Trowa sought the council of his neighbors.
"Blue Jay!" He called out in a voice rough from disuse. "Blue Jay, who owns the voice that haunts my dreams?" For everyone knew if you wanted the news of the forest, the Jay was the bird to ask.
"None of your concern," the bird twittered, appraising the berries Trowa had freshly gathered with a gimlet eye. "Not bird of feather nor beast of fur. Nothing within your domain, Brown Man of the Mountain." He offered the bird a handful of tart spring strawberries and continued on his way.
"Gray Hare!" He whispered down a deep burrow, not wanting to disturb the newborn young. "Gray Hare, who cries out every night in pain?" For everyone knew the rabbits were the keepers of the forest floors, and could tell you the location of every pebble and twig.
"None of your concern," twitched the hare, smelling the clover in Trowa's basket. "Not an animal seeking a cure or broken-footed by man's traps, Green Man of the Forest." He gave the hare the greens and best blessings for the babes.
He next sought out Ural, but did not call, for the bear stood as a silent statue in the winter-swollen stream, waiting for the largest fish to try and make his way past. Faster than the eye could track, the bear reached down with both wickedly tipped paws and brought two great fish thrashing from the water. He carefully lumbered over to the bank to break his fast with Trowa, who was content to munch on nut cakes and sip the painfully cool water. "You have come to know who weeps at night," the bear observed after cleaning his claws of all remnants of the fish. "But first, come Bee-Charmer! I have found an early honey hive and I would have sweets after my meal." They crossed the tender spring meadow, dappled with flowers and heavy with promise, and found at the far end a hollow tree metropolis. The hustle and bustle of the bees sounded as a somnolent drone. Ural heeded this song and sat some distance from the tree, drowsing in the mid-morning sun.
"Trowa … Trowa … Trowa." The bees sighed into his ear, "Take from here, but do not let the bear come near." He took a chunk of the comb from the area they indicated and returned to Ural's side, licking his hands clean of the sticky sweetness while the bear munched contentedly.
"The noise does not come from one in your realm, Lone Man of the Mountain. You would do well to pretend you don't hear it until it fades away for good." Ural gleaned every bit of dripping honey from between the pads on his massive feet. "This is no breech-birthing deer or twist-legged wolf. What cries as night is far beyond your ken."
Trowa lost his patience as well as his pride. "I can heal anything that comes to me for help, or ease it in its passage - you did not think my skills so lacking when you pierced your paw on the hawthorn tree three summers past!"
"Yes, you make good green mud for the healing of four-leggers and superb splints for broken wings." Ural nudged Trowa's slumped shoulder with his nose. "But the healing of an upright beast does not appeal to you. Let it die."
"A human?" None had braved the mountainside this far up since Trowa's sister had last made the trek ten years before.
"No, it walks on two legs, but would not deign to call you brother. Its own have cast it out, it can have no other life. Let it die." Ural stood to leave, his advice given.
"I will heal any that come to my mountainside and calls for help. Is it a nymph, or a hamadryad?" He jogged to catch up with the bear, who appreciated his stubborn nature more than any human ever had.
"Nothing so insubstantial. Body as solid as yours - I have smelled its scat. Leave it, Brother, it wants to die. It only cries out because death is slow to claim it." Ural took a twistier path through the forest than Trowa had ever followed before. The pale beech trees began to come at stuttering intervals and the evergreens grew denser with each passing stride. They climbed in silence until the firs began to thin and entered a small glen. "There, if you would be a fool, it lies there." Ural tossed his head to the left and Trowa could see a shivering bundle of dirty white huddled in a bed of broken pine needles. "Wise Man of the Mountain, step carefully." And with that last bit of ignored wisdom, he shambled away.
Trowa crept across the glen on feet that he reserved for the rescue of hysterical hares and pain-maddened deer. Finally, he stood over the shaking form. He waited to see if his presence would awaken the sleeper, for an hour, then for two. It looked like a boy, or a very young man; hair that had likely once shone with a brilliance to rival the sun hung in twisted clumps across a furrowed brow and down a too slim back. Robes whose white radiance had surely glowed brighter than a snowy field at midday clung in tattered strips to thin, wildly heaving ribs. A toss of the head revealed the slimly pointed ears gracing the youth's features, and Trowa marveled at actually seeing an elf. The fey beauty of the sleeper was apparent even under the grime, and it plucked at Trowa's soul in places he had forgotten existed.
When the sun had begun to slip between distant mountain peaks, there was a sudden flurry of convulsions at his feet. The sleeper did not waken, but arched hard off the ground, clawing at his throat to try and free the silent scream that marred his flawless features. Trowa knelt, laid his hand upon the fevered cheek, and sang a simple song used to calm pain-tormented beasts. After two great hitching breaths, the elf raggedly sighed and opened his eyes.
Trowa took an involuntary step back from the soul-devouring flash of blue, realizing too late the danger that Ural had warned of. Humans had no business touching elves, and elves knew too well the mind-destroying power of their own gaze. "Have you come to kill me?" came the murmur that was almost too soft for Trowa's keen ears.
"Do you fear death or welcome it?" Trowa looked at the youth's forehead, at his chin - anywhere but back into those burning eyes. A mad blue buzzing remained in his head still, urging him to submit his soul to the elf-lord's will.
"Death is a stranger to me, and ignores my calls… do you think it would come if you sent for it?" The boy attempted to sit up, but his limbs were too frail to allow it.
"Mortal men have more luck in attracting Death's attention than any of your kind." Carefully keeping his face averted, Trowa scooped up the boy who seemed to be made of twigs and empty skin and carried him toward his cabin.
"I have no kind," whispered the elf as he rested his head on Trowa's shoulder in defeat, and he spoke no more as the rhythm of Trowa's steady feet rocked him into sleep.
Trowa had carried more substantial armloads of fresh leaves, and the boy's bones shifted like the same as he was borne down the mountainside. Ural had been quite correct - Trowa had no knowledge of caring for one such as this. "What would I do for an animal in your condition," he asked the unconscious elf who gave no answer. So he proceeded in the manner that was familiar. First he bathed the filth of sickness away, and wrapped the frail form in the softest shirt of his own. Since he did not know what kind of nest or den elves favored, Trowa bundled the boy in his own bed. Next he mixed herbs for the symptoms, his hand moving at its own volition; a pinch of ground root for pain, three leaves to relieve fever, a dusting of crushed blossoms to ease sleep. The elf fought the medicine briefly, but soon the potion was gone and Trowa sat to wait.
He waited through the setting sun. He waited through the early evening and past the middle of the night. In the depths of the darkness, during the hours that did not differentiate between life and death, his vigil ended. The seizures returned to the sleeping elf, and a knocking like the crash of a falling tree sounded at his door. Trowa ignored the visitor and calmed the youth with murmured nonsense and his steady hand. When the convulsions had stilled and he had wiped the sweat-stained brow, Trowa rose to admit the caller.
He had been expecting someone of her kind, and wisely kept his eyes averted as the Lady entered and dwarfed his dwelling with her very presence. She was as blonde as the boy in his bed, and only slightly shorter than Trowa, but the light that radiated from her spread to every corner of his humble cabin and filled the unseen spaces. "Why do you come for him now? He'll be dead by the sun's wakening."
"Only part of him shall die. I come to offer means to save the rest." He could feel her eyes as they stripped him to his core and flushed the secrets out from the forgotten crannies of his mind. "Will you heal him or let him pass?"
"That is not my decision." Trowa memorized the curves of embroidery on her slippers.
"Yes, it is. Will you teach him to be human?" He did not answer. The convulsions had begun again and Trowa could only think of easing the tremors from the stressed frame. When the boy's shallow breathing began to come at more regular intervals, he returned his attention to the Lady, daring to raise his eyes to discover the color of her mossy green skirts. "Please," she said, "The punishment was too harsh - he was not meant to die. By the time the first bird greets the dawn, he will have sweated out the last of his immortality." She placed a softly glowing vial in his hand. "Give him this and the rest will be saved."
"The rest." The liquid was a living thing that struggled to escape.
She laid a burning cold hand over his eyes and when it was removed, colors he had never known and dimensions that did not exist to human sight assaulted his vision. With a flick of her hand the perception retracted. "How we see - too much for you, perhaps, but he would be lost without it."
"Isn't he lost now?" Trowa was still reeling from what he had seen - afraid but somehow craving still more of the altered awareness
"Come and talk with me in the night's air - you can do nothing more for him until dawn." The cabin returned to its normal proportions as she left, and seemed hollow and loose like the shed skin of a snake.
The sky darkened and the stars leapt out to dazzle Trowa's eyes as they stood side by side outside his door. "The elixir will prevent Quatre from becoming totally human. His immortality is forfeit, but to make him blind and deaf as well would be cruel beyond all measure."
Stillness filled the night between them. "You will give me no questions to ease the telling of my tale? Stubborn Man." Her voice faded to a ripple on the surface of the silence. "In your bed lies my brother - once his Father's heir, now outcast, disgraced, and cursed. His crimes were not great, but instead repetitive. He dipped into the well of our Father's patience once too often, and drained it entirely.
"And this time, my darling fool missed his own bonding to the Prince from Over the Sea. The hour of the ceremony found him in some tree watching birds break from their shells. It was an alliance that my Father desired greatly." She sighed with sad fondness. "Quatre was always a child more fascinated with the slanting rays of the sun than the lessons a future king must learn. His punishment for his last infraction is mortality and banishment."
Neither spoke any further until the first faint hint of light made itself known on the eastern horizon. "The decision rests with you, mortal. Will you help my brother to live as one of your kind, or will you help him find the door to death's realm? Will you give him the vial or keep the gift for yourself?"
"It is not a gift for me, and I am not willing to pay the price for such a treasure." Everyone knew that gifts from fey hands often had unpleasant consequences. Something stolen from one would most certainly bring harsher penalties.
"A wise decision. I see now why the birds and beasts call you the Wise Man of the Mountain." She held her hand over his. "Will you accept something else from me?"
"I want no gifts and I take no payment."
"Ah, but this is not for you, but rather for those you tend." She dropped a small silken bag in his hand. "Add two of these leaves to your poultice for broken bones - the healing will only take a week if you do. There are also seeds within. Plant them on the night of the next full moon and you may harvest in three moon's time." Another bag appeared beside the first, "One blossom from this bag will erase the worst of pain and ease the sleep of any fevered or injured beast. Sow the seeds whenever and wherever you wish - and harvest before the red of the petals begins to fade." A slightly larger pouch covered the other two. "Steep two spoons of this in hot water, and give it to my brother when he awakens."
"Will this ease his suffering?"
"No, but it will comfort him." There was a lilt in her words. "'Tis his favorite tea." And with that, she glided into the forest and disappeared as if she had never been.
Trowa waited until the sun sent out its first scouting beam. He waited until the birds began to carol the morning into being. And he stopped waiting as the pained cries echoed inside his cabin once more. The elf lord thrashed weakly on the bed, radiance dwindling even as Trowa watched. He scooped up the discarded elixir and the liquid clamored to be released. It wanted him, and for a dark moment, he wanted it as well. The young elf seemed to have no desire for it at all, but after a brief struggle to avoid the command in those flickering blue eyes, Trowa was able to make the boy drink it.
Blue eyes matched green again, but this time the stare was muted and powerless. "Are you hungry?" Trowa received no answer. "Would you like some water? Or tea?" The blonde turned away and curled in on himself. After a long moment of contemplating the boy's skeletal back, Trowa fixed him a cup of the tea. He placed it and a bowl of root vegetable and mushroom broth stew on the bedside table. With a small sigh he packed up his supplies, left the cabin, and ignored the quiet sobbing that chased him down the mountainside.
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It was well past dark when Trowa returned for the night. Everything was much the same - but the bowl, cup, and bed were empty. The elf sat in front of the fire, cradling a wounded robin in his hands and whispering to it softly. When Trowa entered, he looked up guiltily and held the bird out as if he had been caught stealing.
The robin's wing was strained but not broken, and within a few moments Trowa had it splinted and braced. "Would you hold him again while I fix some medicine and prepare a bed?" The blonde had remained huddled in front of the fireplace. Cautiously, he held his hands up and accepted the small burden.
The robin, who had remained surprisingly silent through the treatment, twittered, "I told you, didn't I? Told you - told you! Trowa heals us all - he'll take care of you too! Everyone on the mountainside knows!" Trowa mixed a soothing brew and added a small pinch of the pain reliever the Lady had left. He knelt beside the pair and the bird sipped at the potion. Soon, the robin's chatterings faded entirely as the medicine took effect. Quatre peered at the bird and then at Trowa, suspicion plain on his face.
"I didn't hurt him, just gave him something for pain and to help him sleep." After making up a small nest, Trowa relieved the elf of his burden for a final time.
"Would you like some dinner?" There was no answer. Trowa emptied his day's forage onto the table, sorting fiddlehead ferns from morel mushrooms. "I'll just fry these up - there's more of the stew. And acorn-flour cakes as well." The blonde shifted away from the fire at his approach, his eyes following Trowa's every move. "I'm not sure what elves usually eat - I hope you'll find this sufficient. And there's the tea that your sister left." The boy pulled his knees up and buried his face in them, but still did not speak.
The meal was silent as well. At first the elf refused to come to the table, but Trowa carried him there and deposited him in the only chair, taking a stool for himself. Quatre ate everything that was placed in front of him, but made a face when Trowa added a liberal amount of honey to his tea. "Don't argue with me. You need fattening up."
Startled by this, the elf allowed the sleeves of the too large shirt to fall away from his wrists. After contemplating the stick-like appendages for a brief moment, he ran his hands over his sides. Quatre's fingers caught on his protruding ribs, and with a small cry, he touched his gaunt face. Horror and disgust filled his eyes, and panic quickly overshadowed them both.
"Shhh!" Trowa cautiously knelt by Quatre's side and traced the same path the boy's hands had taken. "It's not that bad - we'll get your strength back in no time." He continued to offer quiet reassurances and soothing touches and after a few moments, the youth collapsed against him. Hot and hushed tears soaked his shoulder as he carried Quatre to the bed. Trowa waited until he was sure the other slept and left him there to take care of the remains of the meal and tidy the small space.
He made himself a small pallet on the floor, but when he turned his attention to the fire, Quatre slipped into the makeshift bed. "What are you doing? It's much too cold for you to sleep on the floor!" He made to pick up the smaller man, but surprisingly strong arms held him back. The blonde shook his head emphatically and pointed first at Trowa, and then the bed. "I don't mind sleeping on the floor - you get back up there now!" The commanding tone did nothing to sway Quatre. "Fine, don't! But I won't sleep there, either!"
An exasperated frown twisted the elf's face. He repeated the pantomime of Trowa taking the bed and received only a stubborn glare for his trouble. But then he crawled into the bed himself, patted the large leftover space, and pointed at Trowa. "You want me to sleep with you?" Quatre shrugged, and gestured to the floor and then the bed. "Yes, I suppose it doesn't matter. Why won't you talk to me? I know you can - you did last night." Instead of answering the elf turned away and burrowed under the blankets. After making sure that his patient was completely covered, Trowa lay down next to him.
When slumber had almost taken him, a cautious arm crept over his side and Quatre's slight body snuggled up from behind. The steady beating of the boy's heart eased Trowa into dreams as the robin muttered, "Told you!" in its sleep.
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After that first day together, they fell into a routine. Trowa would go about his work among the wildlife as always upon rising in the morning, and Quatre would stay sequestered in the cabin. Spring was always a busy time for Trowa, and before long the small cabin was home to orphans of all sorts - birds, rabbits, squirrels, fox kits, and wolf cubs. Ural's granddaughter was still filled with milk, though her own cubs had left the den, and she was almost a constant presence around the cabin as well.
The elf was more help than Trowa could have ever dared to hope. As his strength was regained with each passing day, he began to do more and more of the daily chores. He cleaned the young animals and kept their bedding tidy. Every time the healer noticed that the supply of one herb or another was dwindling, he would find the container that held it replenished the next day. And on more than one evening, Trowa returned bone-tired from easing a breech birth or binding a broken limb to find a hot supper waiting.
But still, the elf spoke so little that it passed for not speaking at all. And Trowa, who had lived happily in silence for quiet a few years, found the lack of conversation oppressive. He tried everything he could think of - passing on bird-gossip at meal times and gentle instruction in the mornings. And still, he only heard Quatre's voice when the boy sang to the animals and as he whispered 'good night.'
They continued to share the bed; out of habit or sheer stubbornness he could not say. And Trowa, who had long shunned the touch of another's hand, found he could not sleep without Quatre pressed against his back. The boy's steady heartbeat calmed his own and kept all bad dreams at bay. And still, Trowa refused to acknowledge that he had been lonely all along.
One morning, as spring was lengthening into summer, Quatre whispered, "I am healed. I should go."
Trowa's heart shouted 'No!' and his head yelled 'Don't!' while his mouth simply asked, "Where?" Quatre had no other answer than a broad sweep of his hand. "Then stay."
"Why?"
There were a thousand reasons, a hundred suitable answers. Of all of them, Trowa's mouth chose, "Because I can no longer sleep without the sound of your heart, without feeling its rhythm next to my own." And although he had never thought them before, he knew the words were true as soon as they left his lips.
"You don't know what you're saying!" Quatre almost yelled, and fled the cabin.
The day dragged long because Trowa fearfully anticipated its ending. Although he resisted the impulse to ask every passing bird and squirrel for news of the elf and his whereabouts, Trowa could think of nothing else. Finally, when the sun had crawled far enough down the western sky for it to be considered evening, Trowa found himself hesitating outside his own door.
To open it and find Quatre there would ease the tight sickness in Trowa's chest. To open it and find the room empty would break the heart that Trowa had once forgotten he possessed. Unwilling for a time to risk the disappointment, he turned to walk away and was greeted by a low grumbling salutation from the edge of the forest.
"Where are you going, Not-So-Wise Man of the Mountain?" Ural asked with a toss of his head. The gray in the aging bear's coat had spread since Trowa had seen him last. "Running away from your own home?"
"No, I…" But Trowa had no explanation to offer, so the pair ambled along in silence until they reached a massive fallen tree. They sat with their backs propped against it and watched the first stars of the evening wink into view.
"So, how is the elf-not-elf? Has he healed?" Ural apparently knew where Trowa's thoughts rested.
"I made him angry, this morning." Trowa counted the newly revealed stars until their numbers grew too great to comprehend. "I…" Words unfamiliar to Trowa crowded to pass his lips and stopped the flow entirely.
"You've grown attached to him." observed the bear.
"Yes, I suppose I have." Trowa sighed with some relief. Attachment was as good a name as any for the warm hollow in his chest that filled whenever Quatre was near. "He doesn't seem to like me much, though."
"I doubt very much that you could have done anything to anger that one." Ural batted lazily at a firefly drunkenly hovering around his head. "But has he healed? I would hear his laughter again before I leave this world."
"You know him?" Trowa frowned. "Why did you want me to let him die?"
"I only said those things so you would prove me wrong, cubling." Trowa was one of the few men in the world who could stand the sight of grinning bear. "He and I had many a fine adventure together in my youth. And he with my grandsire before me, and my grandsire's grandsire before that." Ural caught the firefly and watched it blink its way across his paw. "His body might be healed, but give his soul a bit more time. When you left the company of other men, it was your decision. You could find a new village easily. Quatre cannot ever return to his home."
"Will you come and talk to him, sometime? He won't speak to me." The firefly reached the tip of Ural's claw and took flight, only to tangle in Trowa's bangs.
"I have tried. The sound of his own voices taunts him - he can hear the echoes of his home in it. This is why he does not speak. Perhaps someday he will feel at home with you." Ural rolled away from the tree trunk and to his feet. "Go to him now, he waits for you."
And Quatre was waiting, a meal laid out on the table and a soft apology on his lips. "I'm sorry about this morning…" he whispered as Trowa entered the cabin.
"As am I… I had no desire to cause you pain." Trowa sat at the table and served both of them from the food Quatre had prepared.
"You didn't - I am the one who constantly brings myself hurt." As Quatre talked, Trowa could almost hear what Ural had spoken of; there was a richness to the light tenor, a bright lyricism just beyond his ear's reach. "The words…" A momentary tightness took Quatre's face before he continued. "The words that you spoke to me this morning are a soul-pledge among my… among elves."
"You mean I asked you to marry me?"
"No, according to elfish tradition, you did marry me." Quatre apparently found something deeply interesting in his tea, for he did not look at Trowa as he spoke.
"Oh…" The rest of the meal passed in a tight, uncomfortable silence. Each swallowed bite, every scrape of the spoon rang out across the still room as each sought to avoid the other's eyes.
"Why are you here?" Quatre's faint words rolled through the hushed room like sudden thunder. "And not with your own kind?"
"I do not care for the company of other men. I find them to be foolish and dangerous creatures." The words started as a trickle, but soon they were flooding from Trowa. "When I was younger, and it was first discovered that I understood animals and they understood me, I was quite a bit of help to the villagers and farmers. And this made me happy, proud even - to be able to contribute at such a young age.
"I could easily find out what a cow had eaten to upset her stomach, I knew which animals would have difficulties giving birth, and I could calm an injured beast so it could be tended. The people appreciated my talent but were frightened of it, too. So the animals were my only true friends. The only ones to listen to me talk, and the only ones to ever give real answers to my questions.
"Soon after my tenth year started, a farmer called upon me to assist with a broken-legged cow. I tended her as best as I was able, and after a few months she was able to walk again. And by the end of the summer, he had slaughtered her for meat." Trowa's hands had clenched on the tabletop as he spoke, and his fingernails left grooves in the wood. "And after that, I refused to treat anymore of the village beasts, knowing that I was only prolonging their deaths. And for that, I was shunned." Such a simple word to enclose so many hateful things.
"As a child?" Quatre looked as if he might weep now for hurts long gone.
"Ah, shh… I have no more anger towards them. I simply have no desire to be in their company." Trowa rose to refill Quatre's tea. "A raven told me of a man living on the mountainside, a man who healed all the injured beasts that came to him and harmed none. I left my village to find him and never looked back. This was his cabin, and I spent six years learning his craft from him, until he died. And I became the Brown Man of the Mountain in his place."
"Wise Man." Quatre corrected with a small, wry grin.
"I am called many different things, not all of them strictly true." Trowa huffed.
"How long have you been alone here, then?" There was a sliver of laughter in Quatre's voice, and a broader smile touched his lips as Trowa met his eyes.
"I came here at ten, and I am now twenty-four. And I've been living here by myself since I was sixteen. Although I don't really consider myself alone - there's always some sort of animal about." Trowa noticed the curve of his own lips. "It's good to see you smile." And without meaning to, he added, "You're beautiful when you do."
There was a hint of the lost power in Quatre's eyes as he searched Trowa's face. Then with a slow-lidded blink he cleared it away. "All mortals think so of elves… is it not said that to look at an elf's face brings madness and obsession?"
"Your face has little to do with your beauty, Quatre." The meal had long ended, so Trowa busied himself with clearing the remnants away. With his back to Quatre, he asked, "So, will you stay?"
"Aye. I have nowhere else to go…"
And thus it was settled between them. Quatre took up permanent residence in Trowa's life, cabin, and bed. Every night still found them pressed tightly together in the same manner as the first, Quatre nestled firmly against Trowa's back, his heartbeat leading them both into the gentle rhythm of sleep.
And every day passed much the same as the day before it. Trowa still was a solitary wanderer over the mountain's side during the day, gathering foodstuffs and injured animals. Quatre found tasks to occupy his time as well. He roamed far, the forest gossip ran, and although Quatre never told Trowa what he did with his time, Trowa was content just to find the elf waiting for him at the end of each day.
They spoke occasionally, but mostly allowed simply gestures and open expressions to communicate for them. And the silences were no longer oppressive, but instead held the comfort of a well-worn pair of shoes. Once or twice, Quatre tried to sing in his native tongue to while away the evening hours, but the melancholy words caught in his throat and threatened to choke him. After that, when music was wanted, Trowa played simple airs on his hollow reed flute, and like everything else between them, this was enough.
One day, after mid-summer had passed, a madly chattering squirrel rushed up to the patch of brambles that Trowa where busily picking black berries." Quick! Hurry! Come!" The squirrel frenetically gibbered as it raced up Trowa's legs to perch on one shoulder, and then dashed to the other to continue, "Oh, hurry - he's crying and calling for you! Hurry! Quickly, come! Bring your medicines and come!"
"Quatre?" Trowa was already running in the direction from which the squirrel had come, and it gripped his ear tightly to keep its place. "Is he hurt?" A small lump of dread grew in his heart and broke off, falling to his stomach to send tendrils of fear throughout his body.
But the squirrel would do no more than repeat the admonition, "Hurry!" so when Trowa skidded into a small clearing ringed with silently observing bears, his fear became tinged with confusion. The bears parted to allow him entrance, and at the center of their small circle, Ural lay limp in the dirt, Quatre clinging tightly to his neck and shaking with sorrow.
"Ah, Wise Man, come to bid an old friend farewell and good journeys?" rasped Ural, his voice a whisper of its former rumble.
Trowa quickly was at the bear's side, hands busily searching for an injury. When he found none, he moved on to stroke Quatre's hair instead. "I can do nothing to stop the hands of time."
Quatre looked up, and bits of Ural's fur clung to the tear tracks on his face. Trowa brushed at them with his thumbs, gently framing the elf's quivering cheeks. "Save him! Please don't let him die!"
Before Trowa could answer, Ural spoke with rapidly fading breath, "Quatre, everything must die. My time is at an end, and I must leave this world so another bear may enter it. My life has been a good one, and as it ends I have no regrets." His words barely stirred the dust beneath his muzzle as he addressed Trowa, "And I go happily, knowing that I leave my two best friends in each other's care."
The last words left Ural at the same time as the last of his air, and a solemn stillness overcame the clearing. Quatre buried his face in the thick ruff of fur at the bear's neck, the coat barely able to muffle the dense sobs that seemed intent on tearing him apart. Trowa felt helpless in the face of this kind of hurt as well, and comforted them both by returning his hand to Quatre's hair.
After a time, when Quatre's grief had outlasted his tears, Trowa gathered him up. With a respectful nod to the bears, he left them to their ursine wake. Sorrow had made Quatre almost as light as when Trowa had first found him, and he clutched the insubstantial elf tighter to his chest as an occasional after-sob shook Quatre's slight frame. When they reached the cabin, Trowa set him on the bed for want of a better place and pulled away to make some tea.
"Don't go!" Quatre nearly fell from the bed in his rush to keep Trowa there. "Please…"
"I wasn't going to leave, I was going to make you some tea - maybe something to help you sleep…"
Quatre pulled him back down to the bed and wrapped around him. "You're all I need to help me sleep…" He placed his ear directly over Trowa's heart, and matched his shaky exhalations to the steady rise and fall of the chest beneath his cheek. "I've never seen anyone die. Why couldn't you save him?"
"Quatre, everything mortal must eventually die." Trowa's arms had found their place around Quatre, and one of his hands twisted slowly in the wisps of blonde at Quatre's neck. "I could have no more prevented his death than I could stop the sun from setting every night."
"Not you!" Quatre sat up to examined Trowa fearfully. "You won't die, and leave me alone, will you?"
Trowa drew Quatre back down before answering, "I will die someday, too, Quatre." And then as gently as possible added, "And you will, as well."
This truth settled into Quatre with little shakes that expanded into violent tremors. Trowa held him close and stroked in his back with a steady hand that eventually swept away the tension. "I'm afraid." The admission brought a tiny echo of stiffness that Trowa chased away.
"Did Ural seem to be scared?" Quatre shook his "no" into Trowa's chest. "Death is not something you need fear - it is a change, not an ending."
"For you perhaps, but elves have no souls - they simply fade away."
"Never believe that you don't have a soul," whispered Trowa into Quatre's sun-sweetened hair. "For you do…" and the unspoken word reverberated through the small cabin… Mine…
~*~*~*~*~**~*~*~*~*~**~**~*~*~**~*~*~*~~**~*~**~
Quatre was quietly melancholy for a time, and this faded to nostalgic wistfulness, and as the days shortened towards the fall, his soft smiles and gentle laughter were once again the life of the cabin. He had continued his solo forays around the mountainside, answering only with mischievous grins when Trowa asked him about his daily activities. But one night, when the evening air had grown just chill enough to necessitate a fire, and they lay spooned together in bed, Trowa idly twining his fingers in Quatre's embracing hand, the elf asked, "What have you planned for the morning?"
Trowa built bridges, cathedrals, and small cozy homes out of their tangled fingers before answering, "I have no plans that I will not put aside for you."
"Good." Quatre's voice sounded from between Trowa's shoulders, and no more words intruded on the heady calm between them until morning.
The day dawned bright and full of late summer's promise, but it could not compare to the radiance of Quatre's face as he pulled Trowa from the cabin and off across the mountainside.
First, he guided Trowa to a high mountain meadow, one corner of which had been carefully sown and cultivated with the herb Trowa used to ease pain. Next Quatre led the way to an ancient oak, whose roots embraced a jumble of the small, shy flowers for easing fevers. A lower clearing was filled with a controlled scatter of the bone-mending plant Quatre's sister had provided, and the banks of a small streamlet were lined with peppermint and other water-loving herbs from Trowa's apothecary. It was here that Trowa finally grabbed his boundlessly energetic guide by the shoulders and whispered in slow awe, "You planted and tended all these for me?"
"I wanted to thank you." Quatre was suddenly shy.
And then their eyes met, not for the first time, but both seeing something new only because it had never been acknowledged before. A spark passed between their gazes; it flashed from fearfully wondering to joyfully apprehensive face. All the sound drained away from the day, until the pair was only aware of the sound of two heartbeats, slowly syncopating into one.
Quatre's words matched the new rhythm, "What is happening between us?" He placed a trembling hand one on his chest and covered Trowa's heart with the other. "What is it that fills me when I look at you?" His clear blue eyes searched Trowa's for an answer. "And your heart, whose beat I can no longer tell from my own…"
"Could you sleep without it as your guide?" Trowa voice stumbled over the weight of the words.
"No…" Quatre breathed as he folded his arms around Trowa's neck with the slow deliberation of a flower closing its petals for the night. Trowa's arms folded around the slim waist in much the same way. On the tips of his toes, Quatre stretched up to rub first one smooth cheek and then the other against Trowa's, before hiding his face in Trowa's neck in tremulous reticence. "That is a gesture between life-bound, among elves."
"And this is a sign of affection, between humans." Trowa whispered before tasting the fullness of Quatre's lips for the first time.
They stood by the softly chuckling brook side for a time, trading secrets of touch and love. As the sun's rays began slanting towards the late afternoon, they parted with a sigh that said they would never truly part again, and headed back to their cabin, joined by far more than their entwined hands.
So enrapt were they in the melody of their own making that even Quatre did not notice his sister's presence as they entered their home clearing.
"It is good to see you well again, brother." The green of the forest trailed her like an affectionate pup as she moved into the yard.
"Iria!" Quatre replied in soft shock.
"Father has repented of his harshness with you, Quatre. He bade me bring you home again." Her eyes had not moved from their joined hands. She held out an inner-lit vial of eager liquid in her own. "He wanted me to give this back to you."
"I am home, Iria." Quatre told his sister with no hesitation. And looking directly in Trowa's eyes, he added, "Unless there is enough in there for two, I don't want it anymore."
"Do you realize what…"
Quatre felt no need to let her finish. "Yes, I do. And I would rather spend a brief life of happiness than live a thousand years alone."
"Quatre…" she sighed as she gave her brother a farewell embrace. Iria met Trowa's eyes over Quatre's shoulder and he did not drown in them as she mouthed, "Thank you," before pulling reluctantly away from her brother. She pressed the vial into Quatre's hand and whispered, "There is not enough to give two forever, but there is enough to give them a long time to love." And she was gone as surely as she had never been.
The pair contemplated the spot of her passing for a time, and each other for several small eternities longer.
And while only Trowa knew if he drank the strangely silver tea Quatre served that evening, everyone knows that if you tilt your ear just right, and open your mind just so, you can still hear the wind that swirls off the mountainside carrying with it the soft melody of a flute guided by the rhythm of two hearts beating as one.