Broken Compass
His hands were cold. He didn't like how the sun blinded him. It was however a sweet relief from the darkness that had stretched from when they had thrown him in here.
He tried raising his head. A hand was used to push his battered body upwards. He bit his lip, as his grey and dirty fingers, revealed to be broken.
Quatre turned his head away from the sun. It offered no warm, just a wavery yellow light that flooded the dim, dank cell.
His hands were drawn together. Nails bitten raw. He hadn't been a nail bitter, but his nerves had overtaken him and he had the need to do something, anything. He was flying just as the sun rose behind him.
He hadn't noticed that blood was running down his chin, mind consumed by something that seemed so wrong, until an unknown Preventer had nudged him slightly. Muttering something, pointed to Trowa's face.
Trowa had blinked, bringing a hand close to his face. Every line, every callous, he knew his hand. He didn't remember biting his nails down.
Eyes roll back, everything becoming not black, but a disfocused grey. Fireworks explode with an array of blinding and painful lights. Quatre opens his eyes as the cell door slams behind his captor.
He hadn't spoke. Not once. His lips were bloody where he had bitten them. He stared at his fingers. They twitched, a dull pain, miniscule compared to the new wounds on his body.
Blood shines from the sunlight, ruby red and weakening. Quatre looks up again as a bird flies past.
Trowa's eyes snap open as a bird cries out, shrill and insistent. He remembers someone telling him that the beauty of the language of birds is practically meaningless.
The voices blur around him. Rising and falling as he focuses on his task. He forgets his fingers, the tiny pain a simple reminder of what could be lost.
As the sun hovers in the sky, Trowa works and worries.
His body burns and aches with pain. His lips are cracked and bloody. His stomach sometimes rebels, sending him grimacing as he tries not to grunt from the onslaught of pain.
There is nothing to do, just listen to his own breathing. He could wait. Wait for them to come and to test their new ideas upon his body.
He doesn't want another new day to meet him like this. He suspects it won't. Quatre feels tired.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The phrase is far from Trowa's mind as he collapses to his knees and rests one shaky hand on his lover's shoulder.
Relief surges through him as still ready muscles tense under him wayward fingers. For a moment he forgets the gun fire behind him and focuses on every minute that is Quatre.
Trowa smiles as Quatre weakly raises his head, the frail sunlight illuminating his ragged blond hair.
Safe. Warm. Rested.
Quatre doesn't wake as Trowa carries him home, lays him in their bed, careful of the tubes and bandages.
He leans into Trowa's touch as Trowa presses a hand against Quatre's cheek.
Home.