Heero

All I could see of him was his hair and two fingers.

He was huddled under an old but thick blanket, all underneath it from head to toe. Some of his hair poked out under it in misshapen angles, and the two fingers were lax out the top of the blanket. They looked like he had been clutching at it, but now they were still, and as I rushed closer, I saw they were deathly pale and tinged blue.

It was freezing in the cellar, the perfect temperature for wine. At least a hundred bottles of red wine lay perfectly still in their racks, and my little one lay equally still.

I feared it too late as I rushed to him, peeling the blanket from his head, to no reaction. His lips were blue.

There was a flurry of action, as Wufei yanked the torch from me. "Gather him up," he hissed. "He's frozen."

Numbly, I did, not really aware of what to do with myself. I lifted him off the floor and across my lap, holding his head in the crook of my elbow. Wufei thrust the torch to one of the men and began fixing the blanket around him.

I touched my hand to his face, not sure if he were even breathing, as the torchlight played with shadows across his face.

He looked nothing at all like the dream. He was not a sun-kissed demigod with chestnut hair and perfect proportions. He was not beautiful. He was not lovely, or fair, or even half the picture I had become accustomed to. I wasn't even certain it was the right person, until the torch came closer again and his eyes fluttered open.

They were much more purple than the dream had shown. They were even more beautiful now. He drew me in with his eyes, bringing me closer, until our noses touched and I just stared at him. His eyes showed exhaustion, a little bit of confusion, and I seriously doubted he was completely lucid, but none of that mattered.

His face, which had been lax, softened, and he simply looked at me. All I could see in his eyes was pure love.

I didn't know what was happening. I thought for a moment that perhaps I wasn't lucid either, but it stayed there, and he stared at me, lovingly, kindly, as if he was more happy to see me than anything else in the world.

Wufei handed me his water canteen and I realised he had been talking to me. "He's parched, Heero, look at him." I took it numbly, trying to wrap my exhausted mind around things, and when I looked back to Little One, I realised he hadn't looked away from me. His face had fallen, his expression crestfallen, tears forming in his eyes. One of his hands was attempting to tug at my shirt.

I pushed my attention back onto him, vowing not to stray again, and brought the water to his lips.

This was a test, I knew it. If he couldn't drink, he was done for, we were too late.

He didn't seem to understand at first, not breaking his gaze with me. I stared at him, holding his eyes, as I poured a little water out onto his lips.

His first reaction was to fight it. He moved his head away, letting out a feeble moan of protest.

I held his head closer to my chest, keeping him still, using the mouthpiece of the bottle to edge his lips apart and get some water in. After a moment, he stopped, blinked a few times, then the hand in my shirt grabbed firmly and he drank. Guzzled would be more appropriate. After a minute he seemed to accidentally inhale it, and began coughing it up. After that I restricted the speed I let him have it, but he just resumed staring at me, and drinking.

Sometimes he would hold the water in his mouth for a while without swallowing, closing his lips, and swishing it around, as if it were some fine treat, but he would always eventually swallow it and wrap his lips around the canteen for more.

All the while Wufei was looking him over, peeling the blanket off him to check him over. I wasn't looking, too scared to leave his gaze in case it brought on another tear in his eye. Plus, he looked at me with unadulterated adoration. I couldn't understand it, I couldn't place it. Why?

"We have to move him, Heero," Wufei said. "He's sick, real sick, if we knock him we might break something. But he has to get out of this cold. It's a damn cellar, he's freezing to death."

I nodded, not breaking eye contact. "Okay," I said. "How do we get him up the ladder?"

Wufei huffed, and I imagined him grimacing, but I would not tear my eyes away to look at him.

"You stay down here with him, and push him up. I'll take him and sit him on the landing. Try to keep looking at him, it's keeping him centred. We need him awake till we can put some food in him."

I nodded, realising that I was keeping him centred. His eyelids were fluttering open and closed, but always back to look at me, with that expression of love in them.

I reached under the blanket for the hand that was near my shirt. I found it, but not before my hand found his chest, which was so thin that it made me draw back. His hand was equally thin, and I found I could not hold it as I wanted to, because the tighter I held, the more I felt it seem to give way.

I feared I might shatter his fingers.

I carefully brought his hand up to my neck, holding it there against the warmth of my pulse. His fingers curled against my throat.

Wufei took the blanket off him and threw it up onto the floor above, then went up himself. "Come on, Yuy," he pressed.

Trying to maintain our eye contact, I put his hand back down and hooked my arm under his knees. During this, I made the mistake of glancing away from his eyes, and saw what Wufei had already seen.

My Little One was, actually, little. He was not as tall as he had been in my dreams, and he was skin and bones, quite literally. He was completely naked, except for a collar around his neck, and I had the presence of mind to put two and two together as to why a man would keep a naked slave in his cellar. I wished I hadn't.

I pushed my gaze back to his eyes, and lifted him up. He was more awkward to lift than heavy, as he was all twig limbs and limp neck. The man with the torch grabbed his head just before it would fall, and he was about to push it into my neck.

"Don't," I said, "He needs to look at me."

And so we awkwardly shuffled over to the ladder, where Wufei waited. I braced Little One against the ladder and got a grip around his armpits, while Wufei lightly gripped his hair to keep his neck from falling.

He barely moved throughout the whole thing, as I lifted him up above me, still staring, and he watched idly. His only move was to reach out to me feebly with a hand when Wufei moved his grip around his chest and hauled him up.

I heard him give out a strained cry, one that sounded like despair incarnate, as our eye contact was broken, the spell upon us both gone in a flash. I vaulted up the ladder after him, and when I got to him, I took his face in both my hands and tried to recast it, to get his eyes on me again, but he had closed them, turning his face aside into my palm, tears beginning to fall.

"Get him to the sitting room," Wufei said, handing him over to me, and I pushed his face into my neck this time as I lifted him and left the kitchen.

One of the men was soaking his rations in water, softening them, another nurturing a new fire in the dead drunk's fireplace. I sat down with Little One on my lap again, holding him close, as Wufei took his cloak off and lay it over his naked body.

All of the men had the common decency to avert their eyes, and had they not, they wouldn't have seen anything good anyway. He was in absolute abysmal form, but I tried not to look, instead trying to get him to open his eyes again. I needed him to look at me, to love me, to centre me, and I needed him to have all those things as well.

Someone found a blanket, and had that over him as well, over Wufei's already warm coat. I knew we couldn't stay in this house for long. We needed to get him warmed up and out before he was lucid, as this had clearly been his prison for some time.

None of the townsfolk had known him. They hadn't been lying.

A woman knocked on the doorframe of the entryway, tearing my eyes from Little One. "Oh, good lord, it's ... here? I thought he was supposed to be in Garth?"

"What is it, ma'am?" Wufei asked tersely.

"Oh," she said. "So sorry. Mama at the inn started preparing a room for you, when we heard the horses. I just came to tell you. I'll run and tell her to put on some broth."

She turned and fled as swiftly as she came, and I was grateful, but Little One still wouldn't open his eyes for me. I begged and pleaded with him quietly, trying not to frighten him, as he had begun sobbing and his breath came in heaves.

Someone handed me Wufei's canteen again and I brought it to his lips.

The exact same process as the last time happened. As soon as he felt the rim of the bottle at his lips he turned away and began struggling in earnest, but the moment I actually got some water into his mouth he soothed right away.

After a moment, he brought his hand up, fighting to get it out from under the blanket and Wufei's coat, and held the bottle feebly, just touching it, as if trying to be certain it was actually there. Then he blinked his eyes open, and instantly the spell was recast.

His entire body softened in my arms as he relaxed, staring at me. His eyes, which were now red and puffy, blinked away the tears and he went straight back to staring at me as if I were giving him the world on a silver platter, and not just day old water from a soldier's flask.

"Hello again, Little One," I said, as tenderly as I could muster. He drank for a little while, staring up at me, calm and quiet as a mouse.

The soldier that had been soaking his rations in water gave them to me. "I don't think we should wait for the miss's broth," he whispered, as if frightened to break the calm.

My peripheral vision allowed me to see what was in the bowl of water, some of his hard bread, soaked till soft and a little mushy, and one of the biscuits still dry and hard as a rock in there. I pulled the bottle from Little One's lips, but he got so upset when I did that I had it back in his mouth in seconds, hushing him before he started crying again.

He grabbed at it feebly, trying to keep it near, and I helped him, guiding his wrist toward it so that he could hold it. "Just for a moment," I said, as I pulled it from his lips. I capped it in case he dropped it, and reached for the soggy bread, fumbling for it out of the corner of my eye. I brought it to his lips, opened his mouth for it with my pinkie, and pushed the small morsel into his mouth.

He blinked for a moment, and then seemed to swallow it whole. Then he pleased me to an unimaginable extent by opening his mouth for another.

I smiled proudly. "That's it," I said, "that's it exactly. Just a bit more. I'm taking you far away from here soon, Little One."

His eyes lit up a bit, and I saw that he was coming to, and this was not the place I wanted him to come to in, so I tried to soothe him and keep his eyes on me. "We're going away, Little One. There's a room for us, not far from here, where we're going to stay for a little while. It's going to be warm for you while you get better. After that, I'm taking you home with me, where you'll always have a warm bed and plenty of food."

After a moment I realised that he didn't understand me, at least, not much. Calling him Little One did, as he had said, put him in a good mindset, it even made him attempt to smile for me. He also liked the words "warm", "food", and "home", but everything in between seemed to just confuse him. So I started just putting those words in heavy rotation, shoving them into as many sentences as I could as I fed him.

"Back home, it's very warm, with lots of food, Little One. You'll get three meals a day, and a warm, warm bed, at home with me, Little One, very soon."

Soon enough the bread was gone, but I balked at trying to feed him the biscuit, because it was still quite solid and all he had done with the bread was swallow it whole. "Hold on a minute, Little One, while I ask my friend Wufei a question about our warm bed at the inn," I said, still staring Little One in the eye.

"Yes?" Wufei whispered.

"When can we go?" I asked, as I uncapped the bottle resting on Little One's chest and brought it back to his lips for him. He smiled at me, stronger this time than any of the others, and took the small sips I gave him.

"When he's warm enough to brave the outside," Wufei said. "You've done well. You look exhausted. Try to get him to sleep, so you can too. I've sent Relena to fetch the broth from the inn when it's ready. Let him rest for a bit."

I nodded, still holding gaze. "Little One," I said softly, "Love, it's time for you to sleep now. More food when you wake up." I sincerely doubted he understood my promise of food after sleeping, but I just wanted to calm him in case he got scared when I moved him. He did, a little bit, seeming to have learned from the last time that moving equals loss of eye contact, but this time I didn't break eyes.

I laid him down across the hearth in front of the now bustling fire, thankful that someone had lain a blanket there earlier. It was still hard as the stone beneath it, and I grimaced as I laid his head down on the hard surface. He didn't like that. The hand that wasn't clutching at the water bottle began searching feebly for me, trying to get to me, and as it fumbled around on the ground, I realised something terrible that I hadn't seen before.

He was near sighted. He couldn't see me.

It was bad, too. His eyes were searching for me, blinking rapidly, squinting, and he fumbled with his hand on the blanketed floor, trying to feel for me instead of grasping where he saw me.

I quickly ducked my head back in, pressing my forehead to him. "It's okay," I said, "I didn't leave - "

He let out a strangled howl as soon as I said the word leave. "No, no, I'm not leaving," I corrected, but clearly negatives were beyond his comprehension at the time. "I'm staying," I corrected again. "I'm here. I'm staying."

He calmed again, staring at me, with a horrid fearful expression on his face, and I worried I'd never be able to make him sleep now. Careful not to leave his pitiful sight range, I lay down next to him, tilting his head to the side so we could look at each other. I gathered his little body in my arms and smiled at him, hoping to calm him.

"Sleep," I said. "I'm here. I'll be here when you wake up. Sleep."

And then he simply closed his eyes and was gone, as if I had been the only thing he had been awake for to begin with, while I tried to wrap my head around things.

He was near sighted. He wasn't in our dreams.

He seemed to like me. That wasn't supposed to happen at all, not that I was complaining.

Primary mission success.

Secondary mission, tentative success. In progress.

New primary mission: Maintain peace.

Secondary mission in progress.