Temper the Soul
Chapter 16
by zapenstap
Audrey stood in front of a small, stained glass window, staring out over the city. As dusk settled over the quiet houses she grew more and more anxious, terrified of what she had done, of what was to happen because of it. Her body trembled still from the horror of her revelation to Damion, of all that had been so haphazardly said and done. Confessions had spilled from her throat, wrenched from deeply buried graves by the demand in his eyes. And she found herself panicking, unable to stop it, unable to soften the blows or even control her own reactions. The crushed look in his eyes when he took leave of her smote her heart. There seemed to be no apologies to make, no words of comfort. For a flash second she had considered offering to give herself to him there in that room, and the idea had almost seemed overwhelmingly attractive and equally horrifying to her. She didn't know what was happening.
Wilting at the window, she leaned forward to press her face against the cool glass.
She had not seen or heard a word from him since he had flown from her presence, looking for all the world like she had stabbed him in the heart.
Abruptly she was aware of movement in the palace. Pulling away from the window, she headed toward the more widely used hallways, drawn my the noise of hurried speech and running footfalls.
She halted a serving girl by the sleeve, matching her face with her name instantly. "Mary, what is this commotion?"
"An ambulance at the gates, my lady first choice," the girl replied, and seemed excited. Her face was flushed as she looked into Audrey's face, seeming embarrassed and pleased simultaneously. "I am sent to inform his Highness Prince Damion. You have a favor to ask of me?"
"An ambulance? Has there been an accident?"
"I don't know know, Mistress. Rumor is that someone injured demanded to be brought here. Is there something else I can do for you?"
"No. Thank you." The girl was looking at her eagerly, with a strange sort of sweet reverence, not as if Audrey were of a higher class and naturally superior, but with willingly bestowed honor.
"Prince Damion is waiting, my Lady. Do you offer your Lord any salutation I can deliver?" .
"Not at this time," she replied, and figured out what it was about the girl's behavior toward her that was so strange. It was respect for her position as Damion's consort. Mary had the look of a girl smitten by a crush on someone out of her reach, and had transferred the love she wished for herself to the woman in the place she dreamed of being. How many young girls in this city, in this palace, fancied themselves in love with Damion?
Audrey felt a pang in her breast and guilt in her conscience. Could she take him any more for granted? But despite her shame, knowledge of his desirability did not change anything in her heart. She wished she had the innocence of this girl, the willingness to please and the simplicity to love without fear or discretion. Before the girl could read anything in her face, she turned away, rushing along the hallway toward to the source of the commotion, determined to distract herself from these frightening contradictions.
"What did you say to him?"
Audrey stopped, surprised to see Julia in the hall, garbed in a flowing green gown of a color like summer grass, her golden hair braided about her head like a crown. Audrey unconsciously straightened, feeling dark and pale in Julia's presence, like a shadow on snow or pale starlight in the darkness, not emitting enough light by which to see. She felt drained of her power and emotions, weak, cold and dried out, but she held her head high.
She could not reply.
*****
Relena sat up in a chair with her back perfectly straight, her hands clenched over knees pressed tightly together, both feet flat on the floor. She had unwound her hair and let it fall over her shoulders and though she tried to look relaxed, she knew her eyes must be hard as moonstones, reflecting the furious movement of her thoughts.
When Heero opened the door to her room she couldn't help jerking more than she needed to, turning her head to drink in the sight of his face. He shut the door behind him, casting a look over his shoulder at her. She met his eyes, comforted by the resolution she found there, the cool analytical surety that saw Heero Yuy through anything.
"What are you thinking?" he asked her, removing his jacket and hanging it over her chair.
"That my brother is dead and Duo soon will be." He avoided her eyes as if he had something better to focus on, but she knew he wasn't looking at anything. "I know they're just the worst of my fears," she said, "but I can't help being afraid."
He sat heavily in the chair across from her and did not reply.
She didn't want to talk about it either. "What did you talk to Damion about?"
"Audrey."
She smiled faintly and looked down at her hands. Strange that Heero's precise observations about people had taken this new turn. It was like Heero to project his kindness to what he cared about, though in the past he would have ignored relationships or thought it beneath his concern, but he was so intelligent and good-hearted that when he allowed himself to care, he cared a great deal.
A heavy knock sounded at her door, beaten furiously. Both she and Heero snapped to attention and to their feet, finding each other's hands almost unconsciously.
"Heero! Relena!"
She shared a look with Heero, startled and questioning, raising a hand halfway to her chest in surprise.
Manny burst into the room, grasping the edge of the door in both hands, eyes wide, his usual amiable expression gone as he looked at them with grim seriousness.
Fear flamed in Relena's heart. Every nerve was as tense as strung wire. "What? Manny, what is it? Is it Damion?"
Heero's jaw clenched. "Did something happen between Damion and Audrey?"
Manny shook his head furiously. "Well, yes, but never mind that," he said with distracted concern, seemingly possessed of anxious energy as burst into the room like a train and began to straighten things Relena didn't even know were out of order, as if that was why he had been sent there. But the look he suddenly flashed her plunged daggers in her hurt. "It's you're brother."
Relena lurched forward. Heero's hand gripping hers kept her grounded. "You got a call from him?" she cried.
"Not a call," Manny said hurriedly. "Come with me." Gripping Heero's hand, Relena followed him. "He's been injured," Manny said quickly, ushering them both out of the room with a grim face. "He's in the palace. His fighter plane crashed in the airport fifteen minutes ago. He was rushed here by ambulance."
Panic seized her, shivers running up her arms. "Oh my God! How did he get here? What happened? "
"An ambulance?" Heero demanded.
Manny answered all of their questions at a mile a minute. "He refused to be taken to the hospital. Don't worry. They say his injuries look more serious than they are. He apparently patched a call through to Cinq and learned you were here. His landing was messy and done without the guidance of air traffic control, but he's all right."
Other people were rushing through the halls, more perhaps, than even this accounted for.
"Damion has received an entreaty," Manny added. "Just a few minutes ago. Heero, you have a call from Preventor Headquarters if you want to take it."
Relena's heart froze in her chest as she looked back over her shoulder at Heero, who seemed to be staring at nothing straight ahead. "No..." she said, stopping in front of him and turning, putting a hand on his chest. "Heero..."
He took her arms and looked down at her with calm, deep eyes. "I don't know what they want yet." That was a lie.
She stared up at his face, knowing her thoughts were transparent to him. They were the same as his unspoken ones. If Zechs was shot from the sky and had survived, everyone would know it. There would be a reaction. Now things planned long in secret were unfolding faster than she had wanted them to, even when she had bemoaned so much delay. The Preventors were calling in their reserves. A full frontal assualt from combined peace-keeping forces and participating leaders would be staged against the anarchist mobs. Their own people would be pulled out, the dissenters crushed. They would ask for the assistance of all the gundam pilots. "Heero, if you have to go, go," she said, but her eyes were hot and seemed to ache in her skull in time with her heart.
"Miss Relena, Heero," Manny said, seemingly uncomfortable and a little flustered by their delay.
"I'll be careful," Heero whispered, touching her lips with two fingers. He looked at Damion's servant and nodded. "Lead the way."
Manny led them through the halls, past what seemed like a hundred people rushing about. Relena's throat was tight. She couldn't believe the activity, even over something like this. What sort of call had Damion received?
"In here," Manny said, guiding them through the guest quarters until they came to a room surrounded by people. "Hey, everybody!" Manny shouted. "Stop lolling about around here. Make way for his sister. Carter, Jackson, all of you over there, Thompsan needs help with the supply cases. Katie, Samson, talk to Oswold and the guards. Come on, people. We don't have a whole lot of time."
"Manny!" a young wide-eyed girl squeaked. "Where is the prince?"
"On his way here, probably, Lu. You all want to be standing around when he gets here?"
They scattered like quail.
I the suddenly cleared hallway, Manny grinned and beckoned Heero and Relena to the doorway. "He was really irritable when they brought him here," he warned them over his shoulder, and held the door aside for them to enter. "Everybody's trying to be helpful, but you know how it is."
They walked past him into the room.
"Zechs," Relena whispered at the man on the bed. His preventor's coat was hung over a chair, torn at the sleeve and along the bottom. It was stained with blood. Zechs himself was propped up in the bed, white bandages wrapped around his chest and a wad of cotton pressed to one side of his head. His hair fell about his face, tangled and windblown. His face seemed recently washed, but there was a laceration beneath his right eye and dirt and grime still plastered to his upper forehead and neck.
A man was sitting in a chair beside him with a kit of basic medical supplies open on the table beside him. Relena supposed he was a doctor, perhaps a physician employed by the palace. At any rate, he smiled at her when they entered, packed up his supplies and quietly left the room.
"I'll be in the hall if you need me," Manny said with a smile, and followed the doctor out.
Zechs raised his head as the door closed, ice blue eyes catching hers briefly. "So you are here." He looked at Heero. "And you too."
"What happened?" Heero asked as Relena moved to occupy the seat the doctor had vacated, scanning Zech's bruises and bandages with her eyes.
He turned to her briefly. "I'm fine, Relena. I got a little cut up in the landing was all. It was my plane that got shot up."
"Can you still fight?" Heero asked him.
"I'll be bed ridden for awhile." His stare was icy cold. "Are you going out there, Yuy?"
Relena bit her lip as Heero nodded slowly but firmly. "If that's what Lady Une wants," he said in a monotone. Relena tried to feel brave and not let anything show, but her whole body felt stiff and cold as if saturated with ice water.
Zechs' expression didn't change a hair. "Your friends Quatre Winner and Trowa Barton are already at Headquarters. They'll want you there no later than tomorrow morning if you're going."
Relena's heart beat slow and loud in her own ears. She couldn't say anything as Heero turned his eyes on her silently, watching her twist the corners of Zech's bedsheets in her hands. She knew he had to go. She knew he would be needed. "Maybe we should let you sleep," she said to Zechs, forcing herself to smile and hold her head high. "And Heero can take that call."
Heero was still looking at her, standing straight and proud like a soldier, but his midnight blue eyes focused on her like she was only thing that existed. Her pleasant mask collapsed as she snuck a look at him from the side, tilting her head to peer at him from beneath her hair. He looked like he was trying to hide his frustration and didn't know what to say.
Abruptly, something flashed across his face. "Relena, I'll be right back," he said.
"Heero?" Relena said, standing up.
Zechs scowled. "Yuy, what...?"
"I need to talk to Damion," Heero said, and turned to the door before she could read his expression. "I'll be right back."
*****
Audrey lifted her head high, raising the tilt of her chin.
Julia's heavily made-up eyes swept over her, seeming to look down on her despite her shorter stature. She shook her head as she approached and the golden jewelry about her throat jangled, clinking with a strange music. "A girl in my position learns to listen to rumor," she said crisply, and smiled one of her cool, devilish smiles. "I knew your history before you came here, so don't think you have anything to hide from me. What did you tell him tonight?" Audrey's body seemed to become very heavy, her heart dropping out of chest like a black ball. She knew... "I saw him leave you. I think you broke his heart."
"I didn't mean to," she said as evenly as she could manage.
"What did you say to him?"
"I told him I didn't love him."
Julia's expression was awful to behold and take in. Her face, usually reflecting some secret amusment even at the worst news, was flat and chill. After a few moments, Julia tilted her head slightly so that her eyes stared from beneath her eyebrows. "And why would you say that?"
Audrey struggled to speak. "Because I don't."
Julia's eyes did not change. "Yes you do."
She shook her head. "No."
"Why not?"
"I don't believe in love, Julia."
Julia jerked her chin up expressively, eyes flashing. "What difference does that make?"
"Believing makes it real."
Julia frowned at her for a moment. "You may be right about that," she said quietly. Her expression relaxed as she scrutinized Audrey closely, her manner flowing more smoothly, like a rushing stream. "You do a beautiful job of looking like you have it all together. You will make an excellent queen if you can hold that in a crisis, and I rather believe you can." She paused. "You know him and you know his work. He would be a fool to throw you away, and he's not a fool."
Because you would make a good queen.
Julia shook her head, smiling slightly. "But you should trust him with your heart. Don't you want someone to love you?"
This hurt too much. "Please," she said. "I can't just..."
"Yes you can," Julia cut in. "It just takes a little faith and courage. I am a hypocrite to say it, I know, but he loves you and he believes you have it in you to love him. Do you find him beneath you? Ill-matched"
"No."
"Unkind?"
"No."
"Immature?"
"Not really."
"Not attractive?"
"I'm attracted to him."
"Then in spite of what fears you may have, you do want to share his bed?"
The room felt warm. Her skin was hot and flushed. "I..."
"His touches don't excite you? They turn you off?"
"No."
"Would you want him to continue?"
"It is not so simple."
Julia shook her head. "Do you want to please him? Would giving him pleasure please you?"
Her heart quickened, her mouth felt dry. "Yes."
Julia's face softened, her eyebrows drawing low in sympathy. "Does it hurt you that you've hurt him?"
It did, but she only closed her eyes.
"My dear first choice," Julia said in a low, practical tone. "When you truly don't care about someone, telling them so does not hurt. It is a relief. I know. I have done it. Do you want Damion to quit bothering you and be gone?"
She felt shaky and the sensation was frightening. "No," she said. "I love him, I just..." She clapped a hand over her mouth, trembling. "Oh God." Had she said that? She loved him and lied about it. She didn't mean to. Her words lurched into motion and quickened in speed. "I... don't love him the way he wants," said tried to clarify, knowing it was too late, feeling a clench in her stomach. "I don't yearn for him. The world does not circle around him. I..."
"But you care about him?"
"Yes," she somehow said it simply. "He loves me. He..." she couldn't think of any words to describe the quality of soul that placed him in her high esteem. She knew that she loved him in some sense, yet she still saw him as nothing more than a man, not an icon of desire. "Is it not only friendship?" she asked quietly. "I do not yearn for him as they say lovers do."
Julia shrugged her shoulders slightly. "Perhaps you love him as a friend, but that is more than he believes. And you say he is also sexually attractive to you. If I can speak frankly, I think you are just afraid."
She swallowed.
Julia continued in those suggestive, instructional tones. "If it's love, it must be love that runs deeper than your mood if your logic cries out against it. But then, you have not accepted his love yet, have you? You can't miss something you don't really have. The kind of feeling he desires from you may come if you trust yourself to fall and let him love you."
Audrey closed her eyes, felt her heart race. It sounded so wonderful, and yet so terrifying. The fire in his eyes, the urgency with which he touched her was almost violent, conquering. To let him really have her would require losing something of herself to him, letting him change her to fit with him, and yet the thought of his presence being warm and constant once the struggle had ended was comforting, almost surreal. And he would have to change too, wouldn't he? But what if grew bored and left her, came to hate her, in body or in heart, as she was taught would inevitable happen? Her throat consticted. She missed him even thinking he would abandon or hurt her. She missed him. The thought surprised her. When she opened her eyes, there seemed to be more lights in the room, everything shimmered so strangely. "I..."
"I hear he has received an entreaty to the west," Julia continued, assessing her with those cool eyes and smooth expressions. "Pressure has been on the Council and they have reluctantly agreed to let him go. The palace staff is in an uproar preparing for his immediate departure. If you want to love before you wed, you need to speak to him now."
"Oh God," she said, and felt butterflies in her stomach. "Where is he?"
*****
"Where is Damion?" Heero asked Manny the second he was in the hall.
"Heading this way, I think," Manny said. "Is something wrong with...?"
"No. I just need to ask him..."
At that moment Damion approached, his expression cluttered with a dozen priority concerns that had seized his attention all at once. Manny leaned back against the wall and out of mind, duty discharged.
"Damion," Heero began, shifting his attention. "I have a favor to ask you."
"I'm going to the west," Damion said, seemingly distracted. "Though not with you. I am going to a safe place to direct a conteroffensive and a retreat in cooperation with other nations, but I am still going."
Manny apparently had heard this already by his lack of reaction, but Heero's attention snapped back a little. He had wondered as much, with the way Damion refused to discuss Taravren's obviously intimate connection with the crisis in the west, intimate considering Gardiner was native of Taravren and rabid against it. It was only a matter of time before the Prince Regent of Taravren was pulled in to help in the organization of ground troops from afar with the other leaders. To Heero, knowing he would be leaving himself tomorrow morning, for the thick of battle in his case, it almost seemed anti-climatic. And yet... "Damion, what about your marriage to Audrey? How long will you be gone?"
"Not past the wedding with luck," he said without distinguishing tone A small, bitter laugh escaped his throat. "Terese would have my head on a platter if the date had to be changed now. It can not really be changed." He shook his head. "She says she can't love me, Heero. You were right about both things." He shook his head. "You were right."
He didn't like being right all the time. The only one to ever prove him wrong consistently was Relena. "She'll come around," he forced out through his teeth, not even really sure what he was saying, but the wounded look in Damion's eye bothered him now as it had before, which surprised him. "Isn't that what you would say to me?"
Damion blinked. "I'm sorry, Heero. I didn't mean to involve you in this. What was it you wanted to say to me? How is Zechs? How is Relena?"
"Zech's is a soldier. Hid injuries aren't serious, though he can't fight," Heero said, letting it go. "But I have a favor to ask you."
"Anything."
"Loan me a few hundred dollars. I'll pay it back."
Damion blinked. "For what?"
"To buy a ring. I want to marry Relena tonight."
PLEASE review this story. I'm writing it faster, but I need more reviews to keep going. Please tell me what you think. The longer and more honest the review the more it helps me, but anything is appeciated! Thank all of you so much for reading. I'm at the part I've wanted to write the entire time, so please come back and keep reviewing or I may never make it! O_O