Temper the Soul
Chapter 28
By zapenstap
Damion lay on his bed panting, eyes wide open, trying to breathe through the constriction in his throat. Another night's sleep and another nightmare. He should be getting used to them by now. Life right now was a nightmare. Sometimes he couldn't tell when he was waking and when he was dreaming. Manny was in his dreams again, looking so normal and unbothered, asking him what was wrong. "Are you okay, Master Damion? Do you need anything?" And then he grinned, his brown eyes flashing. Manny asked him if he would be able to go riding that day, but before Damion could reply, there was a sound like a shotgun. Damion always knew before it went off that Manny's face had been the target, but in the dreams he never died right away. Instead he just bled and bled, the blood getting all over everything while he stared at Damion with eyes that begged the Prince of Taravren to do something. But there were shackles on Damion's wrists and somewhere Gardiner was smiling that half-amused, disinterested smile.
Again he had slept late into the morning. No one came to wake him up early anymore. Maybe they wanted him to sleep and maybe they were afraid. His servants waited on his every whim now, doing things twice as fast as they ever had and still looking terrified that he would rebuke them for inadequacy, but few were willing to do the little things Manny used to do. Some things needed to be done, of course, and other people had been sent to do some of the tasks Manny used to perform every morning, but Damion couldn't stand it. He let others pour his coffee and lay out his schedules with tense hands and gritted teeth, but often he had to send them away. And they always looked so hurt. He knew they thought they were doing something wrong whenever he objected to a task, but he couldn't stand to see that void filled. Rationally, he knew he was overreacting, that certain things had to be done and it wasn't as if Manny were being sealed in a box and forgotten, but it felt that way.
It was probably because he had finally visited Manny's family last night. It was hard to meet his father in the eye and he knew they were disturbed by his behavior. It just felt so wrong to him that they would try to comfort him when he came to pay his respects. The whole house was unusually quiet and oppressive, though somehow they had managed to smile at him. Manny's mother seemed to think he was suffering more than Manny's real family, but Damion didn't understand that. They told him they would be glad to have him over for dinner and talk about it, that it might help if he spent some time with other people who were grieving, but he couldn't look her in the eye. Manny's youngest sister seemed to think it was his fault her brother was dead and Damion couldn't blame her for feeling that way. Sometimes he felt it was his fault too, but he couldn't think of anything he could have said or done to prevent it. Sometimes he was glad that Manny had at least died instantly and nobly, trying to protect him, and sometimes it just made him feel sick. He went home the way he came, unescorted, but no one said anything about it when he returned. They didn't dare.
He needed something, anything, to distract him from this pain. He wanted Audrey's company if anyone's. Maybe he just wanted her. He was lonely. He was lonely and sorrowful and feeling as if his control had been wrested from him. When he thought about her he became inflamed by lust. He missed her presence when she wasn't there, but he also just wanted her in a very basic, animalistic way. He wanted sex and he wanted to possess her. He remembered the way her breast felt in his hand, soft and round and warm. He wanted to touch her again but she was afraid. He wanted to make love to a woman, even rough love if that's how it had to be, but her fears made him hesitate and his own aggression frightened him. Sometimes he just wanted to get it over with. Other times he wished it could be perfect.
He hadn't felt this terrible since that first day he came home.
"Master Damion?" said a small voice came into his bedroom from out in the hall. It was a girl's voice.
The girl's voice registered vaguely in his head as belonging to Mary, that young girl who had seemed particularly upset upon his return to Taravren. He knew why too. She was one of those girls who thought she was in love with a prince. Confused, he got out of bed and called back to her. It was a mistake to let her in, but he was bidding her enter before he could stop himself.
She was a cute thing, blonde with lovely eyes and high cheekbones. As he walked out of the bedchamber and came toward her in the larger part of his rooms, she smiled shyly at him. The way she was looking at him, even if she was doing it unconsciously, made his blood boil. The clothes she was wearing didn't help. Her top was low with sleeves that hung off the shoulders and laces over the bodice that begged to be untied. She wore a skirt that was sheer and clingy, wrapping around her legs when she moved and between her skirt and her top he could see a nice strip of bare skin. Maybe she didn't mean anything by it, but all he saw when he looked at her was a woman who wanted to please him. He had the sudden urge to ask her to lock the door and invite her to his bed, which was absolutely insane.
"What are you doing here?" he asked. He remembered now what Terese had said about girls trying to get into his rooms when he had invited all of the eligible women to the palace. Surely this wasn't something like that.
"I came to see if you needed anything," she said with such innocence that he thought it couldn't possibly be real.
He remembered what he said to Audrey, about being afraid of hurting her if he slept with her in this state, this wild, angry, scared and hurting state of mind. With the thought of Audrey two things occurred to him: how doubly wrong his other thought had been and the contrasting idea that if he used this girl first… I must be mad.
"Prince Damion?" she asked. "Do…do you need anything?"
The way she was looking at him, her lips painted and slightly parted, seemed so suggestive. "No," he told her hoarsely. He had to clamp his teeth shut to keep from asking her if she wanted wine or anything. Anything at all. "I want to be left alone."
"Oh," she said, sounding hurt and confused. She had a crush on him. She was trying to be nice and she had dressed up hoping for a kind word from him to build her confidence. All she wanted was for him to think she was attractive, but she didn't know what damage she could really do when he was like this, or how attractive she really looked right now.
He was going to be married in two days to a woman he loved. "You didn't do anything wrong," he told Mary softly, swallowing. "I just can't abide company right now."
"I'm sorry," she said, still sounding like a wounded animal, and quietly let herself out of his room.
He sat down in a chair heavily, his elbows on his knees and his head sinking into his hands. He kept making mistakes. He couldn't sort out his emotions. There were too many of them. He recalled Audrey to his mind, but there was more turmoil there than anywhere else except thoughts of Manny. Surely that was not how it was supposed to be. But it hadn't always been like that. God, he was going to marry her in two days. They would stand at an altar amidst all those candles and exchange rings while both of them were crowned in front of thousands of people. And then he would be king of Taravren and she Queen, but their marriage wouldn't be binding until it was consummated. She said she was afraid. She thought it might be hard the first time. One sentence like that opened a floodgate of images and hopes and fears for him. He had the terrifying realization that maybe they both weren't ready, but that it didn't matter because he couldn't stop time.
He wanted to kill Gardiner. He wanted to stab his eyes out, take his girl, hurt him until he cried out in pain from bruised ribs and a broken spirit and kill his friends, if he had any. Audrey had said it was terrible when revenge like that happened. It sounded true. Damion tried to imagine Abel Gardiner bruised and beaten on the floor at his feet. He tried to imagine himself shooting a bullet through his forehead. He couldn't tell how he felt. Sick, mostly. Sick, but also vengeful.
He was so confused about everything.
He needed some air.
Getting up, he went to his closet and searched until he found his riding boots and gloves. He didn't bother with any other riding equipment. He just wanted to be outside and on his own. He hadn't ridden in ages, and even though he would be going alone instead of with Manny, he could take Manny's horse, a gift Damion had given him years ago. Well, it seemed all his gifts were returned if Manny's family didn't want them.
He had to stop hating Gardiner and get a hold of himself. He knew he had to, but he couldn't make sense of anything. Taravren was beginning to stifle him as much as his prison under Gardiner's house. It didn't help that he knew it was all in his head.
*****
"Heero?" Relena murmured, sitting up when he did. He had swung his legs off the side of the bed and just sat there with the sheet of the bed twisted around his lap and his hands pressed into the mattress on either side of his legs. Relena crawled up behind him and rubbed his bare back, kissing his shoulders. He could smell the fresh, dry scent of her hair, warmed by the sunlight streaming in through the window.
He caught one of her hands without turning and pulled her arm over his shoulder to kiss her fingers. They curled as he did it and he felt her press the rest of her body against his back, hugging him with her head leaning against his other shoulder. "I've missed you when you were away, you know," she said.
He turned and they shared a smile. "I have to talk to Damion today," he said. "I'd like to spend all of my time with you, but this is important."
"I know," she said, touching his face. "Heero, you don't know how long I've waited to have you to myself. I have you now. I'm not going to let life get in the way and I want you to talk to Damion. Just because we're married now," she bit her lips, flushing. That sounded weird to him too, like the wedding was a dream, "doesn't mean life stops and starts anew. We have to do some shuffling, but we both have responsibilities."
He smiled at her and she looked at him strangely, as if he was hiding a secret, which he was. "Things won't be the same, Relena," he said. "I'm going to take care of you now, better than I have been, and you have to let me."
She blinked. "Take care of me?"
"Yeah," he said.
Abruptly she smiled a closed-mouthed smile that somehow seemed sweeter for being less obvious. Leaning over, he smoothed her hair back and kissed her lips softly. As the kiss deepened, he considered lying back down beside her, but there would be time for that later. Lots of time. A lifetime to hold her and love her this way and other ways lay before them both.
Sensing a change in his mood, she broke the kiss and he got out of bed, searching for his clothes. She didn't get dressed, just watching as he pulled on his coat and stamped his feet into his shoes, the covers pulled up to her chin. She stretched luxuriously as soon as he was dressed and ready to go. He smiled at her as he turned away and felt a sense of peace in his heart that she understood so much of him that it was unnecessary to say goodbye or make promised about when he would return or that he would be careful. She used to say those things all the time, but now she trusted him to take care of himself and he would honor that expectation. His hand lingered in the doorway as he walked out of the room.
It didn't take him very long to determine that Damion had left the palace. People were talking about it constantly. Yesterday he had gone out on his own to visit Manny's family. The palace staff was aghast that the Prince of Taravren, so recently returned to them from a kidnapping that had terrified the entire country, had driven himself out into the city without an escort. They seemed particularly hung up on the idea of Damion driving a car. Apparently, he never had before. And now he was gone again, this time on horseback (they were used to that) but still alone, and not on one of his own horses.
After questioning the stable grooms, Heero borrowed a motorbike from one of the mechanics in the palace who was honored to have a gundam pilot use his machine, and rode out into the countryside in the direction Damion was reported to have gone. After a few minutes he caught signs of fresh tracks and followed them north to where the hills rolled and banked off into small gulches and abrupt dips in the earth. The sky was blue and empty overhead, stretching east and west like a sapphire ocean devoid of life. The ground was still wet with dew, the grass starting to get long and a brighter green than was usual for this time of year. He rode along a dirt path heavily trodden, but the farther he rode, the less traveled the path appeared and the more wild the area surrounding it. Though the scenery was lovely, a foreboding silence stuck in the air. It was too empty, too silent, like the life teeming in the grass was trapped beneath the ground. Or maybe it was the remnants of Damion's bottled up rage he was sensing.
Eventually, he could no longer make out the city because of the hills and the sheer distance he had traveled. What's more, the path left by horse's hooves vanished, though the grass was bent where Damion must have left the trail and headed out into the fields. The grass was almost as high has his shins out here, the ground a little too uneven for fast riding, but by the looks of it, Damion was riding fast, dangerously so. Mixed in with the grass were little yellow and blue flowers, rising out of the ground to drink the sun's warmth amidst the green of their neighbors. The light of the sun was cold and pale.
Heero slowed his bike, the motor protesting, and stopped it by a tree along the roadside. The motor was too loud and unnatural for a place like this. Besides, he was afraid Damion would hear it. The wilderness of the area seemed to press in on him.
The sound of horse's hooves caught him by surprise. He looked up in time to see a dark shape streak out of nowhere along the horizon, coming up from the other side of the hill he was climbing. For several seconds he watched the shape of the horse gallop over the crest of the hill, outlined on all sides by the bright blue of the sky, tail and mane streaming behind. Of course there was a rider on the horse's back, and Heero had no trouble making out Damion, sitting astride the horse with his back straight and gloves hands gripping the reins, staring straight ahead of him as he rode.
The beauty of the scenery sank into a pit as he remembered why he had come here. The horse looked a part of this place, wild and powerful, its hooves thundering over the land, but Damion looked more like a blot of black against the sky. He looked dangerous, and from what Heero could make out of his expression, he looked like he was in some amount of pain.
It wasn't much of a surprise when Damion slowed the horse to a stop. It pranced a little in place, nodding its head in protest at the sudden halt when it clearly wanted to run, but Damion kept the animal under control, his head turning to look Heero full in the face with a flat, hostile expression. The bruises on his face had faded. Heero couldn't even make them out at this distance. For a while the Prince of Taravren paused, holding the reins in both hands almost like he had forgotten them, and then urged the horse down the hill toward Heero at a light canter. About four feet from Heero, he stopped, shifting his weight more than drawing the reins. The pain Heero had seen in his face was gone. He looked cold now, cold and aloof and very much like a king, except for the tenseness in his face.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Damion demanded.
Heero stood on his own two feet, looking up at Damion from the ground, feeling more determined than small. He had spent too much time in a gundam. People looked like rodents from that height. "I came to find you," Heero said, and was aware when he spoke that the tone he used was as dark and hostile as it ever had been during the war. "I thought we could talk."
Damion's gray eyes flickered, but his expression didn't change. "I thought I made myself perfectly clear before," he said. "What have you come to do? Stab me again?" His lips curled in a smile, but his eyes were dead.
"If that's what it takes," Heero said in an almost emotionless tone.
"I won't take it so well this time."
"It doesn't matter."
Damion maneuvered the horse backward a step of two by shifting his weight, sneering. It looked odd on his face, that disgusted expression, and he seemed to be struggling with it. "You don't understand how much power I have and it's none of your business how I use it or how I'm feeling. I can't make things like they were before." His jaw clenched. "Things are not the way they were before," he said more quietly. He almost seemed to be speaking to himself by the end, his gray eyes glazing over. "We aren't friends, Heero. You're nothing to me."
"Come down from there and say that," Heero said, narrowing his eyes. Approaching him deliberately, he reached out for the horse, to hold it still so he could force Damion to meet him on his feet. He was surprised when Damion snapped to attention suddenly, his eyes tightening as he shifted his weight in the saddle. The horse reared a little, dancing on its back feet. Heero shouted as one of front hooves kicked him in the wrist. He fell from the power of it and had to leap backward to avoid being trampled as the animal came down. Shaking out his hand as he knelt, surprised it wasn't broken, he stared up at Damion in astonishment. The prince's face showed no compassion or regret. He sat in the saddle like the horse hadn't moved at all, but his eyes blazed as he stared at Heero in something like a challenging stare.
"I don't take orders from you," Damion said coolly. "I'm sorry for what I said before," he added, turning his head. "Back at the estate, if that's what you want to hear. I don't care about any of that stuff I rebuked you for. I didn't expect more from you at the time. The point is that we can not be friends and I was a fool to think otherwise. If we can't be friends it would be unfair to be anything else. The separation is too great."
Heero got to his feet, flexing his hand and cracking the wrist. He could almost feel the anger in Damion, clouding and consuming everything like a storm brewing inside of him that swept away reason, judgment, compassion and kindness. Damion looked like a man whose foundations had crumbled into a chasm and the only thing left to power him was the pure fury fueled by his losses. "What separation?" Heero asked, though he knew the answer.
"I'm a prince. You never understood that. We can't be friends." It was an excuse, a device used to ward others away. Heero knew it well. He used to use it too.
"I'm a gundam pilot," Heero replied in slow, dark and clear tones. "You never understood that either, but I think we've done all right."
Damion's eyes blazed like the sea on a stormy day as he turned his horse again. "We're through talking."
"If this is about Manny, I'm sorry," Heero shouted. "I didn't mean to be callous. I've never had anyone close to me die before. I know you must be…"
"No," Damion said curtly, angrily. The horse halted under him. His eyes flared up like twin moons as his head jerked back. "Don't you dare talk about him. You don't know. I don't think you have any concept how I feel right now, about anything. I'm not sure you possess feelings for other people. I'm not sure you have them yourself for anything outside Relena. Try to imagine what it would feel like to see her shot in the face and fall at your feet to bleed all over your shoes. That might give you a rough idea of how I feel, but it wouldn't help you understand what I've lost or how lost I feel right now!"
The image of Relena dying that way was too real and too often a thing of his nightmares.
Leaping forward, he made a wild grab for the reins. Damion hit his hands away, shouting unintelligibly as he grappled with both Heero and the horse, his teeth gritted. Heero felt a fist connect with his face and turned his head aside from the blow, but somehow he managed to pull the horse around until he could get a hold on Damion.
"Damn it, Heero!" Damion yelled, struggling. "You don't…!"
He was cut off as they both toppled to the ground and the horse bolted away from both of them. The saddle had slipped from Heero's weight on one side and hung on the horse a little crooked. Once in the clear, the animal shook its mane and trotted away, but both men ignored it. There was real rage in Damion's eyes now, a rage fit to scorch him as the other man rose up in a crouch, Heero's hand still locked on his arm.
"If you want to hurt me, hit me!" Heero said in seething tones.
He got his wish. Damion hit him, punching him in the face and knocking him over. He made as if to stand up and walk away in something like disgust, but despite the pain that flared up under his eye, Heero fought back, grabbing Damion about the shoulder and kicking him down again. Damion coughed, rolling. As soon as he had breathing space, Heero got to his feet and turned, bracing himself. Damion, his clothes covered in dirt and water from the grass, sprung back up and surged at Heero like he had never been struck down, his booted feet scraping against the dirt of the path.
"What is your problem?" Damion yelled. Heero caught the first punch that was aimed at his face and twisted the hand that flung it, but the second caught him in the stomach and he staggered, coughing.
"It's not my fault Manny is dead," Heero said when he found his voice. "Or that you were abused by Gardiner. You need to get past this. Manny is dead, Damion! He's…"
"My friend!" Damion seethed, and there were tears in his eyes, hot angry tears. "But you're right," he spat. "It's not your fault." He aimed another blow for Heero's head, but Heero ducked, attempting to elbow Damion in the stomach; the other man evaded him. "I was the one who was there." Damion added as he turned, twisting on his feet. "Me! If anyone's to blame…"
Heero caught his next attack and twisted the prince's arm. Damion cursed, rising up on his toes. "It's Gardiner," Heero spat. "And you can't control that. It doesn't do anyone any good for you to dwell on what can not be changed. He will be dealt with, but you have to let go of trying to do everything yourself!"
Furious, Damion kicked him, and Heero caught sight of the prince's face before he fell backward from the kick. For a moment before the blows came, he was alarmed. The prince hardly seemed to recognize him. Heero swore as Damion pinned him down and slugged him repeatedly across the face. Heero tried to cry out, taking blow after blow in a shower of head-ringing pain. The blood that trickled down his forehead got in his eyes so that he had to shut them. Was Damion wearing rings? Desperately, he struggled, bringing his legs around until he managed to throw Damion off balance. In the next second he kicked, landing a shoed foot heavily against Damion's chest and shoving him backward into the grass.
There was silence as Damio hit the earth and stumbled to his knees a few yards away. They both stopped, breathing hard. Heero raised him self off the ground slowly, ears ringing and head pounding. His vision was a little blurry and he could smell dirt and grass all over him. There were small rocks pressed into skin and caught in his clothes everywhere. Wearily, he sat up, tears stinging his eyes from the pain and the blood. He blinked it away and put a hand to his forehead. There was a small scratch by his hairline, the blood flow already stopping, partially because of the dirt that got mixed in with it.
Damion was kneeling in the grass with his hand clutching his lower ribs where Heero had kicked him. His eyes were tearing too, but by his breathing, he was trying desperately to get himself under control. At first, Heero didn't understand. Heero had given Damion harder knocks in the head. But then he realized that he must have kicked him where he was already wounded.
Staggering to his feet, Heero half collapsed beside him, reaching out to touch his arm. "Damion… Damion, are you all right?"
"Get off of me," Damion said, drawing back. He coughed and shuddered, squeezing his eyes shut. "Shit. Manny." His eyes teared up as he knelt in the grass, no matter how he blinked or tried to look angry. "Shit." He blinked repeatedly and then ducked his head, taking huge, gulping breaths of air. "Why now?" he seemed to say to himself. "Damn you, Heero. I don't have time for this. I can't…"
"Damion…"
"Leave me alone."
It was then that Heero realized Damion was crying. He seemed to be trying to be angry about it, but the tears kept coming and soon his whole body began to shake. Heero swallowed, not sure what to do. Every once in a while Damion would swear using words Heero had never heard him use before and then he fell back, burying his head on his knees. There was nothing to do and nothing to say. Heero had always been taught that showing emotion was different from living by it, and especially after a fight it was not permissible to cry with pride. But this felt different. Damion didn't give a damn about their fight.
Heero didn't say anything. He just sat there with his elbows looped over his knees and his hands hanging, blinking away the pain in his head and trying to keep himself from rubbing his face in places Damion had landed a few particularly good punches. He didn't say anything to Damion or ask what he was crying about. Heero had no experience with that kind of emotional release, he understood it. Maybe it was just the pain in his chest that had started it, but everything would well up on top of that; Manny's death, Gardiner's escape, Damion's own helplessness, Audrey… Heero hoped so anyway. Not that it would end here, but it would help.
It still made him uncomfortable. All he felt able to do was sit there and watch him without judgment. A sense of helplessness nearly overwhelmed him, and he wondered if Damion felt that too. Idly, his hands played with the grass, ripping it out of the ground and watching it flutter out of his hands. He wasn't sure how long he sat there, trying not to feel moved, but abruptly he realized things had grown very quiet. It was the kind of quiet that came at the end of a fight, when weariness consumed the fire of battle, and also the kind of quiet that came when there was no more emotion to give.
Turning his head, Heero saw Damion with his head lifted and his eyes cleared, looking straight ahead of him into nowhere with his elbows on his knees, looking sad and drained, but calm.
"You probably think I'm weak," Damion said. "I wish I wasn't."
Heero didn't respond for a moment. "If you have good reason it's not the same as weakness. You have to live by your emotions without being ruled by them, but you can't bottle them up either."
Damion smiled a faint, sad smile, and looked down. "Sounds strange, coming from you."
"I have emotions," Heero said quietly. "I always did. I don't express them very well sometimes, but I have them. I've never felt grief before."
"It hurts," Damion said with a choke, and tears sprang up in his eyes again as he nodded his head a little jerkily. "I miss him. I don't know what to do." Damion closed his eyes. "I wish I could explain what it feels like. There's a void that can't be filled and it feels like its swallowing me and I don't have the power to stop it."
"Don't fill it with anger," Heero said, tossing a small pebble out into the grass. "You'll only hurt yourself."
"But I'm angry. I wish I could have killed him, though, Heero. Gardiner, I mean. I wanted to kill him."
Heero looked at him sideways. "You don't mean that," he said slowly. Damion blinked, raising his head. "Even when I hated you I didn't really want to kill you. I've never wanted to kill anyone. I just had to do it sometimes. I can't believe it would do you any good to take the life of someone you want to murder."
His expression hardened like a rock. "It wouldn't be murder. It would be justice."
"Damion," Heero said. "If you kill someone with that kind of hate you might as well be murdering them. It doesn't feel right. Even Wufei got no joy from killing Treize. You'll just make yourself into a monster."
"What am I supposed to do?" Damion asked. "I can't just let it go. What he did to me…"
"Let Julia take care of it," Heero said.
"She's betrayed me," he said coldly.
"I don't think so," Heero said. "I'm not claiming I always understood her, but I don't think she betrayed you. I think she tried to save you from this. If she brought Gardiner back to Taravren, what would you do?"
Damion closed his eyes. "I would want to kill him," he said quietly. "Maybe with time I would… I don't know. He deserves death, Heero."
"Maybe," Heero said quietly. "But you shouldn't have to deal it yourself. You need to stop thinking you can do everything on your own. I remember how you wore yourself out when Relena and I came here. There was no reason for that."
Damion was silent for a moment, reflecting. "I apologize for what I said to you," he said slowly. "For everything that I said."
"I deserved some of it," Heero said in a hollow voice.
Damion smiled again, though his continued grief was evident. "Yeah, you did." Picking a rock up off the ground he threw it, watching it bounce along the rocky path. The horse was grazing in the pasture to their left. "I'm sorry if your face swells up too," he added.
"Don't worry about it," Heero said, tossing a second rock in the direction Damion had thrown his.
"I hope mine is better before my wedding," Damion added almost idly, looking again into the distance. "Most of the old marks faded after a couple of days."
"I didn't hit you that hard."
"Thanks."
"What are friends for?"
Damion looked back at him, his eyes clear, almost looking like they used to. "Friends? I thought I explained…"
Heero turned his head slightly. "I've never really had a friend before," he said quietly. "There are the other pilots, but they were comrades first and it's not really… I don't know. I'm not really sure what goes into friendship, but I'd be willing to try, if you'll reconsider your… explanation."
He suddenly realized that Damion wasn't looking at him. He seemed to be staring at nothing, struggling with a depression blacker than Heero had ever seen on anyone. Friends. Damion had lost his, and everything, absolutely everything reminded him of it. What must he be thinking had happened to Manny? Or was he merely feeling sorry for himself? Maybe the emotions were not that clear. Heero opened his mouth to say something more, to say anything to distract Damion from his darker thoughts, and slowly he began to explain how he had met Duo and the other pilots, first in halting steps and the gradually with more clarity.
Damion blinked at him, his face strangely melancholy, yet attentive. "I always wanted to hear the whole story," he said quietly. "About you and Relena and your part in the war." He stopped talking and Heero knew he was being counted on to fill the void, to provide information enough to shuffle back the horrors that invaded Damion's thoughts. Steeling himself, he started from the beginning.
Heero had intended to keep the story to the basic facts, things that didn't really bother him to share, but as he talked, Damion seemed to come alive again and kept interrupting with personal questions. "What did you think of Relena when you first met her? How did you meet up with Dr. J? What is it like to pilot a gundam? Why did you want to die in battle? Duo shot you when you first met? Should that surprise me?" It went on and on like that until he felt he had dredged up things about the war he never noticed when it was actually happening. The more he talked the weirder he felt, and the more vulnerable. He didn't think he would have been able to manage it if not for all the earlier practice with Relena, though he didn't tell Damion as many details as he told her. The look on Damion's face kept him going. Gradually, he seemed to perk up, his attention being drawn away from his problems with Gardiner and his grief over Manny as he involved himself Heero's crazy past, though a sadness still hung around him. Heero supposed it would take some time for that to go away.
Heero finished with Relena, explaining how strange it was to be with her now, and how wonderful. Damion was quiet again. "What are you thinking?" Heero asked slowly.
"I'm scared of my wedding," Damion said.
"Why?" Heero asked. He understood what Damion had meant when he said that he was right about Audrey. She had been taken advantage of at some point in her past and maybe that was the problem. Heero didn't feel comfortable discussing this sort of thing (he could barely make sense of his own wife) but he thought he ought to try. "Gardiner? I don't think that should worry you."
Damion looked away and the wind blew his dark hair around his face, hiding his eyes. Heero shivered from the chill. "I don't know if I can make her happy," Damion said. "I feel like there's so much missing in me right now that…"
"You are more similar in some ways now," Heero said quietly, looking for something to say that he hoped would be comforting. "You both have that sorrow about you. You'll probably always have a piece of it in remembrance for these times, but since she's been with you she's not as cold and sad as she was at first. In time, you won't be either. So you already make her happy. As for the wedding, I think you're making a bigger deal out of it then you need to."
"Marriage?"
"No, sex. Just… You'll both be fine. Audrey's a sensible girl. You shouldn't have to worry about it."
Damion lowered his head. He still looked sad, but no longer angry or cold. "Manny won't see my wedding, you know," he said slowly. "Or my children. And Terese is gone…" He sighed, closing his eyes.
"Yeah," Heero said. "But you will have a wedding and you will have children. Think of that."
Damion smiled, though his eyes didn't reflect a cheery light.
"You were wrong, you know," Heero said out of nowhere. "I've been lost most of my life. Maybe I still am in some ways."
"Well," Damion said with a touch of bitterness, not missing a beat. "At least we have something in common. I just hope I can pull it together for Audrey." He clutched at a fistful of grass and looked at it in his hand. "I love her so much. I was confused before, but now…" He nodded. "I love her. I'm scared and I think she is too, but I want this. I just hope we can get through it."
Heero didn't say anything.
*****
Abel Gardiner wasn't crazy. Not yet.
To Julia, Able seemed to be a man on his way to madness, not due to any unexplained chemical imbalance in the brain, but from mere rationalization. She watched him out of the corner of her eye as he stood on the balcony smoking, looking out over the city of Rome with his back turned to her and his hand in his pocket. She busied herself with the laptop set up on the wood table inside, reading over the news in Taravren and internationally.
Escaping from the abandoned estate and getting here had not been complicated. He had left his armies and weapons and power behind without a qualm. Somehow, he seemed to forget his part in the war that had destroyed so many lives even more quickly than he dismissed his power. They had surprised one another with just how clever they could be and she had to admit to herself that it had been an amusing trip. Abel had a strange and astonishing taste for reckless adventure that she would have fancied more in other circumstances. As it was, the intelligence and unpredictability that governed his wild streak were cumbersome to her efforts to unravel his mystery and deal with him accordingly. But he had to be dealt with. She knew it.
"Well?" she heard him say as he turned from the balcony, flicking the butt of his cigarette over the rail before he strode inside.
"As I expected," she murmured, her fingers curving delicately around the lid of the laptop. "You're wanted for treason and so am I."
He chuckled. "Treason? Because I was born on Taravren soil? Please. He just wants an excuse to kill me."
"I know," Julia said calmly, closing the laptop. "And you know why."
"Yeah, I remember."
He did now.
He was still moving behind her, pacing the floor, probably looking for another cigarette. Occasionally she thought she could feel his eyes on her, but she ignored it for the most part. His obsession with her was not the most peculiar part of him.
Abel wasn't crazy, but he was getting there. He might have developed a serious mental disorder if he kept on the violent road that he was on. He chose not to remember violence for which he was responsible and in so choosing blinded a part of himself. He remembered things if pressed, but even then there was always an excuse for what he had done, a callous or amused way of explaining why it was necessary. The farther back into his past she pressed the hazier his memories became and the more elaborate the excuses. At length he would fall silent, looking troubled, and change the subject. A few hours later he might even have forgotten the conversation.
She had gathered in bits and pieces that sometime in his past he had witnessed or experienced great violence for a great deal of time, but he was not forthcoming with the details. Of course he hated it, and tried to forget it. He chose not to remember anything that might trigger that memory, and it was the combination of remembering and trying not to remember that made him violent. His mind kept searching for the realization that that was not his fault, and it wasn't, but without dealing with it directly the best he could do was desensitize himself to violence as a whole. Failing that, he would displace the blame, especially of that which truly was his fault, and his memory rebelled against remembering something he hated.
She had troubled him trying to get him to remember. Sometimes she thought she could see him thinking about it, trying to reassemble the shards of his past with the result only being frustration and fury. Whatever mental blocks prevented him from remembering whatever it was he feared also prevented him from moving passed it. In retrospect, it was amazing he was as stable as he was. Daily, he seemed perfectly normal, but sometimes he would be irrationally angry and she knew that if she had been a man, he might have hit her indiscriminately.
However, his feelings and thoughts and motivations were all very much under his awareness and control. He took control of whatever he could, including people and weapons and women and wars. But power also frustrated him because he had been deprived of it his whole life and it angered him to see other people wielding it "poorly," when they had no right to it at all. Damion was one of those people: a Prince with a loving family who did not make use of a power he took for granted. But Julia knew that Damion chose to limit himself. Gardiner did not understand that restraint and temperance gave one more control, not less. He was jealous, and hateful, and angry, and very much aware of it, which made him angrier still. And the anger made him violent.
Abruptly, she felt his fingers brush against the back of her neck and shoulders, caressing her skin very lightly. "Do you mean to turn me in?" he asked. The way he touched her was not suggestive or controlling or coaxing in any way. He never tried to seduce her like that. His touch was more…affectionate, almost casual, which frightened her more than the other.
"No," she said simply, not reacting in any particular way. Reaching down by her foot, she found her handbag. Rising out of her chair, she adjusted her dress and turned to him, smiling. He looked back at her levelly, and she had the feeling that he understood that those smiles were rarely a reflection of her real mood. He often regarded her expressions like they were puzzles rather then accepting them at face value like so many other men.
Once she was standing, his hands went for her waist, holding her almost like she was a bird, fragile but firm so she wouldn't fly away. There was so much material to her dress that all she registered was the light pressure that went into that hold. She remained perfectly still, her arms straight at her sides, overlapping his hands.
The look in his eye was not as sentimental as his touch. His eyes sparkled with a knowing guile, the sort that made him a leader when he wanted to be. There was power in his expression, and also a certain stubborn desire in the way he looked at her. He wanted her, not just her body, but the whole of her. There was something about her he seemed to find irresistible, only unlike the other men, he seemed to know what it was.
The look she returned was hard eyes in a cool mask. He picked up on it and scowled. "You are still angry with me," he said, clenching his jaw. "Your prince Damion will recover, you know. I didn't permanently hurt him. If it bothers you so much, go back to him and seek pardon. You haven't done anything. He'll forgive you."
"I can't leave you here," she murmured coolly. "And he may not."
"You mean you don't want to," he said with almost a baiting confidence. "Tell me, have any of your other men loved you like I have?"
She schooled her face to stillness, banishing the images of their intimate moments. He was her best lover, but that was not his business or hers either. Business was a different game, and currently a more important one. So was justice. If only they had met under different circumstances.
His eyes drifted down away from her face to the hand that reached into her purse and a moment later his hands released her waist, taking a few steps back. His expression didn't alter a hair when she pulled a small silver gun out of her handbag and aimed it at him with a straight arm and an expressionless face.
"I thought you didn't want to see me killed," he said, hardly sounding surprised or upset.
"I said I didn't want Damion to kill you," she replied, but she had to force her voice to be cold.
Don't forget to review! The encouragement is really useful and I'm so so SO happily overwhelmed with the responses I've gotten. Please let me know what you think of this chapter and the next one will be up faster.