NIOBE'S
VIOLETS
by
Ashura Nagisa
DEDICATION: For Dan, for his 1x2 School fic contest
DISCLAIMERS: The usual. I don't own any of the characters, names or places from GW, I've just
warped them.
WARNINGS:
Yaoi (3x4, 1x2), Yuri (HxC, RxD)
ARCHIVE: Desolation Angels
(http://www.dreamwater.net/ashura)
**********
Chapter
Twelve: Let Determined Things to
Destiny
**********
Note: At this point the chapters get shorter, and
it becomes impossible for me to remain in Duo's perspective consistently and
still get the whole story told, so some of the other characters will get to
have a voice as well. Also...lots of
flashbacky things in this, it gets really weird. (Not that it wasn't before.)
****
All
eyes in the crowded infirmary looked to the door as Sylvia entered, Duo
hurrying in her wake. She could have
made a grand entrance, but neglected to--wisps of flyaway hair defied control
to float like a halo around her head, the hem of her gown tangled in her legs,
and the sword banged awkwardly against her back.
"What
the--" Hilde began, but broke off as Sally glided from the cot to meet
them.
"So,"
she said softly, "it's this close."
From
one corner, Quatre let out a sigh. "We're going to be fighting sooner than we thought, aren't we?"
Sylvia
met his eyes over Sally's shoulder, mouthing the words in silence--I'm
sorry.
Quatre
shrugged, straightening finally, his aquamarine eyes taking on a wild,
disconcerting gleam as he assumed a mantle of command he had yet to be
presented with. "So be it. Where are Dorothy and Miss Noin? Someone needs to find out just what's
happened to Trowa and Mr. Treize. Then
we need guards to man the balconies and keep an eye out for anyone entering the
grounds."
"Hilde,
Duo," Sylvia inserted fluidly, her voice barely more than a whisper,
"please find the others, and tell them to meet back here--except Relena
and Wufei, they should guard." Quatre glanced at her, startled, but nodded agreement. Duo, thoroughly unnerved, turned and darted
from the room, Hilde close on his heels. She, he noticed, looked no better than he, and they submitted to the
others' bizarre direction purely out of trust that someone understood what was
going on far better than they did--it was instinct, merely, that an insane prophet
and a Siren whose only command to date had been on a gameboard would somehow
see them out of this alive and whole.
"I'll
check the pond, you try upstairs," Hilde said, reaching out to catch his
hand and squeeze it once before pelting down the passageway that would lead her
back outside. Duo spun around the
corner and headed up the stairs, ducking through the door at the first landing.
He
found Wufei and Lady Une standing sentry at the entrance to Dorothy's room, and
they both looked startled as he skidded down the corridor toward them.
"You've
got to come meet the others in the infirmary," he gasped out. "Something's happened to Trowa and Mr.
Treize, everyone's convening there--except you, Wufei, Quatre wants you to
watch for intruders in case Romafeller shows up ahead of schedule."
"/Quatre/
wants...?" Wufei began questioningly, but broke off when Lady Une fairly
snapped to attention, slipping her glasses from her pocket and sliding them
onto her nose.
"Wufei,
take the first balcony, Duo, you take the third. Inform me at once if they make an attempt to breach the
perimetre, and keep them from entering. I will take Dorothy to meet the others." In a simple effect of posture she had adopted an air of authority
that neither boy could question; they only nodded sharply once and dashed off
to do her bidding.
"Listen,"
said Wufei, as they ran for the stairs, "if anybody does try to come
through, I'll take care of holding them off--you'll be higher, so you can see
further. If you see anything, run down
to tell me right away, then go let Lady Une know. All right?"
"You
got it," Duo answered, waving what he hoped was a jaunty goodluck to his
schoolmate as Wufei turned off to man his post.
He
continued up the stairs, hurrying for his own--the little spot so near the
gabled roof where he and Heero had spend their tender moments. He was panting by the time he reached it,
his legs burning with the exertion of running up every flight of stairs in the
school with barely a breath between, and rested heavily against the
railing. Now all he could do was wait
until the enemy arrived.
****
Wherever
Trowa was, it was very dark. It was
disconnected, too, and while he remembered vaguely that he should have had a
body, he could find nothing substantial about himself that would obey his
commands. So he floated--detached and
inchoate, as if he were the living, conscious proof that all matter is nothing
more than energy.
It had
hurt, but only for a moment--there had been a sharp pain, piercing through his
skin--he had called out at that moment, screamed her name with what could well
have been his last breath, praying that she'd hear him even in this strange
not-place he was trapped in now.
Memories
here were as detached as thought; sometimes they brushed the surface of his
mind as nothing more than a scene, a captured moment, with no context to give
it time or place--random, chaotic.
//"Come
along, Mariemaya, it's time for your medicine. Don't want you to get sick now, do we...?" Hands, heavy on his small shoulders,
steering him down sterile hallways. And
he following, because he didn't know any better.
A door
opening. A gaunt old man with greying
hair and a dark gleam alight in eyes that chilled Trowa to the depth of his
soul--oh God, he knows, he knows!--and then the prick of steel against flesh,
and everything ripped, ripped apart--"CATHY!!!!!!!!!!"//
//A
flimsy wooden building--the stable--it must be springtime because of the sun
shining through the crack between the boards, it only ever did that in early
spring before the leaves outside grew to cover it. His fingers stroked slowly through his horse's chestnut
mane. Tah-mal-lee, the stallion's name
was: it meant "always," and
he was a gift from Arbaa when last his lover had been able to leave the desert
and visit him. Their interludes were
few and distant, and the time between was punctuated with a longing that
bordered on obsession. They shared
dreams frequently--something neither had been brave enough to tell their
parents; it was a dangerous practice and not to be wasted on the frustrated
erotic fantasies of barely-grown boys. Trey-ti pressed his cheek against Tah-mal-lee's neck, breathing in the
comforting scent of horsehair and leather. "I miss him," he confessed in a heartbroken whisper. "I miss him...."//
//The
shackles they locked him in had been painted with venom, some kind of acid that
ate slowly through his skin, its sting keeping him entirely too awake. He tried to change, to shift form to
something smaller that could escape their bonds and their notice, but whatever
they had done to him kept his power from answering. He had been able, at most, to will one lock open--but that too
they had prepared for, and there were several more that he could not force into
obescience. Even now the poison
dissolving into his bloodstream made his entire body burn from the inside.
But
that was nothing compared to the agony ringing in the heartbroken voice that
screamed his name.
"TREY-TI!!" In all the world, no-one else had such a
voice, no-one could capture a cosmos worth of emotion til it screeched along
the skin like a lathe, searing away layer after layer of skin til he was sure
he must be laid out naked to the sky--but he was not, and his body, disobedient
though it was, remained his own.
"Arbaa..." His voice rasped hoarse from his cracked
lips. "It's all
right..." It wasn't--it wasn't all
right at all, nothing was, but Trey-ti found he feared the feral light in his
love's pale eyes far more than he feared whatever further tortures awaited
him. It hurt, to see such anger in
those eyes that had shone with love for him til he trembled, to hear such pain
in the voice that could have caressed his sorrow away.
And as
he watched Arbaa lift his head and meet his gaze, he knew he was too late.
"No! It isn't! It won't be!" The blonde sheikh was already too far gone, driven past the edge
of hysteria by his own grief. He
screamed again--Trey-ti's name, soul-searing anguish exploding like a supernova
through the courtyard and over the plains, echoing in the star-filled sky. Trey-ti felt himself shatter, body and soul
in a thousand fragments cascading to the ground, a shower of falling stars that
once had been a boy. He was everything,
and nothing--and then for a time he was no more.//
Floating
again. Always floating, always
empty--he remembered so clearly for a moment, and then it was gone again. It was warm, though, and peaceful--he would
be content to remain so for eternity, but for the empty part of his heart that
told him something was missing.
Only he
had forgotten whatever that something was.
****
Une
breezed into the infirmary with Dorothy and Noin behind her. She had changed somehow, Heero realised--or
maybe she had come fully into memory, the way he had, or Wufei. Maybe things were all coming together at
long last, and this battle would truly be the final stand. Maybe this time all he had to do was win,
and he would be free--free to forget the past, to live happily with Duo, and when
the time came, to die with him.
Sylvia
caught his eye and smiled sadly. "Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished," she whispered in
his ear, Her breathy voice sent a
shiver down his spine.
Dorothy
plopped onto the edge of Cathy's sickbed and opened her laptop--the red-haired
telekinetic had still not moved; not even her eyelids fluttered in what seemed
to be much more than sleep. Miss Noin
was holding something in her hand--a ring, Heero recognised. One he'd noticed on Treize's finger, and
more recently on Lady Une's. It was the
Lady who had given Noin the bauble, as a focus for the clairvoyant's already
strong power.
"I'll
find him," Noin whispered reassuringly--she probably thought that no-one
but Lady Une heard her. Une just nodded
once, forcing back the worry that clouded her eyes.
"I'm
looking too," Dorothy spoke up. She didn't even touch the keyboard; her hands hovered over it like a
Ouija game, numbers meaningless to anyone else scrolling rapidly across her
screen. "If they're anywhere in
Romafeller's system, I'll find them."
"Maybe
I should go help watch--" Heero began. He felt helpless, like a trapped animal capable of doing nothing more
than chewing off his own leg or waiting for someone to come put him out of his
misery.
But
before the last words had left his lips, the door burst open, and Relena fell
against the door, panting hard.
She
said what they all expected to hear. "They're coming."
Noin
refused to break her concentration away from the mental search for Treize and
Trowa. Quatre and Sylvia exchanged a
look, and Dorothy glanced up at them without tearing her attention completely
away from the computer.
Quatre
nodded slowly, once. "Miss
Noin...Dorothy...keep looking. I'll
stay here and guard them and Catherine."
Sylvia
stepped forward, straightening the sword on her back as if finally it had
become the right weight for her--it no longer seemed awkward, any more than her
strange apparel. "You should come
with me, Heero," she commanded, but he was already ready and at her
side. She turned to Une instead,
resting a hand briefly on the older woman's arm.
"Come
on, Mother," she said softly. "It's time."
*****
