NIOBE'S VIOLETS

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)

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Chapter Twelve: Let Determined Things to Destiny

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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."

*****