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)

AUTHOR'S NOTES: AU, Humour, Drama. Almost finished...we're into the homestretch now. Thanks to everybody who's offered feedback on this, or even let me know they're reading it! Not as many answers in this one, just setting things up for the finale!

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Chapter Fourteen: Once More Unto the Breach, Dear Friends

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Dekim Barton drew himself to his feet, gathering dark robes around his gaunt, leathery body. His visage more resembled demon than human now, and it was easy to tell what he really was. His eyes blazed crimson as he faced down the furious Sylvia and her glowing sword. "Your challenge," he declared grandly, "is refused."

A wordless growl burst from Sylvia's lips as she advanced. "Then I'm not challenging you," she snarled. "This isn't a duel, demon, or a challenge to a fair fight--it's just getting you out of the way before you hurt any of them."

"My dear prophetess," the demon laughed, "whatever makes you think you can? Every time we've ever fought, you and I, you've lost." His gaze darkened, his mouth twisting with sadistic rage. "What will it take for you to learn your lesson? To be forced to watch once again while I eliminate them all, turn them against each other, use them as the instruments of their own destruction?"

"Over my dead body," the slender oracle snapped. She made her way forward, expert swings of the serpent-hilted sword clearing her path of golems. The courtyard grass was already thick and sticky with blood and the ochre that fallen humans leave behind, and Sylvia's bare feet and the hem of her white robe were stained with it. Her cloak had been long since abandoned--Heero spotted it crumpled in a heap, and hurried Duo in that direction, finally grabbing the garment and wrapping it around his lover.

Flame burst around them as an exhausted Wufei staggered past, his fingers wrapped tight around the hilt of an antique broadsword. He nodded to them with no more than mild curiosity--his goal was Sylvia and the demon she faced. "Stay back," he directed as he passed. "You must stay safe--I will guard her."

"Like hell," Duo grumbled under his breath, wrapping the crimson cloak tighter around himself and slogging along through the grass behind the firestarter. "We're all in this together now, and if I'm gonna be some secret weapon--"

"You already were," Heero corrected, but didn't try to stop him--rather he glided along next to him, his unfurled wings lifting him just enough aloft to keep him from having to step in the blood-saturated grass. "But he's not the only problem--where's Dermail? And Tsuberov? We've got them to deal with too...."

Duo paused to scan the grounds for the others. Hilde had found a machete in the gardening shed and was cutting a swath in the horde of dead-eyed golems. At first, she'd been gleefully shouting battle-cries--and gloating in the fact that her wounds mended themselves as fast as she received them--but now weariness had set in and her excited adrenaline rush had given way to the cold, dispassionate business of dealing death. Duo caught a glimpse of her deep blue eyes, and they were so much older than he remembered them--her memories were swelling as well, it was they who swung the blade like an extension of her arm, and who knew just where to step out of the way as the bodies collapsed without the need to watch them fall.

Lady Une, too, was felling golems, though it seemed she was trying to clear a path toward Sylvia and Wufei. She was rumpled but unwounded, and unarmed as well--she would reach out and touch the undead creatures and after a brief flare they would crumple to the ground.

He found Dermail then--he had cornered Relena, who faced him down with a defiant glare betrayed only by the light of fear in her blue eyes. His Power oozed from his fingers, a sickly red-orange glow reaching tentacle-like to encircle the girl's forearms, pinning her in mid-air and sinking, dissolving into her skin. He saw her bite down on her lip til blood trickled from the corner of her mouth, refusing to succumb to the impulse to scream.

Then from out of the writhing mass of golem flesh, a flash of blue jacket and long blonde hair--Dorothy forced her way through and slammed into her grandfather from the side, knocking him off-balance, and the crimson tendrils stretched and weakened. Duo could only imagine Dermail said something to her--he saw her lips move, saw her shake her head almost sadly as she raised her hand. Lightning crackled in her palm, white-hot and blinding, wrapped around her fingers and licked down the length of her arm. She released it then and it /leapt/, diving into Dermail's body, wracking his form with its force--he shook, sizzled, suddenly rigid and just as abruptly limp again, hovering over the sodden ground until at last the shock faded and he crumpled, smoke still wisping from the membrane of his wide frightened eyes.

*****

Sally felt the surge of Power even from the confines of her infirmary--it boiled in her blood, lit up as if the entire garden had awakened and bloomed spontaneously into vivid, glorious life. The pulse of it pounded in weak human veins, breathing into her sensitive heart, leaving the fresh taste of rain and wild chaos on her tongue. And inside it she could feel the faint aura that was Zechs, enrapt, joyful, determined. //He's going to need me.//

Quatre still sat at the head of the cot, a silent sentry with the stains of undried tears glistening on his cheeks, staring fiercely down at the unconscious Catherine as if willing her to awaken. Noin still searched for Treize, her vision interrupted sporadically by images of the battle outside which she passed along dutifully. She felt Zechs' call as well--Sally saw her jerk upright at the first brush of Power, her azure eyes widening in surprise.

"I'll go to him," Sally said, before Noin could break her grip on the mirror she gazed into. Her friend nodded once, a flash of sorrow flickering across her face and vanishing into concentration as the clairvoyant turned once more to her task. If Quatre had noticed at all, he gave no sign of it, and Sally hurried outside.

She bypassed the courtyard completely--she already knew what was going on there, and that was not where she was needed. Zechs and his plants were keeping the attack from closing around the school, guarding the other side, and as long as he remained there, the battle would be contained.

Unfortunately he could only hold the garden until he ran out of blood. Sally was a healer, both of body and mind. She refused to lose a friend to this battle, to let him sacrifice himself as if he were a soldier. She had memories of a past life as well--Une had drawn them out of her long ago in a fit of loneliness, and she understood all of them far better than they suspected. And as long as she drew breath, she would not let any of them die again.

She found him then, kneeling at the root of the willow tree, struggling weakly to remain conscious as his blood leaked ever slower into the dirt his hands lay limp against. His skin was pale beneath his tan, and his glassy eyes barely shifted at her approach.

"I'm holding them," he said--his voice was strong but far away, as if it were only his spirit that spoke, disconnected from the body that housed it.

"You need me," she told him.

She rested her hand on his shoulder, releasing a trickle of her own Power into him. It strengthened him, anchored his buoyant soul to his more earthly form, and she felt his pulse rise and even beneath her fingers. His breath came stronger, and his fingers pressed harder into the dirt as the wounds on his palms slowly healed. He had given the earth enough blood--it was unnecessary now, with Sally at his shoulder pouring herself through him into the soil.

He leaned back to rest against her as his vision slowly began to clear.

****

Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.

Quatre was concentrating so hard he didn't immediately notice when the lavender-grey eyes flickered open at last, blinking rapidly with the sudden confusion of shared vision. One slender hand lifted, slowly, to brush a light caress across his cheek.

"Quatre...."

"Trowa?" It was too much to hope for--but while the voice was Cathy's, the inflection was not, and immediately after the word left his lips the Siren realised he hoped it /wasn't/ his lover, severed utterly from his body.

"He's in here too, yes." /That/ was Cathy. The hand dropped away, and she swung herself off the bed, pressing her fingers to her temple as if to clear it.

"But what about--where's his body then--" Quatre was worried, and more than a little confused.

Cathy shrugged. "We couldn't find it...we'll hope Treize has it. Come on, Quatre, there's no time for this, we're under attack, remember?" She took only a moment longer to orient herself before striding out of the infirmary with Quatre in close pursuit. He was wrong, he realised--it wasn't completely Catherine, any more than the first whisper of his name had been completely Trowa. They had merged together again, become a single gestalt entity, closer than even they had ever been.

And Quatre, while he supposed he should be happy for them in some way, wanted his Trowa back.

They emerged in the courtyard in the midst of chaos. Tsuberov's flesh golems were everywhere--either moving about and attacking, or as inanimate corpses littering the ground, but in either case they managed to get in the way. Sylvia and Wufei confronted a glowing Dekim Barton in the ruins of a crumbled gable, and the others slowly made their way toward that centre.

A golem--a badly-sewn construct of human skin and bone, with a disturbingly young face and dead, empty eyes--swung at them with the only weapon that came to hand; a broken branch. The air lit in a flash of blue as Catherine/Trowa shielded effortlessly, and a flick of her wrist sent the creature catapulting backward.

"Somebody has to get rid of Tsuberov," the gestalt said simply. "It's the only way to stop all these damn things."

"I don't want to leave you," Quatre shot back. His need to protect battled fiercely with the unhappy realisation that his own talent was all but useless against these soulless creatures.

"Quatre..." The lavender eyes softened, and he thought he caught a flash of green within them. He imagined in that instant that this was really Trowa, only borrowing another form the way he had done so many times. "Please, love...we have to at least hold the school until Treize gets back. You're the one who can do this. If any of this is going to work out--if we're ever to be separate people again--we have to end this."

Reluctantly, Quatre nodded. "He's hiding on the balcony, out of harm's way, so he can control the golems. Can you get me there?"

The gestalt nodded. "Of course. And...I love you, Quatre. I always have." Even in Catherine's soft soprano voice, the Siren knew whose words those were.

"I love you too, Trowa," he whispered. And even as the words left his lips, the gestalt lifted a hand, and Quatre felt himself lifted into the air. //All right, Tsuberov. I'm coming for you.//