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!
****************
Chapter
Fourteen: Once More Unto the Breach,
Dear Friends
****************
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.//
