Well, here it is

Well, here it is. The grand finale itself...I do hope it lives up to expectations. All that's left now is to tie up a few loose ends. (And sorry for taking so long to get this out...the end of the semester completely flatlined my brain...anyways. On with the fic.) Oh, and thanks to everybody who's given me feedback on this so far! This one's for you!

NIOBE'S VIOLETS

by Ashura Nagisa

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 Fifteen: Tears May Drown the Wind

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The sodden grass squished under Duo's bare feet. It squelched with a thick liquid too warm for water, coating his skin to the ankles in blood like warpaint. The hem of the burgundy cloak trailed in it, the colour of dark dried blood itself, and he wrapped it tighter around his body.

Heero's arms wrapped around him firmly from behind, pinning his arms against his sides and bearing him up off the ground. There was a curious catch in the sigh that escaped his cracked lips, and his lover's breath warmed the side of his neck.

"I need my hands free," he said reluctantly, and he could feel Heero's nod against his cheek.

"I know, so will I, but let's get closer first," the angel answered, holding them just enough aloft to skim along the ground, to keep Duo's feet free of the blood-soaked grass and speed their progress through the battlefield. Short bursts of light showed Une's slower progress toward Sylvia and the demon, though Hilde was doing her best to clear the Lady a path. Her machete twisted out of a golem body and even as the creature fell it found another, slicing mercilessly through the animated things. They were sickly, hollow-eyed, their strength in numbers but not in strategy, for they were unintelligent puppets of the madman who had built them.

Duo watched Quatre lift into the air, though he didn't bother to question how, and float toward the only remaining balcony--the school itself was in shambles; his own burst of Power had left a pile of rubble where the east wing had once been.

"Treize is coming! He's on his way!"

The voice called Duo's attention backward--Noin's voice, as she pounded into the field, clearing her way with the revolver in her hands. But unlike the rest, she wasn't aiming for Sylvia--she made her way to where Dorothy had pulled a shaken Relena to her feet and now stood in front of her protectively, lightning crackling in her spread fingers.

"Relena," said Noin, "get to the garden if you can. You're needed there. Zechs needs you."

Dorothy looked about to protest as Relena slid her hand free, but a whisper from the watersprite forced a grim nod as she transferred protection of her lover. Noin's fingers wrapped loosely around Relena's arm as she fired again and led the girl away.

****

Gentle as Catherine was making an effort to be, Quatre decided he did not like floating through the air. He sunk his weight into his heels the moment his feet touched down on stone, reveling for a heartbeat or two in the security of solid floor beneath him--flimsy as that safety was, with the ancient walls still trembling from the force Duo had let loose on them.

Tsuberov did not seem to be aware of him. The necromancer stood proud and defiant on the ramparts, long blue robes billowing about his gaunt form, his arms crossed triumphantly across his chest. Stringy grey hair fell in matted clumps past his chin, blown into his face by the wind, his icy laughter echoing in the chill air like brittle glass.

Quatre wanted to push him.

"Aren't my darlings beautiful?" the old man asked querulously, and the Siren started--so he had been noticed, after all. "My lovely, lovely children." He turned slowly, beaming at Quatre with a broad, beatific smile and a mad, wild gleam in his colourless eyes.

"Are you crazy?" Quatre demanded. "Your 'children' aren't even alive!"

Tsuberov shrugged, nonchalant. "Maybe I am crazy," he agreed, almost bemused. "But oh, they are alive! Every drop of blood they consume, my beautiful boy, makes them more aware! They live, oh yes, because of the life they take--"

"Enough!!" Quatre launched himself at the mage before he could think better of it, before he could consider the consequences of an accident or misjudgment of distance that could send them both plummeting from the balcony. He slammed into Tsuberov, toppling them both onto the floor, digging his feet into the stone as they skittered toward the edge. He landed on top of the old man, but winded, and his advantage of position didn't last long--gaunt fingers seized a clump of his hair and yanked his head back. Oh, but it was difficult to concentrate--not only because his neck was bent at an angle that barely allowed him to breathe, but because of the thick whirl of the necromancer's emotions threatening to smother his sixth sense completely.

Tsuberov was very proud of his creations. He was also very, very mad.

"The blood is the life," he chanted seductively in Quatre's ear. "My children are immortal, beautiful boy, and when you and all the Prophet's kin have fed us, I will be as well."

In the end he was only an old man after all. Through the fog in his brain Quatre jerked his elbow back into Tsuberov's rib and twisted out of his grasp, gasping desperately for breath. He had refused Une's request to awaken his older memory--all he had were /moments/, nightmarish glimpses into a past in which the only certain thing was that he had somehow failed. He had let Trowa down and destroyed him. He had let /himself/ down.

He would not--"I will NOT fail again!" The words burst forth, independent of his will and yet an extension of it--and Power came with it, flooding him, trembling in the air before him and crackling in the breeze that licked the necromancer's skin.

"You think that you're immortal, old man?" he demanded harshly. Anger fueled his voice; the old man flinched as the Siren's power raised boils on his skin and then burst them, blood and fluid lubricating his dry, crackled skin.

The Siren stalked forward, his fingers clenched, his pulse throbbing in his temple, the Power in his voice almost too thick to be controlled. "Prove it," he continued, and Tsuberov shrank back in the face of his onslaught.

Quatre paused, far past the point of reason, or the strategy he was known for. Fury roared through his blood, coursed through his brain, rose with every heartbeat. He summoned it, called it from within the depths of his being, wrapped it in his tongue and then shot it--precisely directed, aimed like a bullet in a single spoken command:

"Fly."

****

Urgency flooded Relena's body as soon as she stepped into the garden--it sang through her feet, infiltrated her blood, exhorted her to run faster, /faster/. She'd always been able to feel it, but not like this--the heart and soul of nature, alive but in a world that never quite touched her own. But now the air was singing with it, and calling her, and she found herself compelled to answer.

She pounded down the path, through the trees, not questioning how she /knew/ somehow that Zechs would be at the pond, under the willow. She was just as unsurprised to see Sally there, her hand on the shaman's shoulder, both their faces pale and drawn and unfathomably tired.

"You need me," she panted as she skidded to a halt near them. "Miss Noin says you need me."

Sally's blue eyes flickered open, and she nodded--slowly, wearily, as if she had no energy for anything else. Relena sank to her knees next to Zechs, closing her fingers over his hand where it was pressed into the dirt. She felt queasy, at first, then /changed/, as if she had been just a little out of sync with the universe and quite suddenly had been popped back into place.

A trickle of Power bled into her hand. It was unlike anything she'd ever felt--her Talent was a physical one, and while she'd felt the effects of others' mental manipulations before, she'd never been so intimately connected with it, or had it such a part of her. It was cool, refreshing, like spring water, but spring water so mineral-thick that it tingles the skin it touches.

And as Relena sank into the Power, the world around her faded away.

//A flash of blue eyes. The silky caress of long golden hair, and the gentle touch of fingers softer than anyone's fingers should have a right to be. Blue eyes, half-closed and shimmering with tears, droplets of water clinging to pale lashes like dewdrops on a blade of grass.

"It's stupid." A soft voice, feminine and smooth and self-deprecating, thick with bitterness all directed at the speaker herself. "I knew he was engaged, Cyane, I /knew/--but I couldn't help myself, I swear I couldn't. I loved him anyway. I knew it would come to nothing, and yet--"

"It hurts anyway," she heard herself say--soothing, comforting, possessed by the need to watch those clinging tears evaporate into insubstantial mist. "I know, it hurts anyway."

Those graceful fingers lacing limply into hers. "I'm sorry. You're supposed to be celebrating your brother's wedding and here I am crying all over you."

"No, it's all right." Cyane lifted those fingers to her face, pressing them gently to her cheek. "I'd rather--I'd rather be with you."

The startled widening of vivid blue eyes--the catch of tears thick in the voice that replied. "I--"

"Someday," Cyane offered softly, "if you heal from loving the brother--perhaps the sister will do?"//

****

Reluctantly, Heero released his hold on Duo. Chaos was no longer adequate to describe the scene--he had seen the silhouette that was Quatre tackle Tsuberov atop the balcony, and the golems had lost any semblance of order. Wufei and Sylvia--as well as Hilde, Une and Noin, a little further off--had their hands to full trying to fend the creatures off to pay proper heed to the demon Dekim, and they were likely to need all and any help the others could offer. Catherine, looking winded, alternated between shielding against the golems and throwing them backward, but the gestalt's energy was flagging, and Dorothy joined her with a grim frown and a burst of lightning.

Duo hit the ground running, ignoring the slime of battle coating his feet and seeping into the ground. He knocked aside two golems with quick spurts of Power, but the hollowness inside him warned his reserves were almost depleted.

"You again!" Dekim, it seemed, could not decide whether to look pleased or annoyed. "It seems--" He broke off, his gaze flickering to some spot high in the air and well behind Duo's shoulder. Whatever he saw could not have pleased him--the hiss that escaped his reptilian lips was its own sort of eloquence. This is all going to be finished, it said, and it's going to be finished /now/. He raised his hand, almost too quick for Duo to see, let alone react, and let loose an eruption of Power so heavy he could /see/ it--and yet Time had decided not to follow its own rules, because for all that he could watch it slam toward him he couldn't seem to move fast enough out of the way--

Something warm and solid crashed into him, knocking him away. He stumbled, his arms windmilling as he struggled for equilibrium and failed, tumbling onto the ground. His eyes widened, blurred suddenly by the suspicious sting of tears, his mouth opened in an O of disbelief as he identified the thing that had knocked him away: Arms. Legs. Matted, tangled blonde hair and soft pale skin--and an unhealthy stain of blood blossoming over the white of her robe.

"Oh shit--oh shit--" Duo never quite noticed Wufei's scream of rage as the firestarter charged the demon, or Heero landing defiantly in front of Dekim, or the moment when the golems crashed to the ground in a jumble of inanimate limbs around the broken body of their creator. He dropped to his knees, easing Sylvia's head into his lap, tearing viciously at the burgundy cloak in a vain attempt to stem the flow of blood.

"Idiot! You are such an idiot!" He pressed the cloth against her chest, but its only effect was to make him hyperconscious of the weak, defiant pulse of her heart against his hand. "What the hell was that for, you stupid stupid girl--" He was no longer conscious of his own words, any more than he was of the scene around him or the crimson-tinted tears blazing trails down his cheeks.

Her fingers pressed warm and wet against his cheek, bringing him back into himself. "Because otherwise he would have hit you, and you would have died," she murmured, her voice strong for all she could force it no louder than a whisper. "I told you I would help you...." He didn't understand how she could be so calm--her breath was too ragged now, her pulse barely more than a flicker beneath Duo's desperate hands. She traced a slow line down his cheek--her fingers faltered, and dropped to her chest, and he watched in morbid fascination as she slid her hand downward, coating her fingertips in blood. Her eyes closed--it was a visible effort when she lifted her hand again, feebly drawing a pattern onto his cheek.

"Bin--remember--"

And in that single moment he /did/ remember--all the images that had remained hidden away in the deeper recesses of his memory with only the scent of rosemary to draw them out, all contained in a single smooth face, a single name. It was a sudden, acutely painful realisation--he /knew/ her, a relationship so deep it had to be a repressed remembrance or else an eternal ache, and a void no-one in his current lifetime had ever been able to fulfill.

He felt the exact moment when her hands dropped limply to her sides, when her glassy eyes unfocused and her head lolled against his chest, when the frail tremour of her heartbeat faded entirely away. He thought he felt the soft warmth of her last breath against his wrist, and he choked the words past the lump in his throat.

"Good-bye, Mother...."

He couldn't bring himself to let her go. He didn't need to--the others, freed from fighting golems, had fallen into a protective arc between him and Dekim. Pain was tangible, the air was thick with it, and the demon fed on it--no, was drunk with it, his laughter echoing in the courtyard and grating along sensitised nerves. The battlefield was ablaze, ringed with flames reaching into a sky thick with smoke and the stench of death.

Then through the smoke, a shadow appeared. It was a flicker at first, nothing more than a phantom of the senses, a trick of eyes determined to see aid where there was none. But it grew, and as it grew it took man's form, striding determined forward until even the spectres of steam around it, frightened, cleared away.

And Treize Khushrenada stepped onto the battlefield.

Power suffused him, surrounded him--it pooled in his hands, danced in his hair--he /glowed/ with it, its light cutting through the dust and fog and smoke that filled the air. The demon sensed a challenge and almost reluctantly turned to face him, bony digits clawing at the air. But when Treize spoke, it was not defiance that coloured his voice but a profound, ancient exhaustion.

"Enough," he said simply. "This has to end."

He didn't even give the demon a chance to respond. He brought his hands together and light exploded from them, radiating outward in a blinding halo. The light was everywhere--the very air sang with it, the skin hummed with it, it rained from the sky and burst from the ground, it infused everything and burnt everything away--

And slowly, at last, it faded, leaving another charred place on the battlefield and a small collection of survivors, blinking as they waited for their vision to return, and shaking their heads from the ringing of their ears.

They began to move again at last. Lady Une, her cheeks as streaked with tears as Duo's, lifted Sylvia's limp body from his lap and into her arms; Wufei followed her as she bore it away, his eyes fixed firmly on the ground at his feet. Catherine-Trowa seemed torn between throwing its arms around Hilde and racing immediately to comfort Quatre, who huddled against the shattered wall hiding his face in his knees, but somehow they all three finally ended up holding onto each other desperately. Noin sprinted for the garden, with Dorothy close on her heels.

And Duo, stunned, just buried his head in Heero's shoulder, gasping for ragged breath, as his lover's arms and wings enfolded him.

****

No, we're not /quite/ done yet...!