Wings of Love Part 9/? (IX) (3x4, 4x3)

Disclaimer:

Quatre and Gundam Wing are not mine. If you don't know that Gavin is © me yet, then ... I won't say.

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"Her name was Mariemaia ..." The little boy's voice faded as he said the last word. The two, ghost and boy, had finished crossing the Mountains and were now resting at the foothills leading to the Ocean. Gavin had just returned with the news of his friend.

"Mariemaia ... So, you return to the world of the living when you leave?"

"I have to. I have school." He stated the answer as though the question was one of the silliest ones he had ever heard.

Quatre looked about confused and then remembered. "Oh, of coarse." Delicate lips lifted into a smile. Gavin couldn't help but grin too, his smile was like sunshine. It made him feel fuzzy inside.

"She said to say hi."

Blond eyebrows quirked in an attempt to remember. Mariemaia ... The first memory. He stopped, not wanting to see all of those pre-death visions anymore. They were depressing, and frightening.

//Q-chan.// he remembered. She had called him Q-chan.

"Tell her I miss her ..." /Tell her I miss Trowa/ he almost wanted to say, but no. He couldn't do it. Trowa would consider the idea of talking to spirits crazy at best. At least ... At least he would send the child to a mental institute. No, Heero would do that, come to think of it. Trowa would rather ignore.

The hazy spirit sat back and sighed.

"You miss him again."

The Arab nodded. "I wish he were ... Well, no I don't wish he were here. I wish /I/ was there."

"I know you do." Gavin watched his friend a moment, thinking about yesterday. Mariemaia had discovered his blindness and they had talked a good while about it. This got him to thinking ...

"What is color like?" His voice quavered, waiting for the spirit to jump back in alarm or be confused or hate him for it. Instead the spirit just shifted his position and thought a moment.

"Its hard to explain," he finally said. Oceany eyes stared widely at the child, confused at the question. They wanted an answer, but were afraid to ask. He didn't want his young guide to leave him. He was the only friend he had in this desolate place. "Are you color blind."

The child shook his head, staring at those eyes. That was color, right? He could see the color of eyes. He could see strange colors beyond those eyes, colors no one but him could see.

A sigh escaped him. In exchange, he forfeited the colors that everyone else saw from black-gray-white, muted halftones and empty canvases filled with phantasms that made him appear crazy. Why did he have to see this stuff? Why did no one else? No one believed him at all when he tried to tell them. No one except Mariemaia ... And the dead people.

Not-to-mention the other beings that haunted his daily existence. Where were all the angels, anyway? Someone had once told him that there were angels. If there were such benevolent spiritual beings he had never once seen one. Not in this world or on Earth.

"I'm blind, blind," the boy finally stated. "I only see spirits, Aura, and anything else that's not material or "real"."

Quatre nodded. "Guess its like me not being able to smell."

"Guess so."

There was silence for a moment, while the boy picked at a few loose pebbles on the ground. He could see this world, mostly. It was a "non-real" place. He turned his eyes to watch Quatre. Yes, he had figured that out. Gavin continued to stare as the spirit picked up a stone and held it confusedly in his hand. He obviously didn't understand why he could carry it ... He probably didn't know how anything worked. Fist clenched on the rock in desperation and just as he looked as though he were about to chuck it away, the child spoke again.

"It's the same reason I can see it."

Anger and desperation faded away and the pebble was dropped back to the ground. However, there was still some tension to the air- like malevolence crackling with a barely noticeable static force.

Something was wrong.

"Quatre we need to get out of here."

"What?"

The boy grabbed the spirit's hand and dragged him up. "We just need to get out of here. You don't want /them/ to find us."

"Them? Who's-" The Arab looked up into the air. Two specks in the sky were growing closer even as they spoke.

"Run! They'll kill you!" said the boy, starting to drag Quatre forward.

The blond picked up his worn feet and began running, confused and startled behind the boy. "What do you mean? I'm already dead!" he shouted.

The white haired boy stopped and looked at the spirit, eyes filled with fear and determination and bravado all at the same time. "Do you want to be Oblivion? Do you want to be nothing? Do want to break your promise? These things can /destroy/ you-Destroy you so you'll never think, feel, or be again! I don't think you want that!"

A cold wind rushed through Quatre's being.

***Stay here ... There are bad things out there. Things that can hurt you ...***

That was what he meant. Things that could obliterate him.

"No!" he shouted, running as though all the beasts of Hell were out to get him and take him the the Devil himself. They would not get him. He was going to return to Trowa. No beast would stop him-he had to do it. They would not tear him apart. He would survive, in the spiritual sense, and he would return.

The blond looked back probably knowing that it was a bad idea. He was right. Large humanoid creatures pursued them in force. There were six of them, with large leathery wings and black staring eyes. Their skin was red and scarred, like a boiled crab's- And each hand and foot had a set of five black, sharp, bloody claws ready to tear the innocent spirit to pieces. He daren't think of what their teeth would look like.

What was worse, they were getting closer.

"They're gaining!" he shouted, trying to keep up with the lithe boy before him. However, Quatre wasn't near as nimble, and his foot caught upon a stone and the youth began tumbling down the gentle slope of the hill.

"Gavin!!!" he yelled, unaware of what to do- afraid for his soul, the only thing he had left. The world passed by in a blur. He saw the black legs of Gavin go by. The child had stopped and was facing the beasts. But that vision was soon replaced by more swirling gray and black and white.

*THUD* His body hit the bottom of the hill and crashed there flattened. He didn't know whether to move or run again-but even if he did run, without Gavin he didn't know where to go. Was the boy alright? Had they gotten him? Could they get him with his flesh or was he more dangerous because of it? Quatre didn't know. He was scared, alone, and confused with tattered memories and a bunch of demonic monsters trying to be rid of him for good. It was at that moment he decided that he quite preferred being alive to being dead and rather wished he would wake up from the horrible nightmare.

But he wasn't waking up ... It was real.

Fearful aqua eyes finally gained the courage to look up the hill, only to be taken aback at what they saw. The tiny, fragile boy was fighting the giant winged Daemons. He had some sort of sword in his hand, a sword that appeared to radiate darkness as if it were light. As he watch in a kind of half daze he saw out the corner of his eye another spirit appear behind him. In his daze he could see so clearly what appeared to be an angel fighting behind the boy.

Strong pale hands, gripped the smaller ones and guided the sword, while great and powerful black downy wings protected him from attack. His hair was white, like Gavin's, and had the same iridescent quality. The being seemed to radiate light and darkness all at once, as if he were neither Good nor Evil- like Humanity.

**//Do not be afraid\\**

And then it was gone, with the Daemons and all their evil. With the fading of the image, so the memory too soon faded, leaving the whisper of a childhood song left in his head:

***Soon, soon, you shall forget***

***Hour upon hour turns frolic to fret***

***Follow the wind song, soon will it end***

***Visions and lullabyes, lost in the glen.***

All that was left was the vague knowledge of a dream, and that the being was Azrael ... Some part of the boy, but then that too faded away like the wind.

The boy tread down the hill, pushing the white hair from his face in order to see Quatre better. The sword was gone, as if it had never been.

"Are you alright, Quatre?" The spirit nodded, letting the pieces of melody and riddles slide away into the back of his mind to disappear. "There are worse than those."

Quatre didn't question, he only sat and sighed.

"I'm sorry, but I tried to warn you. They scare me too, but I've learned that the bigger ones are near so scary as the small ones. The tiny ones sneak into your mind and you never know that they're there. They're the kind that hurts the living-that makes them crazy or depressed. They slowly eat away at a soul until it doesn't exist anymore, or is so tattered it can't survive alone and floats away."

"How ... horrible ..." Quatre didn't know what to think of that. He knew people, good people who suffered like that. Were they dying inside and just didn't know it?

"We should go," said Gavin, softly. "The sooner we get to the Ocean, the safer I'll feel."

The blond pushed up on his arms as if to stand but feel as a pain shot through his shoulders and back. He yelped and put and hand to his back, feeling a sticky liquid running down his lurid back. He was bleeding? How? Was it from those bumps on his back?

Quatre pulled his hand away and stared at it. The liquid was indeed crimson. It was blood. "I-I'm dead," he stuttered. "How can I bleed?"

"Souls bleed too," said Gavin gentley, grabbing the bond head and holding it while Quatre fought not to let tears run down his face. The aqua eyes watered with pain as he stared at the pale face. Gavin stared, and they screamed /Why is this happening to me?/

"It's okay, Q-chan," he said, trying to comfort him with the old name. "That's just your wings."

"Why does it hurt so much? I though wings were good ..." The voice faded off as he started to cry a little. He had thought all the pain was gone, but no- it was here smacking him in the face again. Pain-anguish-he had left Trowa. He had-

"Shhh. It's okay. They have to hurt. Skin doesn't stretch so good. So they grow like teeth. Its okay, shhh. Its okay."

The comparison to teething was a good way to describe it, considered the sobbing spirit. It hurt and there wasn't ice to numb it. However, its a lot harder for something to break through skin than gum, and wings would naturally be bigger than teeth.

The little boy carefully lay the Arab on the ground so he would hurt himself. Gently, he began rubbing around his back with his delicate fingers, trying to find some way to aleviate the pain that the spirit was now feeling. He knew that the two broken lumps were now tender, but sometimes wings just didn't want to come through all the way on their own.

/Poor guy. Running must have broken them early./ His nose scrunched up a little, trying to keep himself from crying. Why, oh, why was he an empath?

Carefully, delicately the little hands pulled at the broken skin, however gentleness didn't help the pain much and it only caused his friend to get even more frightened.

"Quatre, I have to do this. They're stuck inside, and it will hurt less if I help it."

The spirit sniffed. "What are you doing?"

"Uncurling them out, so they don't take forever to do it on their own. It will hurt more if I leave it alone."

The soul began to control himself as the boy worked to free the tiny pinions. When he was satisfied he'd completely removed all the tiny edges of the wings he stopped, and let Quatre sob the rest of his fear away. It was odd that the spirits always seemed to be more of children than Gavin when it came to pain. However, souls' pain was the worst, like its pleasure was the most wonderful feeling in the universe.

The boy took out a Kleenex and tried wiping off the blood from the Arab's back. It helped, but the fresh wounds were still bleeding and needed help stopping. He finally resorted to pulling out a couple old hankies from his pocket, and wrapped them around the edge of the tiny wings. His back looked much better than way, and the pinions were so cute, barely covered with any down at all.

"They're tiny, aren't they. How am I supposed to get back if my wings are tiny?"

"They have to grow. It takes awhile, so I really can't change that."

"Will it hurt when they grow?"

"It only hurts when they sprout. After they heal, the wings grow just fine. The worst of that's over."

The spirit breathed a sigh of relief. At least all he had left to do was wait. And journey. He guessed that the journeying part was far from over.

"We should go, right?"

The boy nodded. With a gentle push, Quatre was back on his feet and ready to walk again. He shuddered at the pain only a minute, then turned his focus to the horizon. Something was glinting out there-just out of reach.

"Hey, Gav, what's that?" He asked pointing.

Gavin looked and smiled. "That? That's the Ocean. Come on, we're almost there!"

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The beach at the edge of the Ocean had an entirely different feel than the rest of the Underworld. There was a sort of hopefulness there that hadn't existed anywhere else.

***You've gotten this far*** the waves seemed to whisper.

The whole thing was rather awe-inspiring to the Lamb, who by now could flutter his tiny wings happily. Gavin noted that fact and giggled. Wings gave away so much about a person's mood, especially when the person didn't know how to control them. It often seemed like the wings had a mind of their own. Thankfully, Quatre's wings had decided to begin fluttering after the wound had healed. Sometimes they didn't, and that could really hurt the soul.

"Come on, Quatre. We have to get to the Dock."

The blond nodded and near started skipping after his guide. The child just looked back and began laughing even more, strange eyes sparkling with a glimpse of true pure joy.

"There isn't anything in the water, is there?" questioned the happy angel.

"Nope. Not by the shore. Maybe in the deep, but you don't go swimming there."

"Okay!" he said, and ran into the waves, laughing as he went. Water spurted up about his beaming form as he splashed and played. Gavin continued to laugh, comparing his regressed friend to a baby duck that had climbed into a puddle for the first time. It looked so fun ...

The child couldn't stand it anymore. He wanted to play too, and followed Quatre into the water. There at the edge of the wide expanse of sapphire water, the first color Quatre had seen since Gavin, they splashed and chattered like a couple of young dolphins. Quatre wondered if he'd ever had so much fun in his life. Trowa never did things like this ... Maybe if they'd had someone around like Gavin, maybe ...

Thoroughly soaked, the pair got out of the Ocean, leaving play for a later time. On the beach again, Gavin emptied his black shoes of all the salt water, hoping that the little event wouldn't have ruined them. His starched black collar now hung loose around his neck, and the black jacket and pants hung off his skinny frame like wet fall leaves to a spindly tree in near winter.

Still giggling with joy and hope, Quatre attempted to cartwheel, falling flat on his pale face. Gavin finished replacing his shoes and walked over to help Quatre up.

"We should go," he giggled, putting out his hand for the bazillionth time during this journey. The spirit just laughed and stood, following the white-haired boy once again.

The joy didn't fade as time went along. There were so many different feelings and emotions in this place. The sand between his toes was soft and felt almost like sand from real beaches, only they had a soft cloud-like quality. He knew that if he could touch a cloud, the sand of this beach and the water of the ocean would be exactly what one felt like- well, maybe less wet and grainy, but that would indeed be the feeling.

Too soon the duo came upon the bleached wood frame of the Dock. It was an ancient structure, constantly worn away by salt and tides. From their vantage point at the bottom of the steps, they could make out much of the gray wood Dock, and the shadow of someone waiting for them.

Gavin took a step forward, onto the first stair. "Charon ..." he said, voice dying off slowly as he sought to recognise the Keeper of the Dock.

The figure put a foot forward and then stopped. "It's I. Come up here, you, and bring you're friend with you." His voice was kind, if melancholy- a pleasant treat from the attack that was now likely days ago. The boy nudged Quatre forward, wakling him up to the plank boardwalk at the top of the Dock.

"His name is Quatre Raberba Winner. He has wings. I knew he'd get them."

The weathered man nodded. Now that they were closer, his features were far more apparent, but it seemed that Charon had the same melancholy gray features as the Dock and the rest of the Underworld. His face was lined with fine crevices and tiny wrinkles. His hair and eyebrows grey and sparse, like the landscape of the Moors, but his eyes ...

His eyes were living, breathing ... Through all that hopelessness and empty void there was this spark in those sunken eyes. Hope-it breathed the world with its sapphire Ocean-like appearance. Kindess flooded the shrunken man, even though hopelessness had bent his spine down hundreds, maybe thousands of years ago.

"You need across the Ocean, young man?" The statement was barely a question. He knew what Quatre was seeking-could see right into his soul like Gavin. The spirit's nod was irrelevant. "I think the Boat will hold you. Come with me."

The man gestured, and Quatre started to follow, but stopped when he saw that Gavin was staying behind. A questioning look appeared on the blond's face.

"I can't go," said Gavin. "My journey ends here."

Sadness bubbled up inside Quatre. What did he mean he could go? He had to go. He wasn't about to make this journey by himself.

Charon looked at both spirit and boy with doleful sympathy. A bony hand grasped the boy on the shoulder, while the other lifted his face up to look at him.

"You come this time," he said.

Eyebrows raised in confusion, head still held by strong old hands.

"Listen-Listen, Azrael," whispered the old man. "Can you here them? Can you hear the angels?"

The boy paused and tried to hear, but emptiness filled his ears.

"I don't hear anything."

"Listen. They call you, boy. They're waiting ... This time, this time see ... This time know. Listen."

Quatre saw the boy straining to hear, knowing it was doing no good. It was like the dream like memory of Gavin fighting the Daemons ... A conscious mind can see nothing, know nothing of angels ... Only in near dreams, only in a trance ...

He could hear them ... Whispering voices in song far away, fading even as he realized what the words meant-

Then gone again with consciousness.

"You come this time, Azrael," Charon repeated. "He needs you.

"Come."

TBC.

Notes:*****************************************************************

1. My "daemons" in this scene are based on some from Dante's "Inferno". Read it, it's good classic literature that's very inspiring, not to mention cool.

2. The song lines are from "Wind in the Willows"(not mine) and may be paraphrased. I want to do a songfic based on that but can't, because I don't know all the words.

3. The world of the dead has had a lot of basis in The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman. Its part of a larger trilogy. Anyways, that's wear all the desoloation and gray comes from. I took the idea in a completely different diretion than him though (especially considering the daemons and wings and stuff) I beg you to read the His dark Materials trilogy if you haven't. Its an ingenious work which actually has a yaoi couple, two angels called Baruch and Balthamos.

4. Charon is the ferryman of the dead in the Greek Underworld, in case you were wondering.