Toy Soldiers

Toy Soldiers

by Ashura

disclaimer: all the usual crap

pairings: none yet; non-traditional and subject to change

warnings/notes: AU, because playing fast and loose with the timeline and actual events. Yaoi, het, drama, angst, violence, sap--um, how about just "everything"?

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Book I: Sweet Bells Jangled Out of Tune

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Chapter 2

"...Unite them through benevolence and regulate them through strictness--these ensure internalised discipline."

--Sun Tzu

Colonel-Lady Une of Oz had, during the course of her career, been party to a good many terrible things. She had already built up a notorious reputation throughout space as the one who had directly targeted the colonies to force Gundam 01 into self-detonation, and had been willing to sacrifice her own men and the entire New Edwards base to eliminate her enemies.

Treize Khushrenada, leader of Oz and her oldest friend, as well as the man she was hopelessly in love with, had quite thoroughly reprimanded her for both of them. He was far less ruthless in his tactics than she, and grateful as he remained for her devotion, he required her to tone down her method. Most recently, he had extracted a promise from her--that under no circumstances were captured enemy pilots to be tortured.

Apparently, either this order had not yet completely made the rounds through Fortress Barge, or someone had chosen to ignore it. Either way, she vowed, that someone was going to pay quite dearly. The captured pilot was bent over the table--his wrists secured, his clothes in tatters around his ankles, his skin a heated matrix of angry crimson welts. The letters 'OZ' had been brutally carved into him between the shoulderblades, and from the way he tried vainly to stir even his head at the sound of her voice, she guessed he was only barely conscious.

"Colonel," Tobita said--his voice swelled with the bravado she had become accustomed to in him, but she could hear the tremour of fear behind it. "I was following orders...."

"Of that I have no doubt," Une agreed icily. Even as she was--satin nightgown clinging to her body, her red uniform jacket draped over her shoulders, her glasses perched hastily on her nose--she knew she intimidated him with more than the pistol pointed at his forehead. "Blythe, accompany me. Nichol, Anderson--take Mr. Tobita to holding. There, find out who issued these orders and detain them as well."

"It was Major Stephens," Blythe told her flatly as the other two officers escorted the silver-haired interrogator down the hall. Une shrugged.

"All that can wait for a decent hour. We need to try to repair whatever damage he's done here." She crossed to the table and bent to unfasten on of the boy's wrists, alarmed when he made no response and only crumpled a little more against it once his arm was free.

"I'll do the other side," Blythe directed, "just make sure he doesn't fall." Une did not even chastise him for attempting to direct her--he was a doctor, after all, and she had known him for as long as she could remember. So she obliged, catching the boy tentatively under the arms as he started to fall, wincing as her fingers pressed his open wound. He yelped, wordless and primal like an injured animal.

"Cover those wounds with something," the young doctor directed, taking quick survey of the prisoner's face and pulse and lifeless eyes. "Something clean, and--shit. Lady, he's barely even alive, I need to get an antibiotic in him and some painkillers before we lose him completely."

"Then get them!" Une snapped. She shrugged her jacket off her own shoulders and draped it over the boy's--it couldn't feel /good/ against his bleeding skin, she suspected, but at least the lining was made of something soft. Her voice was a little gentler when she spoke again. "Get whatever you need, Nathan, and meet me back in my quarters."

"Yes ma'am!" He spun on his heel, his dignified exit lasting only a few paces before she could hear him pelting full-speed-ahead down the corridor. Une hefted the pilot's limp body into her arms, cradling him against her chest--he moaned quietly and his head drooped onto her shoulder.

This was /not/ supposed to happen. Treize was going to have her head.

If anyone in the halls that night wondered why the steel-hearted Colonel of Oz could be seen in her nightgown, carrying a battered Gundam pilot back to her own personal quarters, one look at her face persuaded them it was probably in their better interest not to ask.

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The boy moaned again as Une lay him on her bed, whimpering despite her attempts at gentleness--not that there was any part of his body, she suspected, that he /didn't/ hurt. She eased the jacket out from under him, and pulled one of the lighter blankets up around his waist--whether for his supposed comfort or hers, she wasn't really sure. Some disturbed part of her mind suggested wryly that a half-dead Gundam pilot /would/ be the only man she'd have in her bed on this floating hunk of space refuse, but the rest of her mind was not in the mood for joking. Treize had issued an /order/, dammit, and she'd passed that order along, and it had been broken--and Une was going to make sure that all those responsible paid for that transgression just as surely as she would.

And then there was the pilot himself--he had looked young enough when they'd first captured him, but now, broken and bleeding all over her second-best sheets, he was absolutely pathetic. Like a stray animal, she thought--the predatory sort, that you want to take home and care for even though you know it will turn against you later.

This predator was in no danger of turning on anyone yet, though. It was going to be hard enough just making sure he lived through the night.

"I'll bet they didn't get a damn useful fact out of him for all this, either," she muttered, startled from her own thoughts as a knock sounded at her door and it swung open.

"Sorry it took a little longer than I hoped," Nathan Blythe said, his arms laden with a black leather bag. "Damn idiot in sickbay didn't want to give me the painkillers." He flashed her a wry, dark smile. "I finally asked him if I needed to drag you out of bed /again/ to retrieve them personally, Lady, and suddenly he decided to be co-operative again."

"Good," Une snapped, standing and motioning Blythe toward the bed. "Just keep him from dying, and we'll salvage as much of this mess as we can."

He obeyed, perching on the edge of the bed with his bag on his lap, trying to stifle his horror at the injuries inflicted on this--this /child/. The boy, Nathan decided, couldn't possibly be more than sixteen. //And I thought /I/ was too young to be a soldier.// "We'll keep him on his stomach as much as possible," he decided, rolling the boy over as gently as he could. "Tobita managed to keep most the damage on his back, at least, though there are lash marks on the sides of his arms and legs as well. Burns on the thighs and genitals--scalding, I imagine." He shot Une a guilty, apologetic look. "I just put him in holding, you know, I didn't know they were going to take him out tonight. I should have kept a better eye out--some of this is Bronson's work, not Tobita's."

"Just save him!" Une growled. "We can arrest half the Barge come morning if we have to, but take care of this first!"

"Yes ma'am," Blythe sighed, returning to his appraisal of the pilot's injuries. "I'll give him the injections now--can you get me a damp cloth, please, and a bowl of water?" He saw her nod and stalk off to retrieve the things, and set about determining the dosage of the potent painkiller he intended to administer. //For this kind of damage? I could shoot him up with heroine and it wouldn't numb the pain.// He came to a decision at last, filling the syringe and giving it a practiced flick. Locating the vein was easy, it was finding a place not crusted over with drying blood that presented more of a problem.

"Here." Une returned, pressing a warm, damp towel into his hand and setting a bowl of water atop her bedside table. He nodded thanks, finally sliding the needle into the skin of the pilot's elbow.

"Now the antibiotics, then we'll get him cleaned up," Blythe said wearily. "That's pensycolene, Lady, it's the strongest we have, and I've given him a bigger dose than I've ever prescribed for anybody. He's going to be unconscious for eight hours at least. Even after that he'll be groggy, and we'll need to give him more."

The significance of this was not lost on the Colonel. "He's not dangerous, then," she said, and he nodded confirmation.

"He will be after he heals a bit, but for the next few days he won't be able to do anything more than lie here. So," he added, almost smiling, "you should be able to get a little more sleep before head-hunting in the morning."

Une sighed, drooping a little at that. "At least I have a comfortable couch. I do want to keep him here--I don't want anyone but you and I to go anywhere near him. And here I can keep an eye on him myself."

Blythe just nodded, injecting the antibiotic and depositing both syringes back into his bag to be disposed of later. Beside him, Une had already dipped another towel into the bowl to wet it, and now she leaned across him to lay the damp cloth across the welts on the pilot's back. Together, they washed away the worst of the blood and ripped patches of skin, til the bowl had to be refilled four times and the rim was showing stains of rusty red-brown.

Finally, he stood, gathering all the dirty things and leftover tools. "I'll be back to check on him in four hours," he said, and Une nodded. He smiled gently at her--she intimidated the others, but he'd grown up with her, and unstable as she was, he still trusted her enough to call her friend. Besides, he understood her. "Get some rest, Colonel."

"I will." She was already rubbing at her eyes, and he thought he heard a yawn as he closed the door behind him.

Inside, Une paused for a long moment to gaze down at the limp body in her bed. Still bleeding in places, still inflicted with grosser injury than she would have even cared to do herself--however ruthless she might be, her methods were always efficient: she might kill people in cold blood, but she didn't /torture/ them. She sighed. At least his face had eased from that mask of agony it had been twisted in. They had decided against cutting his long hair, and gathered it into a loose knot at his neck instead, where it would be kept out of the way, and from brushing against his wounds.

Dammit, why did the colonies send children to pilot those Gundams? A flash of anger at first, then sorrow. //Yes, but how old were you when /you/ joined Oz? Or is a nineteen-year-old Colonel in charge of an entire space fortress really an admirable thing?//

That's different, she told herself fiercely, and went to seek respite on her couch.

****