Sorry for taking so long with this! Had trouble with Treize. Then I realised that like most men, he's
most compliant when drunk... *grin* Well, enjoy!
Toy Soldiers
by Ashura
disclaimer: I don't own GW. Surprise,
surprise.
pairings: non-conventional and subject to change. Ooh, and one actually gets revealed in this chapter! But it's not a major one...and it's a
surprise. Sorry, it's kinda important to
be a surprise.
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"?
****************
Book I: Sweet Bells Jangled Out of Tune
****************
Chapter Four
"Act when advantageous, halt when not
advantageous."
-Sun
Tzu (The Art of War)
"Y'r leavin' me...." Duo's petulant, semi-coherent moan grated
accusingly in Une's ears. "An'
'ere we were gettin' on s'well, too...."
She favoured him with an arched eyebrow and a wry
look, half-bent over her bag as she tossed toiletries into it. "You're very comfortable for a
prisoner."
He tried to shrug, but winced with the sharp pain
that broke through his feigned nonchalance. "Cause you got a nice place 'ere....better'n the holes I usually
getta sleep in...." She didn't
answer, and he watched her pack for a few more silent minutes before adding,
"Sides...y' know how t' play the game by th' rules. 'Fyou go 'way, whose gonna keep me from
endin' up in the closet 'gain...?"
"That," Une answered firmly, zipping the
pack shut, "is not an issue. Dr.
Blythe is going to be keeping a close eye on you, and for an entire list of
reasons. He," she added
thoughtfully, her head cocked as she regarded the frail boy in her bed,
"plays the game at least as well as I do."
Duo slumped into the pillows, but it was relief as
much as resignation that relaxed his battered body. His lips moved, but his voice was so faint that Une had to
abandon her duffel and perch on the edge of the bed before she could adequately
hear him.
"...wonder s'mtimes," he whispered,
"'f there coulda been a way for us all t' be on th' same side...."
A sad, wistful smile flickered across Nicole Une's
face for an instant before it disappeared. "That's what makes war a game," she explained softly, as
glazed violet eyes blinked dazedly up at her. "The sides are never so black and white as we'd like to be able to
believe...sometimes it's hard even to know who all the players are."
Duo shook his head feebly, his pale, sallow face
surrounded by damp, tangled wisps of chestnut hair. "Not a game, Nic...not when people're gettin' killed."
Une's hazel eyes softened, however briefly--then it
was as if a shutter had slammed closed behind them. "I have to go," she said, all business and orders
again, standing abruptly and slipping on her jacket.
"Jus' minute," Duo murmured sleepily from
the bed. "Want'd t' tell you,
see...ev'n in war, there's some things people jus' shouldn' do. A lot'v soldiers...f'rget that. I do, sometimes...s'I jus' wanted to thank
you f'r stoppin' him...honest...."
"I was obeying an order," Une reminded
him coldly, swinging her bag over her shoulder. Mr. Treize needed her, had requested her presence, and she would
not keep him waiting. "As I am
doing now by leaving."
Still, she couldn't help turning back, just once,
before she let the door close after her.
"I forget sometimes, too," she admitted
reflectively, unsure whether she only imagined that the blue-violet eyes
flickered open once at the sound of her voice. "The longer we play the game, the less real it becomes--and the
more acquainted we are with the rules. But I think sometimes we all need to be reminded."
And then she locked the door behind her.
Duo lay staring at the ceiling for a long time
after Une disappeared--not that he could really do anything but lie there in
her bed, but even had he been able to move without pain, every time he tried to
bestir himself to move, he found he couldn't find the motivation. While still fuzzy in the head and covered
with injuries he was sure would be agonising if deprived of Dr. Blythe's
regular doses of pensycolene, he was not /quite/ so incoherent as he had led
them to believe. He had a high
tolerance for drugs, and he had felt the steadily declining effect of the
painkillers as the hours--had it been days?--progressed. But he knew that the only way he would
escape Fortress Barge would be to lull his captors into believing he was an
invalid.
His captors. They confused him. At least Une
did. Nathan Blythe was an easy enough
person to figure out; he was a doctor, and doctors tended to see people as
patients before considering them enemies or allies. But Une...in the space of a few encounters, his preconceived
ideas about the notorious Oz colonel had been dissolved. He remembered her as the one who gave the
order to destroy New Edwards, who was willing to sacrifice her own men--how
could he reconcile that Une with this one, who gave up her own bed for a
captured enemy and spoon-fed him soup?
There was one explanation, of course. He'd heard the rumours before--Lady Une, it
was said, had split personalities. There were two completely different women residing in that delicate
face, and he was simply being privileged to see the side few others were ever
exposed to. He recalled how her face
could close in a matter of heartbeats, and how she had shut herself off when
he'd asked her name. 'Nobody else
knows,' she'd said. He still wasn't
sure, if it was such a closely guarded secret, what had possessed her to answer
when he'd asked.
Oh, he had one idea, but he wasn't sure if it was
something he ought to dwell on--after all, these were still his enemies.
But he had a feeling--a nagging, sneaking suspicion
that tickled at the back of his brain--that Nicole Une was desperately lonely.
****
"Lady...I'm so glad you're here." Treize Khushrenada let out a long sigh, his
regal posture wilting in near-exhaustion as he let the door to his suite close
behind them at last. It had been a long
day, full of the usual tedious meetings and backstabbing politicians, but
unlike most days, business had seemed to revolve around the merits of
Tsuberov's Mobile Doll units. Treize
hated Tsuberov /and/ his toys with a passion that bordered on religious
fervour, and even he found it increasingly difficult to keep his composure
after the third straight hour of being told how the unmanned suits would
revolutionise war. War was only worth
anything when real people were fighting for noble values, otherwise it was just
a lot of innocent people getting killed, and where was the merit in that?
"You asked me to come," Une answered
neutrally. Always careful, that
one. But he could see the sparkle in
her eyes, when she turned away, and for a moment he regretted his
decision. There was too much baggage
between them to ever make them good lovers, yet he was well aware that she had
loved him practically since they were children. It wasn't fair, he realised, to take advantage of her devotion when all he would ever want from
her was friendship.
But she was so willing to take whatever he offered,
and she and Zechs were the only true old friends he had.
So he stifled his regret, and smiled warmly at her,
and drew her inside. "Will you
share a bottle of wine with me, Lady?" he asked, and she nodded, following
him gracefully into the room. He guided
her to a chair, but she pre-empted him with the bottle, motioning him to
sit while she poured.
"Your Excellency looks tired," she
observed, almost crisply--it made sense, he knew. Her harsher self tended to take over when she was nervous about
anything; it was easier for her. Well,
he could remedy that.
"Please, Nicole." Her hazel eyes widened and the glasses
clinked together as she came very near to dropping one. "None of that tonight--I am too tired
to be His Excellency. Truly I would
rather only be Treize, sharing good wine with a dear friend."
Her gaze lowered and she slid his glass to him
across the small round table that separated their chairs. "Very well...Treize. You still look tired."
"I am," he admitted, shedding gloves and
jacket before raising his glass to touch against hers. "To both our good health, my dear...and
yes, it has been an exceedingly long day. You will have to back me up, you know--I've been trying to talk the
Foundation out of using mobile dolls til I'm nearly hoarse with it, and still
they aren't listening. You may have
methods I have yet to discover."
A glint of steel flashed in Une's eyes--perhaps
there was more shared between her two halves than he'd been led to
believe. "I assure you,
Yo--Treize...anything I can do to help you, I will."
"I know you will." He reached out to squeeze her hand
briefly. "But that's not really
what I want to talk about, Nic...I am intensely tired of that subject. Why don't you tell me instead about that
Gundam pilot you captured? Is he faring
better?"
She nodded, but her expression was guarded and
noncommittal. "Nathan is keeping
him barely conscious on painkillers. He's healing, slowly. I think
he's delirious a good portion of the time," she added, a twitch of her
lips /almost/ becoming a smile.
That was rare indeed, and Treize seized on it. "Delirious? How so?"
Her soft eyes fixed on her hands, twisting around
the stem of her glass. "Just some
of the things he says," she admitted after a moment. "Not the sort of things you expect
people to tell their enemies--certainly not their captors."
"Such as..?" Treize prompted. Somewhere during the course of the
conversation his glass had run empty, and Une reached across the table to fill
it.
"Well, he complained that I was leaving him,
for one thing," she confessed, and Treize failed utterly in his attempt to
not laugh aloud. "Thank you,
that's what I thought. Yesterday he
told me I had pretty eyes, and--well, things like that," she finally
amended, stumbling to an awkward halt.
Treize nodded sagely. "They're a surprising lot, those Gundam pilots," he
agreed.
"But you respect them," she interjected,
eyeing him thoughtfully. Once again she
was reading his face without the need for explanation, and he nodded again.
"They would never approve of mobile dolls
either."
Une shifted in her chair--presumably to reach for
the bottle again, and refill the glass that had once again become empty. Treize thought it was odd that he was
already beginning to feel lightheaded--three glasses of wine was hardly enough
to make him tipsy!
Then he remembered--there had been cocktails at the
evening meeting...wine at dinner...spritzers previous and champagne for
brunch...come to think of it, he'd been drinking all day.
"That's why you don't want them
tortured," Une said, pulling him back from his contemplation of the day's
alcohol intake with another serious statement. This one, however, was not /completely/ accurate.
"That's part of it," he affirmed. "And the rest--I made a promise."
Confusion spread plainly across her features. "A promise, sir?" she repeated, too startled to correct
herself from the formal address.
As Treize nodded, he realised abruptly that what he
/really/ wanted to tell someone had finally reached a window of
opportunity. He had--well, he supposed
it would be considered a problem, and he desperately wanted to get it off his
chest, and one of the only two people in the world he would /ever/ consider
revealing such a secret to was right here with him in the room.
"Yes. A promise. I must confess, Nic,
that I haven't been completely honest with you...or for that matter with
anybody. But you have to swear, on
everything you hold most dear to you, that you'll never tell."
If she had been bewildered before, now she was very
close to simply suspending reality and being done with it. "I promise," she said
automatically, still toying with the stem of her barely-empty glass.
Treize leaned toward her, his tone lowered
conspiratorially. "I've met a
Gundam pilot too," he explained, his normally adept mental faculties
straining to determine the best way of imparting this revelation. "You've seen him--the one I dueled
with."
Now Une was merely puzzled--this hardly seemed like
the sort of secret she should be sworn to keep. Everyone in Oz knew that Treize had dueled the pilot of Gundam
05. "Yes, I know him."
It was Treize' turn, as he leaned back into his
chair, to look surprised and bemused and unsure. "It's the most bizarre thing, Nic...truly. I would never have thought it--just
something right in the chemistry, I suppose, because under normal circumstances
I don't think it would have happened--"
"Sir." She interrupted gently, depositing her glass on the floor near her chair
and leaning across the table to silence him with her finger. "Treize. You're babbling. What are
you trying to say?"
"Yes. What am I trying to say." He was discovering this was harder than he'd anticipated, but still the
words burned to be shared. "What
I'm trying to say, Nic, is that I promised him we wouldn't torture any pilots
we captured because--because I think I'm in love with him."
Her eyes widened, and she snatched back her hand as if he'd burned her. "I--I see--"
He might have noticed her trembling, had he not
felt so lightheaded with the release of his awful secret, let his eyes close
and his head fall back. "God, you
have no idea how good it felt to get that out."
There was barely even a moment of silence before
she answered. "Then I am glad to
have been here to help," she said.
****
