by Orerinia Shaydrin
*****
Fields full of golden wheat rolled across the hillsides, orchids of plump, ripe fruits grew along the sides of a road made of cobblestones, and in certain places meadows of bright green grass and vibrantly colored flowers appeared. It had every right to be called a paradise . . . almost.
Working in the golden fields were men, skin brown from the sun, but looking as if they were only made of sticks. In the orchards, women picked the fruit, faces gaunt and eyes wide with fear. Guards marched along the roads, splendid in their red and black uniforms, skin pale with fright and worry. Children could be seen playing the in meadow, the drab colors of their clothes washed out among the bright flowers, but their laughter rang false, as if they only laughed to give ease to the people slaving around them.
Quatre reached out in front of him and snagged a hold of Duo's chestnut braid. "HEY! Watch what you're doing there! The braid is off-limits."
He ignored Duo's protest, frowned and pointed at the people around them, "What's wrong with them? There's so much food around here and most of the workers look like they're starving. And everyone seems scared."
"From what I've heard, the queen here takes all of the resources that are grown or made here and uses them for herself and the nobles who stand by her side. She only gives the people enough so that they can survive." Their whole group had slowed their pace, Duo momentarily forgetting that Quatre still had a hold on his braid. "There's a rumor that she practices the Dark Art and that's why no one dares go against her."
Wufei raised an eyebrow, "The Dark Art? Not many people dare learn it for it depends mainly on the sacrifices of . . ."
"Of human beings, among other things." Trowa frowned, "We have every right to believe the rumor true for she's been known to send back the bodies of spies, delegates, and diplomats . . . minus certain vital organs or lacking blood."
"That's a pleasant thought, isn't it? Does anyone else have an urge to turn around and leave?" Duo twirled around, "OUCH! Quatre, let go of the braid!"
"Ooops! Sorry."
Wufei shook his head, as Duo rubbed gingerly at the back of his neck, "I'm going to keep going. I can't fail the others of my kind. They are depending on me."
"Damn." Muttering various curses under his breath, Duo stared at the ground in thought, before jerking his head up abruptly and looking into Wufei's black eyes. "Please tell me we are not going near the castle."
"The castle?"
"The castle." He nodded, "It's about two days journey from here and stands above one of the bigger cities in this kingdom. There are other castles around, but that's the one that the queen lives in year-round. If we go near it, there's a big chance she might actually catch us."
"I'll try to stay away from the castle, but if the one I'm searching for is anywhere near there . . ." Wufei didn't have to finish the sentence. He didn't have to.
"Aw, shit. Then you would have to go to the castle, huh?" Rubbing the bridge of his nose, Duo gazed up at the sky, "How can you tell where this mate of yours is, anyway?"
"He just does. It's a dragon thing."
Green eyes settled on Quatre, "He wasn't talking to you."
"And I wasn't talking to you."
This would have continued further if Wufei and Duo hadn't placed their hands on their respective companions. "Why can't you two stop fighting for a fucking minute?"
Silence reigned with Wufei breaking it for another question. "Are you sure that it's safe for us to be out in the open like this, then."
His attention diverted from Quatre and Trowa, Duo cocked his head to one side, "Most people will just assume we're traders or some such, that is if no one attracts too much attention to us." He cast a meaningful glance towards Quatre and Trowa again, then turned his head and gave a huge grin to Wufei. "Of course if someone decides to attack us, we can always have Wufei turn into a dragon and eat them."
"I've told you that I don't eat people!"
"What if what attacks us isn't human?"
Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, Quatre shook his head. And Wufei and Duo talked about how much they argued, when they were no better themselves, at least, not by much.
"NOOOOO! PLEASE LEAVE HIM ALONE!"
Duo and Wufei stopped their impending argument, and with Trowa and Quatre turned to find the source of the scream. A young girl clung to a man, tears streaming down her face, while two guards grabbed the man's arms and another two guards stood armed with spears, pointing them in the direction of the girl.
Without thinking, Quatre ran towards the group as fast as his legs could carry him. Desperation spurred him forward as one of the spear-carrying guards raised his weapon and brought the blunt edge down towards the girl's head. At the last second, he reached his hand up and stopped its descent, wincing at the impact.
The guards blinked at him in surprise and the girl took the opportunity to get a better hold on the man, this time wrapping her arms around his waist and hugging him desperately. Grabbing the shaft of the spear, Quatre shoved at it, causing the guard holding it to take several steps back. "What's going on here?" he asked incredulously.
A guard grabbed him by the shoulder, "It's none of your business. Move on."
"I don't care if it's none of my business! What could have this man done to deserve the treatment you're giving him? He barely looks like he should be working these fields." Quatre shook off the guard's hand and gestured to the man. His words held true, the man was skin and bones, his body younger than his face looked. Every breath he took, rattled in his chest and rasping out into the air. The little girl hanging on to him couldn't have been more than eight, with a dirty, tear-streaked face.
"You don't need to know." Reaching for Quatre again, the guard's movement was met by Wufei's hand grasping his wrist.
"It might be a good idea to keep your hands off our friend."
Trowa and Duo appeared from behind Wufei and moved to Quatre's side. The little girl, perhaps feeling her courage grow once more with the approach of four young men, looked at them beseechingly. "They're taking Papa away from me!" Her small fingers dug into her father's clothes, her voice shrill with apprehension.
Duo locked furious violet eyes onto on of the guards holding the man, "Why are you taking him away?"
An answer didn't come from the guards--though all four of them looked remorseful--but from the man himself. "I couldn't pay the dues for my home. I have to go to the nearest town and pay the price." Every word was a struggle for the man to say.
"Papa can't pay them because he's been using them to get medicines for Mommy! She's been sick." The little girl's wide brown eyes slid shut and she buried her head in her father's raggedy shirt, causing her next words to be muffled. "Please don't let them take him away. Please . . ."
"Kayla, let go of me. I'll be back, I promise."
She whimpered, "But not like you are now."
Quatre narrowed his eyes and stared at the guards. All of them avoided his gaze, except one of the ones that held a spear. Something was utterly wrong here. "How is he," Quatre jerked his head in the man's direction, "going to pay the price."
The guard who had made eye contact with him, shifted nervously. "If he's lucky, he gets his hand cut off."
That guard's remark set off a chain of other remarks from the other guards, "We can't do anything about it or else our queen will harm our families."
"You can't do anything about it, unless you can provide a miracle."
"Just let us do what we came here to do. If you try to interfere, you'll just make it that much worse for this man and his family."
Realization hit Quatre, these people--the man, the guards, the little girl--were stuck in the same boat, so to speak. They lived in terror that their queen's wraith would come upon them and ruin their lives. Theirs was a strange sort of desperation, but no one seemed to blame the other for what was happening; it was a daily occurrence to make survival necessary; not just for themselves, but for their families as well.
"Can this man's dues still be paid off so he can go free?" Trowa's hand was reaching into the pouch hanging from his belt.
One of the guards holding the man's arms, bit his lip and nodded, "Yes, but considering how long . . ." his voice trailed off when Trowa pulled out several silver coins and placed them in a guard's hand.
"That should be enough, right?"
The guard with the money in his hand, nodded his head in something akin to disbelief, "It's more than enough."
Quatre straightened his back, "Good, then you can leave this man alone and get about to your other duties."
The man's arms were released with the guards, the man, and the girl giving looks of relief and thanks. As they left, the guards nodded their heads in the direction of Quatre and his companions.
"You didn't have to do that," the man wheezed, "but thank you."
"You don't have to thank us." Trowa took the man's hand in his own and placed several more silver coins into it, "Take this. You can use it to get a doctor for your wife . . . or even yourself. You need to be healthy for your daughter's sake."
The man's eyes widened, "I-I don't know what-"
"Don't start, please." Quatre ran his hand through his hair, "Just go home. I'm sure the rest of your family is waiting for you."
With a shaky nod in compliance the man moved forward, his daughter at his side. When they had only gone a little distance, they stopped and the little girl came running back to them. "Thank you so much!" She leaped, wrapped her arms around Trowa's waist. He stared in shock and before he could say anything, she had moved onto Duo.
With another shouted "Thank you," she hugged him and gently tugged one of the feathers in Duo's braid. Then it was Wufei's turn, the dragon boy gazed at the girl in shock with his black eyes. Next was Quatre and he smoothed down her hair, giving a soft smile. He felt something cold pressed in one of his hands and looked up to see Trowa's green eyes. The other prince nodded and stepped back.
Just as the girl was about to leave, he gently took her by the shoulders and tipped her chin up. "Here, take this." He pressed a coin into the palm of her hand, "Use it only when you have to."
She moved her head up and down, before giving him a quick kiss on the cheek and running back towards her waiting father.
When father and daughter had moved out of hearing range, Wufei spoke. "Was it really that wise giving away so much money?"
Trowa shrugged nonchalantly, "I have more than enough left and even if I didn't Duo has all kinds of cash stashed on him."
"That was a secret!"
"I didn't realize that."
Duo made a slightly displeased noise, before glancing in the direction the guards had taken, "This place is more screwed up than I first thought."
"Without a doubt."
"Heh, you've got that right, Quatre."
*****
The girl knelt down and pushed a tray of food through the slot in the bottom of the door. A pair of lightly tanned hands grabbed it from the other side and pulled the tray the rest of the way through. The girl lowered her head so she could gaze at the owner of the hands. "How are you doing?"
Another girl's voice answered her, "As well as I can be doing stuck in a dungeon."
"I'm sorry about this," the girl offered an apologetic smile, "but maybe your family will buy you free."
"They won't." A small defeated sigh followed, "They wouldn't have sent me here if they had wanted me back. This was all a ploy to get rid of me."
"Are you sure?"
"Positive. And if I ever manage to escape this bitch queen, she and they are going to pay!"
A soft woman's voice filled with steel answered her in the next cell. "Make sure I'm with you at the time. That step-daughter of mine will answer to me when I get free."
"As much as I abhor violence, I can only agree with both of you." The girl rose to her feet, "Someone needs to take care of her once and for all. I'm not going to be back tonight, I have duties in the kitchen I have to attend to."
She exited the dungeon, brushing her hair back behind her ears and looking for a certain person. A fellow servant to be exact. She spotted him quickly and grabbed him by a shoulder. He shrugged her hands off him and glared at her. It had no effect on her. "Can you do me a favor? I'm not going to be able to collect the prisoners' dishes tonight . . . can you do it for me?" She gave him the biggest, bluest eyes she possibly could.
Her fellow servant stiffened and looked for an escape route, "I should just let you take the heat for not being able to do all of your jobs."
"But I can't do all of them tonight. The queen . . . got rid of one of the other kitchen girls and now I have to take care of the things she used to do." She grasped his forearm, "Please, you're the only one I can count on."
He moved away from her, steps quick and sure. "I'll do it, but just this time, Relena."
"I owe you, Heero."
*****
The opening of the door to his room in the inn woke Trowa from the half-slumber that he had been in. He sat up, rubbing sleep from his eyes, and looked at shock at the figure dressed in white silk pants and a loose white silk shirt in the doorway. "Quatre?"
"Oh, it's you Trowa! I thought this was Duo's room." The blond prince slowly edged out of the room.
"His is across the hall, but he's not in there right now. I think he went out to fly or get drunk."
Quatre stopped retreating, "Get drunk? Is that really a smart thing to do here?"
"Probably not, but Wufei went to keep an eye on him."
"Is that any better?"
"No better than us keeping an eye on each other."
Trowa watched as Quatre looked at the ground, his shoulders shaking with silent laughter. "I think we should be worried."
"They can take care of themselves . . . I hope." He pushed the covers off of him and sat on the edge of his bed.
Quatre's smile quickly turned into a grimace. "In a place like this they had better be careful."
"Yeah," Trowa stared at his hands before looking up to where Quatre stood. "Are you going to stay there or come in?"
Quatre jumped slightly, blushed, and closed the door behind him. "Did you know that this place was this bad?"
Shifting on his bed slightly, Trowa patted the side of his bed to show Quatre that he could sit down beside him. "No. I never thought that the queen here had her subjects so afraid of her that they would . . ."
"Turn on each other to insure their survival." Quatre plopped down next to Trowa and curled his legs up under him. "And I thought my kingdom was bad. At least most of the nasty stuff that took place was confined to my family."
"The nasty stuff?"
"All of the plotting and fear." For one moment, Quatre's blue-green eyes looked far too old for his age. "Usually against me."
"Your family, too?" Trowa had known that Quatre had been unwanted like he had been; it just hadn't sunk in until now.
Pale hands tightened together, "Yes. It's been nearly two months since I've left it all behind, but I still get nightmares sometimes."
Trowa laid one of his hands over Quatre's, stopping their fidgeting. "That's why you wanted to see Duo, isn't it? You had a nightmare."
Quatre shrugged, as if trying to forget it all. "It's no big deal, it's just that when I met Duo before, he could always make me feel better."
"It is a big deal. You're not the only one that has nightmares. Duo's pretty good at listening when he shuts up."
"That's true." Quatre started to stand, his shoulders hunched forward, looking like he was a man going to his own execution. "I'm tired. I should go to bed."
In a split second decision, Trowa pulled Quatre back down to the bed. It was one of those strange impulses he acted on from time to time. Even though he and the other prince had fought incessantly since they had met, he couldn't let Quatre sleep by himself for the remainder of the night. He knew how it felt to wake up from a nightmare and go back to sleep only to be plagued by another shortly after. "Stay here tonight. You're just going to have more nightmares if you sleep by yourself."
Quatre bit the inside of his cheek, unsure of what to do. Trowa made the decision for him. He pulled the covers to his bed further down and dragged Quatre onto the bed. Another movement brought the covers back up over the both of them. "We'll keep our nightmares at bay together, okay?"
"Okay," Quatre's eyelids were already sliding shut, the need to sleep weighing heavily on them. No objections came from his lips, perhaps he was just too tired; he was tired enough to slip of to the land of dreams within minutes, so it was possible.
Trowa lay on his back, following Quatre into slumber when he felt the blond prince turn slightly and curl around him. He froze in place with Quatre now laying on his arm, one hand on his chest, and his blond head finding its way onto his shoulder. It wasn't entirely uncomfortable--it was comforting to tell the truth--but it had caught him unaware and he had to remind himself to breathe.
The soft rhythm of Quatre's chest against his own lulled him into a state of partial-awareness. Tonight, both would sleep peacefully together, even if in the morning they would turn back to their old habit of fighting with each other.
But that would be in the morning.
