+++++ PART 1 +++++

Trowa sighed and leaned his forehead against the cool stone wall beside the window. There was a smudge across the stone before his eyes, a mark proving how very long he and his cousin had spent in this tiny cell. Every day, Trowa would stand in the same spot, looking out on the courtyard below. Every day for the past ten years. It was no wonder that the stone was marked from his presence. The oils from his skin had stained the light stone a dull black over time. The bottom of the smudge was level with his chest. It was a marvel to him, sometimes, how very much he had grown in those few years. Long years.

"Anything new?" Duo asked from the bed.

"Not today," Trowa told him with another sigh. Outside the window, he could see the flowers in the garden below just beginning to bloom. Their tower was located on the farthest corner of King Treize's estate. One of the cursed walls was shared with the beautiful garden down below. Trowa thought he would have given anything for a chance to stroll the winding walks who's path he could trace from this great height. He wanted more than anything to touch the flowers who's soft fragrance was his only respite from the stale air of his prison. Well...That wasn't fair. There were birdsongs, as well.

"You think they'll ever let us out?" Duo asked. Trowa could not see him from his vantage point, but he did not need sight to know exactly what he was doing. The two of them had spent so long staring at nothing but each other that there was no doubt in his mind that he knew the other boy's every mannerism - every thought. At the moment, from the sound of his voice, his cousin was dangling upside down from the edge of the tiny bed they shared.

"Maybe," Trowa answered. They had this discussion every day. It never yielded any more hope than it did today. "I could probably guess better if we knew why we had been locked up in the first place."

"See? That's what I always say!" Duo said. There was a muffled thump. The hyperactive boy had squirmed just a little too much and was now on the floor. Trowa smiled a little.

"I know that's what you always say. Who do you think you always say it to?"

"Well, it's the truth, Trowa. All I can figure is they thinks we're going to try and take over Sanq like Uncle Deciem did. But that's dumb. We're just kids!" Trowa sighed yet again and turned his face back to the window. Let Duo continue his rant. It hardly mattered if he tuned it out, again. He already had this particular tirade memorized. The clouds were pretty today. Wouldn't it be nice to be a cloud?

He lowered his eyes from the sky after a while. The sun gave him headaches on bright days like this if he stared upward for to long. Below him, in the garden, there was a figure in white strolling slowly up one of the many winding paths. As it drew closer, Trowa recognized it as that of a young boy - and when this boy approached the bottom of the tower and looked up into the sky, himself, Trowa realized something else.

He was beautiful. More beautiful than the flowers in the garden. More beautiful than the clouds and more beautiful than the sky. More beautiful than the songs of the birds that Trowa had once so envied for their freedom. More beautiful than anything.

"A god..." He whispered in awe. To his mind, this was what he saw. No earthly being could have been so unbearably beautiful. He was looking down from his lofty perch upon a god with hair of gold and eyes of azure. Apollo, perhaps - the god of beauty. Or, no ... This boy must have been the very figure of Eros, the god of love, himself. How else could he have won mastery of Trowa's heart so instantly and completely?

"What?" Duo asked from behind him.

Trowa found that he had to swallow several times before he could speak. His legs were suddenly too weak to hold him upright, and so he dropped onto his knees. "There's a god in the garden, Duo," He whispered. "Eros." He slumped against the stone sill, then, resting his head on his hands. "I'll worship him, forever," he said with a pained sigh. "Do you think he's come to set us free from this terrible prison?"

"Let me see..." Duo said eagerly. He sprung up from the bed and dashed over to where Trowa knelt beside the window. He looked out on the boy below for a long moment and then staggered backward, clutching his heart and gasping. He toppled to the rug and lay there, his eyes shut.

"Are you okay?" Trowa asked. He'd never seen Duo act like /this/ before.

"He's /gorgeous!/" Duo cried. "I would have been happy to spend the rest of my life just looking at him, but cupid's arrow struck me in the eye and heart... I'm dead, Trowa. Just...Throw me out the window so that I can be close to him?" He pleaded.

"Are you making fun of me?" Trowa said irritably, never once taking his eyes off of the vision below. The god was picking flowers, now, holding them to his nose and inhaling their sweet fragrance.

"Making - No! I'm in love!" Duo cried, leaping to his feet again. He pushed Trowa away from the window and took his place, staring down into the garden.

"In love?" Trowa demanded. "You can't be serious! I saw him first."

"Yeah, and you still think he's a god," Duo said, negligently. He wasn't really paying all that much attention to Trowa, anymore. The boy had bent over to pick some flowers on the other side of the path, and Duo could feel his mouth watering. "He's most definitely not anything holy. Not with that great an -"

"Blasphemer!" Trowa snapped. "And even if he isn't a god, you're breaking your oath! We swore on our own blood that we would defend each other, back each other, no matter what. I laid a claim on him - "

"Oh, you did not!" Duo argued.

"I did! I may not have said it, but I was thinking it."

"Yeah, well, I was the first one to say that I loved him, so by your twisted logic, he ought to be mine!"

"But-!" Trowa cried. Then he slumped back down onto the ground beside his cousin. "I don't suppose it really matters, anyway." He muttered. "We can talk all that we like, but he's down there, and we're up here, and that's all there really is to it. Treize is never going to let us out of here. We shall both have to be content to worship his beauty from afar until we finally expire from the want of him."

Duo sighed and leaned against him. "I suppose you're right."

"And we're too young to really think of marriage, anyway." Trowa said sadly.

Duo snorted. "Speak for yourself, dear cousin. I'm a whole two months older than you. Besides...I wasn't thinking of marriage."

"He is beautiful, though, isn't he?" Trowa said with another forlorn sigh.

"Yeah," Duo agreed with a sigh of his own. Together, they watched the young god from their high window until the sky grew dim and he finally trekked back to Treize's manor. Both supposed that they would just have to be content to do just that until the end of time.



"And then- " Wufei said, laughing, as he poured himself another glass of Treize's finest wine. "And then she says "You're that funny little scholar boy!" He hiccoughed once and spilled a little of his wine as he tried to drink it. The older man had one hand up the bottom of his tunic, and it was distracting him. "And then we beat each other up!" He finished, proudly.

"Glad to see that married life is treating you so well," Treize said with a smirk. He finished off the last of his glass and pressed a wet, openmouthed kiss to Wufei's flushed throat. "Just wait till you get the seven year itch."

"Is that what it's called, old friend?" Wufei said with a knowing smirk. Treize's hands were being /very/ distracting, now, so he set his glass back onto the table. "I don't think it quite took you seven years."

"I have twice the wife to deal with," Treize muttered. He licked his way up Wufei's neck to his willing lips. "That means half the time."

"I don't think it quite took three," Wufei snickered. Not that he was complaining.

"It all started to go downhill after that battle in Sanq..." Treize mused.

"The battle in Sanq was your honeymoon," Wufei said, dryly

"Maybe that was the problem," Treize said thoughtfully. "I think it first dawned on me that I'd made a mistake in choosing a wife when she wanted so badly to kill those little boys we found in the rubble."

"Oh, I don't think I've heard /this/ particular war story." Wufei said as Treize pushed him back into the cushions of the couch. "You have to tell me, now, you know."

"Well, I was looking for the King's body and I found these two little boys...they were Deciem's nephews, I think...and Une wanted to kill them, but I had them locked up in the tower-"

"Deciem's nephew?" Wufei asked, his eyes wide. "Duo?"

"You know one of them?" Treize asked.

"I played with him all the time when we were children. He was fostered with my family. Tell me he isn't still locked up in there...It's been four years, at least!"

"Calm down, love," Treize whispered into his ear. "if it means that much to you, I'll have him released in the morning. He'll have to go back to Sanq, though, or Une will likely go after his head."

"Mmm... You're a good friend." Wufei said, snuggling down against Treize's chest. "That's awfully nice of you."

"Wufei," Treize said very earnestly. "For you, I would go to hell and back" (*)



"I DON'T WANNA GOOOOO!!!!" Duo wailed as he was dragged away from the gates of Treize's estate.

"He must have gone crazy, locked up there for so long," one of the guards muttered to the other. "Here we are, giving him the chance to go home, and we have to drag him away from his prison!"

"But I don't want to go hooooome!!!" Duo cried. He stretched out his hands to the bars of the gate. "Take me back! I'll be good! I promise!"

"You can't go back," The other guard told him, giving his manacled arm a good hard yank. "You've been banished, kid. If they catch you in Luxemburg, Queen Une gets your head."

"But I don't want to go..." Duo whimpered. "If you send me back to Sanq, I'll never see him again!"

"Who's him?" The first guard asked.

"The boy in the garden. The beautiful, beautiful -"

"You mean Quatre?" The second interrupted. "Treize's cousin? Ha. You'd have a mighty fine time winning his heart even if you weren't all the way in Sanq. He doesn't want to fall in love."

"Anyway, what would you want to stick around here, for. You'd just be locked up in that tower. It's not like you'd ever even get to talk to him, let alone..." The first guard wiggled his eyebrows, suggestively. "You'd just be able to look."

"But now I can't even do that," Duo said, dejectedly. "Lucky Trowa...He gets to stay here and watch all that he wants." He slumped into his captors' hold, then, and allowed himself to be led, docile, to the ship that would take him home again. This sucked. This really sucked.

"Lucky Duo," Trowa whispered from the window, tears in his eyes. "He's free to enact whatever plan he likes...to raise an army and come seize the city and take my beloved for his own. He's really free, and I'm stuck up here..." He trailed off as he looked down below on Duo's struggle with the guards. "He doesn't know how good he's got it."

+++ TBC

(*) And he does. Well, Theseus does for Pirithous, but it's the same thing. Unless I've got it backwards. Lorena! Help me! I'm not good at this footnote thing!

To telle it yow as shortly as I may, A worthy duc that highte pirithous That felawe was unto duc theseus Syn thilke day that they were children lite, Was come to atthenes his felawe to visite, And for to pleye as he was wont to do; For in this world he loved no man so, And he loved hym als tendrely agayn. So wel they lovede, as olde bookes sayn, That whan that oon was deed, soothly to telle, His felawe wente and soughte hym doun in helle.