Hello again! Lady PhoenixDagger here! Just a huge thanks for the great reviews I've been getting. Keep 'em coming. Also, next chapter may be a while in the making as exams are coming up (yuk). But I'll try my best to write as much as I can when they're over and done with.
Disclaimer: Although I completely forgot to say so in the last two chapters, I don't own Gundam Wing. Everything else in and around the Keep, however, is MINE!!!
ALARYAN'S KEEP
PART I
"FREAKS"
Chapter III
"SHIIIIIIIIIT!!!! Shitshitshitshitshit!!!!!!!!"
Still screaming obscenities, Tama launched herself after the falling boy, praying she could catch him before his body hit the Moat.
With a bullet he still had a chance. With the destructive magic field of the Moat it all came down to just one single, damning touch.
The air whipped past her as she plummeted, tearing at her hair, gnawing painfully at the bullet wound nestled deep between her breasts. Grimly, she prayed her flight spell would hold her despite her condition. Quickly, she recited the incantation. After a spit-second of sheer panic, she felt herself rocket downwards towards the boy.
Success!! She reached her arms out, barely a hand's breadth away.
Long strings of blood flowed from the boy's head, aided in their flight by his momentum. As Tama came closer to him, she realised she came dangerously close to the Moat.
It crackled and snapped sharply, waiting for something –anything- to blunder in and be consumed. Normally it took in trash, or perhaps the random flight of a bird gave it a more nourishing meal, but now it waited hungrily for Tama and the boy, begging shamelessly for a new form of warm flesh.
The whites of the boy's wide-open eyes as she was finally able to reach for him. He was beautiful, really, with his dark lashes and thick, unruly hair. The Prussian blue eyes were large and wide, though marred by the blood dribbling from them. Tama found herself wanting to hold him. He was so small.
Like a mother with her child, Tama reached out and snatched the boy to her breast, cradling him close, despite her wounds, only inches away from the angry oblivion of the Moat.
Tama floated in, landing lightly on the red-flecked balcony railing and stepped off, a bloody bundle wrapped tightly in her arms.
Relena, Catherine and Quatre stood stiffly, watching her touch down. Their captors watched as well, swords drawn. Trowa, Wufei and Duo lay limp at their feet. Relena's lips were tight. Catherine's hands were knotted. Quatre simply stood, staring into oblivion, his military training having taken over. He stood almost at attention, eyes staring straight ahead, his body taut. Tama set the rusty-red bundle on the floor, gently cradling its head.
Relena's heart plummeted.
"HEERO!!!" she screamed, trying to run to him. The black-haired man took her firmly by the shoulders and pulled her back.
"He's being taken care of."
Ria had gone to Heero's downed body, gently turning his head this way and that with the air of a calm, cool physician. A pool of blood was slowly puddling around his head like a gristly halo, soaking her as she knelt. If the young woman noticed, she gave no sign as she examined Heero's bullet wound.
"Damn," Ria cursed softly, wiping her crimson hands on her thighs. "Darien, be a dear and suck the bullet out of his head, would you, please?"
"Get away from him!" Relena snapped as the man started for Heero.
"Let us help or let him die." The youngest girl rounded on Relena. She barely stood up to her shoulder, but to Relena she suddenly seemed a hundred feet tall. Her light eyes bored intensely into her own blue ones. "Choose if you will, but choose fast."
Silently, Quatre took the sobbing Vice-Foreign Minister by the hand and gently led her away.
The man named Darien gave her a small, respectful bow and quickly knelt by Heero's head. Gently, he lifted it and began sucking at the wound, pausing only to spit out scarlet mouthfuls.
Sitting back on her heels, Ria watched. "The bullet missed his brain, but it severed his optic nerves, so we need to hurry if we want to keep his sight." Relena noted nervously that this woman talked as though she knew for a fact that Heero would live. Silently, she offered up a prayer. Peeking at Quatre, she saw him quietly doing the same.
Unaware of the inner genuflection going around her, Ria carefully reached around Darien and pressed two fingers just below Heero's chin, feeling for a pulse. "Slow and a bit irregular, but still there," she noted.
A faint ting caught everyone's attention. Darien sat back on his heels, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. The bloody bullet lay forlornly on the stone floor.
With the speed of a springing tiger, Ria's hands flew to Heero's head, seizing it firmly. A loud moan escaped his lips as his back began to arch. A woman's scream echoed through the hall as fresh gouts of blood pumped from the wound. Relena realised with shock that it came from her. She forced her way forward.
"No!" Quatre grabbed her again, more roughly this time. "She's just jumpstarting his heart."
"How do you know that?" Relena gasped, tears rimming her eyes.
Puzzled, the Gentle Noble let go of her. "I…don't…My gundam training?" He seemed not to believe himself.
Back on the floor, Heero's back was arched even higher, almost bending him double. Ria's face was sheened in sweat. "Almost…almost…"
The group leaned in, watching for any sign of life. Any signs of earthly departure. Anything.
The sign came in a long, tortured gasp as Heero's body sought to refill his barren lungs.
Ria leapt to her feet and whooped in jubilation. "Yessss! We have life!!"
Duo murmured sleepily to himself and rolled over in bed, away from the window and its bloody intrusive light. Then he sat up.
Bed?
Confused, he looked around. The room he was in was made of huge stone blocks, but it was well-lit despite the sluggishly waning daylight due to several mirrors lining the walls and a large window. Five beds, including his, were lined up in row perpendicular to the window. Trowa, Wufei and Heero were in the beds to his right. Quatre was sitting up in the only one to his left, gingerly enjoying a steaming cup of fragrant tea. A woman in a simple blue dress sat beside him on a high stool, her own hands wrapped around a steaming teacup.
Alerted by the noise Duo's bed made as he shifted and sat up, Quatre looked over at him. "Oh, hello, Duo." He sounded relaxed. Happy, even. "This is Belle. She's just telling me all about life here in Alaryan's Keep."
"Care for some tea?" the woman asked pleasantly. Her voice was soft and inviting, made even more so by her pretty face and shiny brown shoulder-length hair. Duo squinted, trying to pin an age on her, but gave up when he found he couldn't.
"Huh! Figures!" The Great Shinigami snorted derisively through his nose and lay back against the headboard. "We get captured and taken prisoner and you decide it's time for tea!"
"On the contrary, Duo Maxwell, you are free to leave the Keep as soon as we get a few matters settled."
"My name isn't Duo Maxwell," Duo said automatically, his training taking over. 'Never let the enemy know your real name, boy,' Dr. G had said to him one day during a particularly difficult simulation when he was still young. 'If they have your name, they have your identity and sooner or later they'll have your life.'
"Please don't tell lies, Duo dearest. It's quite an unattractive habit." The woman known as Belle sipped gingerly her tea; it was still very hot. "Quatre didn't have to tell me your names, I knew them already. Besides, if you were really prisoners, we would have had you chained down." She gestured at Wufei's bed, to which he was shackled by the wrists and ankles. "Like your violent little friend over there."
Doomsday visions of what would happen when Wufei woke up danced before Duo's eyes. He shuddered and tried not to think about it. In the bed next to him, Trowa murmured uneasily in his sleep and rolled over. What the hell is going on? Duo frowned mentally. First they kidnap us, then they sedate us and now they treat us to tea?
"And scones, dear," Belle said blandly. "Incidentally, what was there to sedate? If my memory serves me correctly, you ran head-on into a solid stone wall." Her beautiful face suddenly breaking into a smile, she held a small dish out to Duo. "Care for a scone?"
"Thanks." Never being one to turn down sugar, Duo took the proffered pastry and bit into it before something finally clicked. "Whoa, whoa, waitaminute…"
"Where's Cathy," a low voice broke in from the bed next to Duo's. It was not a statement that asked "where?" but rather a demand that said "I will be told" in no uncertain terms. Trowa sat up, his eyes glittering like a pair of poisonous emeralds in the afternoon sun.
Sipping again at her tea, Belle crossed and re-crossed her legs before answering. "She's with Relena, Trowa dear. She's thinking about you, too. She's quite worried."
Duo choked down his bite of scone. "Oooookay…this is getting weird." He caught the Silencer's raised eyebrow and coughed. "Scone?" he asked, breaking off a piece. Trowa waved it away, his green orbs fixed firmly on the mysterious woman sitting calmly by Quatre's bedside.
"Worried. Really…" he murmured, catching the placating look in the Gentle Noble's own aquamarine eyes. Please be patient, she means us no harm, they seemed to say.
The woman and the three boys sat in silence a while, amidst the sounds of clinking china and testily creaking bedsteads. Nearby, a church bell tolled the hour: six o'clock. No one moved, save for the weary twisting of the boys as they began to feel their muscles begin to cramp. Furtively, Duo stole a look at Quatre every now and then, for he looked faintly ill. Belle simply watched them, smiling softly all the while. Presently, the teapot was emptied and the scone plate was cleaned of all but two. The brown-haired woman crossed and recrossed her legs.
"Well!" she said, startling the hell out of the boys before her. "Seeing as most of you five are awake, I suppose we can get down to-"
"WHAT THE BLOODY HELL HAVE YOU DONE TO ME, YOU STUPID, EMPTY-HEADED, HALF-WITTED WOMAN!?!?!?!?!"
"I see your friend is finally up," the woman sighed. "Quatre, do be a darling and hand me that last scone, will you dear? Thank you."
Pretty thing. Duo watched appreciatively the sway of Belle's hips as she made her way over to Wufei's bedside. Big eyes, nice hips, sexy walk. Niiiiiice.
"Don't be an ass, Duo dear!" Belle looked up from Wufei's still-screaming body, her voice raised over furious shouts of "DAMMIT, WOMAN, UNCHAIN ME!!". "I'm happily married."
Duo swallowed. Again with the weirdness.
"YOU STUPID BI-ulp!!!!" Wufei's eyes blazed hellfire from behind a black currant scone jammed firmly in his mouth.
Ignoring him, Belle perched on the end of Heero's bed. "Now, down to business. My name, as some of you already know, is Belle Ichara and this-" she spread her hands in a grand 'here we are' gesture "-is Alaryan's Keep, a place of life, magic and higher learning."
"Ooooh," Duo snorted sarcastically. Belle waved the last scone menacingly at him and sullenly, he fell silent.
"You and your lady friends fell through a small tear in what we call the Bond," Belle continued on, setting a shapely hand on Heero's knee. He sighed and squirmed, but did not wake.
"Yeah, great. So, like, where are we?" queried Duo, unimpressed. He reclined in his own bed and put his hands behind his head with a sigh. "Earth? The Colonies? The Sanc Kingdom, perhaps? Yeah, I'll bet this is the Sanc Kingdom. Zech and Noin are probably just playing some stupid joke on us or something, right?"
For the first time since they had met, Belle looked uncomfortable. "You…are on Earth…" she said slowly. "…but…"
"Yes?" Trowa prompted.
"…not your Earth so much as ours…"
"Come again?"
The shapely hand moved from Heero's knee and reached into a dress pocket. A tiny, opalescent teardrop was pulled out and held to the light for a moment. "Dreamdrop," Belle explained. "Observe." Flicking her wrist, she tossed it into the air. It hung there for a moment, suspending itself in midair, revolving slowly. The room was suddenly filled with an image of blackest outer space. Hundreds of infinitesimal spots glittered around the room, connected by thin white threads. The ex-pilots gazed around in wonder. Belle stood and flicked her wrist, causing a folding pointer to drop into her palm.
"This," she said, indicating a small whorl just past Quatre's right ear, "is my –sorry, our- universe."
She pointed to another blue-grey smudge above Heero's head. Duo noticed briefly that his head was bandaged around the eyes. Huh, they'll probably be a bit sensitive to light when Heero wakes up, Duo surmised correctly. Belle went on, still pointing. "This was your universe."
"Was?"
"The Bond," Belle pointed to the thin line connecting the smudge and the whorl, "pulled you here." Again the pointer was aimed just past Quatre's ear.
"Excuse me, was?"
Belle closed her exquisite brown eyes. "The Bond then quickly severed itself upon pulling you here. Thus…" she hesitated a moment and dropped her gaze to the floor. The boys stared at her, even Wufei, who had relieved himself of his makeshift gag watched in minute horror as the ageless woman steeled herself to finish the sentence. "Thus…your world…it…it was…" Wetness gleamed at the corners of her eyes and she began to whisper. "…it was…"
The boy leaned in as her voice got fainter and fainter.
Breathing in deeply, Belle said the damning words the ex-pilots dreaded to hear:
"…it was destroyed…"