A/N: Sorry it's late...I am officially swamped with all kinds of frantic AP teachers. This is also late 'cuz my dad's still recovering from surgery and all that. So, second-to-last chapter. I'm so sad. On to the story! The extremely long story...I probably should have made it two chapters, but oh well. Enjoy!
(BTW, Meiran's dad, Fou Lu, is from a fun and underplayed RPG called Breath of Fire IV. He's very OOC, but I needed him to fit the part. Consider it a cameo more than anything.)
Unusual Warnings: EXTREME LENGTH, Mild Confusion To Be Explained Later, Extremely Scary Vampiric Quatre, Scary Trowa, and Angry Father-In-Law. Kind of citrus hinting...I think...
Sea of Silence
Chapter 15
Gathering
x---x
As soon as Trowa stepped off the ship, he was close to screaming. Hell was in civil war; hordes of pirates fought against his deadly troupe, without either Trowa or Duo to keep them from tearing each other apart.
Inwardly he sighed, wishing he and Quatre hadn't had to separate just yet. But, the blonde needed more time to get to his tribes, so Trowa had given him a fierce goodbye kiss and they'd both gone their own ways. He wasn't happy about it, though. He missed his little one terribly, and they'd been separated for only one day. Trowa grimaced slightly. Only one day; it seemed like an eternity.
He shook the thought off, and pulled out his sword. It looked like he might have to fight his way through to Catherine's house. The wooden town, clearly very charred from Algon's petty invasion to get their prince out, still stood, although much of it was in shambles. He didn't doubt it was from the two groups literally attacking each other in the middle of the street.
A circus dog wearing a tall polka-dotted hat rammed itself into a pirate with a prominent red sash on his waist. Trowa growled.
"Devin! You will NOT attack that dog," Trowa yelled, and shocked brown eyes looked up at him as the circus dog growled and began tugging at the pirate's pant legs.
"Trowa, sir," Devin yelled, and saluted. Trowa just glared. "The troupe's been running amok since you were killed." Green eyes blinked, shocked. Killed? Well, it would explain a bit...
"Bubbles, off," Trowa snapped, and the dog, wagging its tail, trotted away with a strip of Devin's pants hanging loosely in its mouth. When the pirate came over to see how his first mate was doing, Trowa slammed his free fist into the older man's face. "What are you people doing? I don't have time for this!" As Devin fell to the ground, Trowa strode purposefully towards Catherine's house. It was barricaded, but wood had never stopped him from getting anywhere. A few quick and absurdly strong kicks, and he was in.
Catherine appeared in the corner, resplendent in her circus outfit. Without even checking who it was, threw her knife.
It was only the fact Trowa had been getting his sister's knives thrown at him for years that saved him. As occurred in every performance, Trowa's hand snaked out just in time and grabbed the hilt. Catherine gasped, and Trowa threw the knife aside.
"TROWA! We thought you were dead," she yelled, and ran forward to give her brother a fierce hug. Trowa laughed softly.
"No, I'm not dead," he said, and hugged her back while keeping a firm grip on his sword. He had broken the barricade, so clearly anyone else could get in. "We have to go. I need you to get the troupe together; we've got to go save...Duo." Trowa decided it would be better to say they were saving the unanimously most loved man on the island than the country unanimously tied as the biggest threat to Shinigami Enterprises.
"What happened to him," Catherine asked quickly, and Trowa paused for a moment.
"Sanc got a hold of him, and we need to get him out," he said, once again telling the truth while leaving a quietly gaping hole in the middle of his statement. Catherine nodded quickly. "Get the troupe together, and find Dante and make him turn the pirates civil." Catherine frowned.
"And what will you be doing," she asked coolly, and Trowa grimaced slightly.
"I'm running to Duo's house, grabbing some things, and then...experimenting a bit while I'm there," he said. "I'll be back in about two hours, if I don't pass out." Catherine smiled, and gave him another quick hug.
"Be careful, Trowa," she said, and headed out of the small house. Outside, the troupe had set up a barricade in the short span of time between Trowa's invasion and Catherine's emergence. She rolled her eyes. "Idiots! Get it together! Trowa needs us!" The circus performers stared at her, and Catherine shook her head. "He's alive, and heading over to Duo's place. We have to save Duo! Get ready to get on the Tesoro; we're leaving as soon as my brother gets back."
The performers were suddenly in a flurry of action, and the fluffy-haired dagger dancer ran off into the town to find Dante. This wasn't very hard, incidentally, as he came out to challenge her as soon as she crossed the road.
"Catherine Bloom! Get your people out of Hell," he yelled, brandishing a sword. Catherine rolled her eyes.
"Relax, Dante," she sighed, tempted to rub her temples. Men were so aggravating some times. The ranking deckhand was lucky he was a good kisser; else, a lovely, shiny dagger would be glinting out of his forehead. "Trowa's back. We need to go save the captain." Twenty pirates suddenly leaped out, shouting for answers.
"Trowa?!"
"What's wrong with Captain Maxwell?"
"Kill her!"
The last person was quickly slammed into the nearest wooden building by a ticked-off Dante. The pirate shrugged at Catherine's surprised glance.
"He always pissed me off." The rest of the pirates laughed and nodded, all suddenly smiling at the misfortune of an idiot. "Now, what are we doing to save the captain?"
Catherine smiled. "Get ready to cast off. We're going to pulverize Sanc and get Duo out at the same time," she said. "We have about two hours." Dante looked around his motley crew, and frowned.
"You lazy buccaneers! Round up the guys! Prepare for battle!" They all scurried off, and Dante himself began to stride off, but turned towards her after a few feet. "Catherine, I'm sorry for threatening the troupe. We all figured it was your fault they were dead." Catherine nodded. "Is the Tesoro even fixed enough to get into the deep?" Catherine smiled again.
"We'll manage."
Meanwhile, Trowa arrived at the silent two-story house in almost inhuman time. Inside the house, the second floor was completely haphazard, and Trowa tried very, very hard to not think about what had caused the destruction. Instead, he snuck into Hilde's room and grabbed the Maxwell family's weapons; the only sibling sane enough to store lethal items had been unanimously voted the spirited girl, and in all due haste the most lethal weapons (aside from themselves) had been tucked under Hilde's bed.
The oak trunk was extremely heavy, but he didn't have much trouble with it, since he'd had years of practice. Trowa frowned at his predicament. He could either take the chest and keep their masterpieces hidden, or store them on himself and get back down to the lions in a much shorter time. Finally, he decided to pull the weapons out. His own custom-made and extremely powerful crossbow came out first, strapped to his back. Next came Wufei's sword (that now hung at his waist) and throwing stars, which were tucked in a bag. Hilde's bizarre three-bladed knives, shaped more like a spiral than actual knives, were put in the same bag, and Duo's extremely expensive and extremely deadly unfoldable scythe hung (collapsed in on itself) at his other hip.
Trowa frowned again. This stuff was heavy.
The journey back down the road was much slower than the one uphill, since he barely kept himself from rolling down the incline with all the added weight. But, the family needed him, so Trowa complied without hesitation. He just didn't have to like it.
Catherine was waiting impatiently for him at the small road's intersection with the main track through Hell, tapping her foot and looking royally ticked off. "I need to get the lions onboard the Tesoro," she growled, and Trowa smiled. No wonder she was pissed; he was probably the only living person who could get lions to willingly board a ship and not eat the other animals onboard, mostly because anyone else who tried it died in the process.
"I needed to try something out anyway," Trowa shrugged, heading for the lion cage.
After his own lions had been massacred, he had quite literally found one on a pirating tour with the Shinigami gang, and from Sarai sprang quite possibly the most devoted, talented, and lethal lions known to man. He'd raised them from cubs, right along with their now-deceased mother. Trowa frowned inwardly. If there were any animal to attempt triplication on, it would be them.
He'd never done it before due to the fact it went against every moral bone in his body. Believing that every being was a sacred being and an individual, he'd never even considered attempting it, not even on worms. But, desperate times called for desperate measures.
Trowa climbed into the cage, and immediately the lions drew towards him. The pirate greeted them, lovingly scratching their heads, and Catherine opened the large cage's doors. "Come, loves," Trowa called out, and the three lions quickly followed their 'father' out and barely even noticed when they were led up a gangplank and onto a huge wooden ship that Trowa considered the Circus Ark.
As soon as the three were settled in a cage, Trowa addressed them. "I respect and love you all, but if you're willing I'd like to attempt something," he said. The lions exchanged glances, until Requiem, the dawn-colored lioness, stood up to rub her head against his arm. "Thanks, Req." A deep, throaty purr responded to him, and Trowa situated himself on the floor, the other two watching with interest as Requiem lay her head on his lap after plopping down next to him in a cloud of straw.
Trowa rolled his pants up to an almost indecent level so that the feline's head and neck touched as much exposed skin, and quickly set his other two hands at an equal level from the ground as Requiem's current stature left her head. In his mind, he pictured the lion's grace, her spirit- anything that made the lioness herself. In a more difficult exercise, he copied that exact image two times in his brain; each triplet cat was doing a different thing, but exactly the same.
Trowa couldn't help but brace himself before the twist, grimacing. This was going to hurt.
The twist went faster than he expected. As his two hands were suddenly being roughly licked by identical tongues, Trowa let his eyes roll up in his skull and passed out, knowing the lions would wake him up soon enough.
x---x
Wind whipped across the hilltop as Quatre glared at the mound, bedecked in long red-orange cloth made specifically for this ceremony. An unmarked grave, it stood in the middle of rubble that once went by the name the Keep. The blonde barely kept a sneer off his face.
He'd been gone so long, and still he was disgusted with the mere sight of the dirt. But this pile he absolutely loathed, for underneath laid the bane of his existence, the one person who had truly delighted in a young boy's physical and mental pain, the one man to have successfully used him, and steal away something rightfully his. The blonde's glare intensified.
"I hate you," he whispered, fists clenched as his aqua eyes turned the grave to a pyre. He could almost hear the Mage laughing at him in the wind, taunting him for not having the strength to achieve his telekinesis unaided. Now, he was suffering for it. Quatre's heated glare suddenly turning the mound to ice. "I hate you so much."
Out of his red-orange robes, the blonde pulled a dagger, and slammed it into the dirt. Power jolted through his arm, and Quatre barely kept himself from gagging. Power, yes, and enough to rekindle his telekinesis, but it was tainted, old, and dead. The blonde grimaced. He needed more, or his power would remain crippled forever.
He jerked his arm back, pulling the knife out sharply as the appendage began to shake violently. The ground tremored a bit, rumbling in disquiet. "Rashid," Quatre snapped, and the older, strong man strode forward from the select few guarding their leader.
"Sandrock," Rashid intoned, bowing at the hard teenager's gaze. In these robes, he could command them to commit suicide after killing their families, and they'd do it without hesitation. And it wasn't just from their belief in his divine right to rule; Quatre had proven himself to be a brilliant leader, and truly worth their allegiance. The blonde motioned him forward with a flick of his wrist, and Rashid sprinted forward.
"I need blood," the shorter man said, and without a moment's hesitation Rashid held out his wrists, palms up. Quatre bowed to him, and Rashid would have done the same if not for his desire to please his master at all costs. After the formality was complete, the quickly wiped dagger slashed against the tall man's bronze skin, and Quatre put his lips to it with a clear look of distaste in his aqua eyes. His lips drew away quickly, shivering and coated in the liquid, and then sliced the dagger, across his own wrists. The blood mixed on the blade, and Quatre, now violently shaking, shoved the knife back into the soil.
At the blonde's scream, a gale cut through the rank of desert warriors, throwing them to the ground, sprawled. As soon as it came, it was gone, leaving a shaking, panting Quatre Sandrock in the middle of a hole, a smoldering dagger's hilt in his hand. Rashid immediately hopped into the crater.
"Master Quatre," he yelled, but stopped at his leader's trembling hand.
"I'll be fine," Quatre stated coldly, his head turning to the sun, eyes shut tight. "He laced his body. He knew this would happen, and wanted to take me out." When Quatre finally turned towards the group of men, they saw his other side was spattered with blood. Clear blue eyes snapped to one of the lower elders. "Get my other robe." The man went running to the massive army below the hill. "Hakim, tell the others we're moving out." Rashid frowned as Hakim jogged away.
"Master, are you well enough to travel," Rashid asked, as the only man Sandrock wouldn't kill for insubordination. To everyone's astonishment, Quatre shook his head.
"I'm not," he said, then locked his gaze with his second-in-command (due to Heero's absence). "But, I'm going anyway." Rashid nodded, and Quatre turned to face a large boulder embedded into the bedrock of the slope. He tilted his head, and seemingly on a whim it rose into the air and hurtled to the ground, crashing violently into the crater Quatre had previously inhabited. A pleased smile formed on his blood-covered lips.
The first elder came rushing up the hill, breathless and carrying identical robes to the ones Quatre wore. The blonde changed quickly, and put the Sandrock pendant on above the fabric. It glinted prominently on his chest, and he turned back to the men.
"We leave," he stated, and the group began the trek to the coastline, where a hired fleet waited for the tribes.
x---x
Wufei glanced around him again. Sword at his hip, check. It wasn't his, but would do. Meiran secure in a secluded mountain hut with Sally Po in case there were any problems with the pregnancy, check. He had a bruised jaw to prove that one; his wife was undoubtedly the feistiest thing on the planet, and took pride in her right to pummel her husband whenever she felt it was necessary. Knives hidden in strategic places around his body, check. Another good/bad habit from Duo and his brother that Wufei just couldn't quit. Wufei frowned. Courage to face Fou Lu, Meiran's rich warlord father? He was still working on that one.
And he had to work fast, too. He was already striding down the hallway to Fou Lu's Great Hall, known for its condensed size and extreme wealth. The man would probably skin him alive and boil him with tar when he learned Meiran was pregnant; they were both seventeen, after all, and Meiran had been promised to some rich boring idiot hundreds of miles away.
Wufei smirked. His adopted family had taken care of that bit rather quickly. To ensure the Chang couple's security, Duo and Hilde's wedding present had been to kill the stereotypically immoral lord. And, they were forever grateful for it.
Fou Lu would not be pleased at all.
The two guards on either side led him through the gaudy halls, and quickly opened a pair of red doors. Wufei's expression soured. Meiran had told him about the doors; apparently, they were supposed to have been dyed the exact shade of human blood. He knew from experience they were far off, faded from the specific shade he was all too familiar with.
Wufei Chang strode in to see a sour-looking, youthful-looking man with long white hair in a dark blue robe sitting on a surprisingly simple wooden chair.
"So, you're the bastard who married Meiran," he growled, and Wufei couldn't help but be shocked. He had to be thirty-three at most. Fou Lu seemed to place his reaction correctly. "My family has a habit of reproducing early. As you seem to know, mister..." The white-haired man trailed off at an absence of nomenclature.
"Captain Wufei Chang," Wufei said, bowing quickly. Fou Lu nodded dismissively.
"Mister Chang. Well, at least Meiran didn't go off with some sniveling, grubby actor like her sister," he sighed. "Captain? Of what, yourself?" Wufei couldn't help it; he glared.
"Of my currently misplaced ship, Nataku," Wufei snapped. "Before that, of the Deviant, and before that the Shenlong, and the Deathscythe, and before that I was unofficial captain of my captain's ship." Distaste coursed through his veins. He hadn't meant to say that much to the man. Just like his daughter, he could make the boy ramble.
"Impressive. So, you're what, twenty," he asked, lounging deeper in his chair. Wufei's fists clenched at his sides.
"Seventeen," he growled. "Now, do you approve of our marriage?" Fou Lu smirked.
"No, but I approve of you. It's the fact you killed Lord Whatever-His-Name-Was to be married I don't like," Fou Lu stated. "He was going to give me far more than you'd believe for Meiran's marriage rights." Wufei snorted.
"Of course. Money over love," he drawled, restraining a sneer. "How noble." Fou Lu's mostly pleasant demeanor dropped away.
"What do you want," he stated, and the red doors slammed shut as Fou Lu stood from his throne in an eerily elegant way. Wufei squared his shoulders.
"I have come in the interest of three reasons. The first is that of Algon, which I couldn't care less about to tell you the truth, but we request your help in taking down Sanc once and for all," Wufei said, and then realized he could have introduced himself as the leading general of Algon completely honestly. "The second is Meiran and myself. We would like your approval so we can have a more...legal marriage ceremony performed." Fou Lu nodded, and Wufei swallowed. "The third, and most important, is that Meiran's pregnant."
The room was eerily silent, until Fou Lu began to laugh.
"You've got my armies," he said, shaking his head. "And, you can keep my daughter, too, and your child. All I want is a good chance to cripple you when the fight's over. If I don't, you get my empire, too. If I do...well, I guarantee you'll only have one child." Wufei nodded, his face paler.
"At the end of the battle, find me," he stated. Fou Lu nodded, a dark smile on his face. "We're gathering on Algon Plain." Again, the white-haired man nodded.
"I'll be waiting," he stated. Wufei nodded, and turned around. The red doors opened upon his approach, and the black-haired boy walked out, heaving a sigh of relief when they closed again while he thanked whatever demented being had made his skin unbreakable.
x---x
The door's peephole slid open, and brown eyes glanced down at her. "Name?"
"Dorothy. I usually come with Attie," she stated, and the brown eyes became more critical.
"You know where she is?" Dorothy smirked.
"If you open the door, maybe," she stated. The peephole slammed shut, and the door was jerked open. A seven-foot-tall man quickly pulled her in, rumpling the brown dress Dorothy had dressed in.
"Weapons," the man stated, and without hesitation, Dorothy handed over her rapier and the accompanying silver stiletto. The man made a noise of approval, and shoved Dorothy further into the dark room. A table sat below a bowl of fire attached to the ceiling with blackened chains, where a man sat, arms folded.
"You know where Atropos Noin is," he asked casually, motioning to the adjacent seat, which Dorothy sat in without hesitation. She smiled at him.
"Yes, and you want that information, and her," Dorothy said smoothly, flicking a bit of her hair behind her back. "The question is, more accurately, what are you willing to do to get your prized assassin back?" The man's face darkened.
"I don't have prized assassins," he stated, and Dorothy laughed shortly.
"You don't? Is that why Atropos hasn't ever been killed by an employer," she asked, and the man's hand thumped down on the table. "Is that why she hasn't ever been Tried? And why she's never been Challenged, or-"
"Enough! What's your price?" Dorothy beamed at him.
"Help getting her out," she shrugged. "Infiltration, and pulling her out. Simple enough...except, we'll be avoiding a final clash-type of battle." The man tensed. "Sanc's holding her, because of who she really is, which is Prince Duo's adopted sister."
"That's preposterous! Atropos is as far from royal as I am," the man snorted.
"Ahh...and any peasant on the street would know the word preposterous. I don't think I need to point out the time Attie could explain the entire inner workings of a ship without stopping to think," Dorothy said, and the man nodded solemnly.
"We'll get her out. I trust you want to be in on it with us, Dorothy?" She shook her head.
"No. I'll be stuck making sure Duo's bodyguard doesn't kill you," she said curtly, as displeased with that plan as Heero himself was. "He's been...violent since Duo was kidnapped." And herself, but she didn't need to add that part in. The man was shaking his head.
"We'll take care of it. If Atropos is in there, we'll get her out." Dorothy stood, and curtsied.
"Thank you, Guildmaster," she said, and the man nodded. With a satisfied look, the abandoned bodyguard walked out and back to the castle.
x---x
"Une, when I said I don't to see anyone, that means I don't want to see anyone," Relena snapped, glaring at the older woman, who glared right back.
"My lady, this is one exception you should make," she snapped, and Relena threw down her compass. Lady Une straightened her coat in exasperation. The princess was lucky her plan was in Treize's benefit, or she would have been dead a long time ago. The honey-haired terror stalked towards her, today in a cream-and-red ensemble, half her hair in a bun and the other half left to hang down.
"I can't take insubordination from you," she snapped. "Who could possibly be so important that it's worth interrupting planning a battle that will be either the life or death of my country?!" The door opened, and Relena's jaw dropped open.
"Meet Milliardo Peacecraft, your brother, and his fiancée, Lucrezia Noin," Lady Une said. The Crown Prince of Sanc wore a simple red jacket buttoned up with white pants, a sword at his side, while his fiancée wore a deep purple dress and seemed to glare daggers at anyone who looked at her.
"Relena," Milliardo said, giving her a short, smart bow that spoke of a life in the military. His younger sister gaped at him, as if he was a ghost. "I've come to support our cause, and country."
The princess was too busy passing out to hear him.
x---x
The ground was cold on his skin when he fell with a grunt. Panting, he looked up with spinning vision at the small town in front of him. Could he make it? A quick tally of his injuries answered him with a resounding no. He was lucky to be alive.
A dog was barking in the distance. There were only four visible houses, as far as he could tell. The world was doing flip-flops, and he was barely holding back the bile in his throat.
With a quick, feeble curse, he blacked out. The ground jumped up to meet him.
"-eero," someone yelled at him, and angry blue eyes snapped open to see Treize standing over him. Heero got to his feet as steadily as he could. "What happened? I didn't know you were in the habit of fainting mid-meeting. Or were you just bored to death?" The group of men around a table full of maps laughed mutely.
"I'm leaving," he stated, and on shaking feet walked out the door, Treize not far behind. The cinnamon-haired Prime Minister grabbed his arm.
"You're in no state to leave the Castle, let alone Rayth, as you're obviously intent on doing," he murmured in case there were any eavesdroppers. "We need you for the battle." Heero pulled his arm away, already feeling the weakness wearing off. And that was a very bad thing.
"Duo's in trouble, and I'm going to help him," Heero stated. Treize shrugged.
"What do you think the battle's for? We're saving Duo and Hilde," he reaffirmed, but the young man shook his head.
"I'm leaving. Expect me back in the morning," he said, and with the weakness from their bond wearing off, strode down the corridor and straight into the stable. Without a word to the stable boys, he grabbed the well-known Wing, named for its insane speed and endurance. "I'll bring her back." The head boy nodded, and Wing and Heero took off out of the gate reserved specifically for a route from Rayth Castle to the land around the capitol, avoiding the constant foot traffic that was present even now at two in the morning.
Wing seemed to know exactly where to go, and Heero let her, analyzing what he knew from the brief lapse in consciousness. Duo was in pain, unconscious, and desperately needed help. From the spinning sky, Duo had probably experienced that a couple hours before, and plenty of horrible things could have happened in that time frame.
An eternity stretched on in the twilight as Heero and Wing approached a tiny village near the coast. Memory kicked in, and the bodyguard jumped off the mare to run the next hundred feet, where a bloody boy lay, black clothing torn beyond repair in the sparse grass. Heero grabbed him, and whistled for Wing.
Even though the mare had never been trained, she immediately ran forward, prancing in place as Heero swung the wounded boy into the saddle. Duo's head quickly found its way into the crick of the other boy's neck, since Heero had turned the boy backwards in the saddle for comfort, security, and easier maneuvering of Wing. The horse, however, seemed to read Heero's mind, and quickly started on its way back to Rayth.
Heero took advantage of the horse's intuition, and wound his arms around the other boy. He quickly realized that every time he touched one of Duo's cuts it transferred to his own body, so most of the ride was spent absorbing the slashes. They only lasted for a few minutes, and although the pain was excruciating it was worth it to see color slowly returning to the braided boy's face.
After an indeterminable amount of time, Duo stirred, burying himself deeper into Heero's arms with a tiny whimper. "Ow," he whispered, and Heero hugged him tighter.
"Stop almost dying," Heero stated, and Duo nodded.
"I'm tryin'," he whispered, hoarse but louder. "Damn 'lena...Hil..."
"They've still got Hilde, as far as we know. Dorothy was livid. We almost ran off to get you both, but Quatre talked us out of it," Heero said, and Duo made an effort to chuckle, although it sounded more like a dry heave. "Are you okay?"
"Feel like your horse sat on me," he murmured. "I'm not bleedin' now..." Heero nodded.
"I used our bond to take the wounds from you. I couldn't do anything about the exhaustion, or I haven't discovered how to yet," the blue-eyed boy said, and Duo sighed.
"I feel like shit," he grumbled, and Heero chuckled.
"You look it," he acknowledged. "Are you going to pass out before we can make it back to Rayth?"
"Yep."
"Want to stop somewhere first?"
"No. Big bed with you'd be best."
"You sound much better than when you woke up," Heero commented, and Duo looked up, a weak grin on his face.
"Well, that's good. I'm gonna pass out now and try not to throw up on you or the pretty white horsie." As Duo's head dropped back down to Heero's neck, the rider realized he was right. It seemed like he should have noticed Wing was white beforehand, since Duo could tell half-awake and mortally exhausted.
Wing trotted into Rayth and up to the Castle without a single movement from Heero. It had to be the most intelligent horse alive, since it also walked over to the side door for Heero and Duo to get off, and then walked itself over to the stable door, where it knocked for entry with its head. Flabbergasted stable boys led the self-satisfied mare trot herself into a stall, where she promptly fell asleep.
With Duo cradled in his arms, the bodyguard quickly strode up a neglected flight of stairs and through the near-waking halls of the Castle at four thirty, opening the mended double doors with minimal difficulty, and locking them just the same. He stripped Duo down, washed off the blood, and tucked him into the oversized bed after loosely rebraiding his hair.
When Heero moved away to go inform Treize of the prince's safe arrival, Duo's hand shot out and grabbed his arm. "Get in the bed." Heero looked at him like he was crazy.
"You woke up to get me to climb into bed with you when you're an exhausted wreck who just avoided death again?" Duo rolled his eyes, and yanked Heero's arm harshly, pulling him onto the bed and, more specifically, right on top of Duo. The boy grinned devilishly.
"Damn right. Now get in and cuddle." Heero smirked.
"You're going to end up killing yourself like this." Duo's grin was immovable.
"Mmmm, death by Heero. Sounds tasty. Get in."
Heero was about to climb off when Duo's arms wrapped themselves behind his neck and pulled him down for a deep, long, agonizingly perfect kiss. When Duo finally pulled away, violet eyes hopeful, Heero was trying his best to glare, but only managed to look insanely turned on and mad about it (which he was). "Don't do that." Duo pouted.
"My lips were lonely." He rolled his eyes, and flicked off his shoes, crawling in next to the pleased prince.
"No kissing," Heero said in his no-nonsense tone, and Duo grudgingly nodded. But, when Heero finally drew the braided boy into his arms, his tongue ran across his ear. "No tongue!" Duo squeaked in protest. "No. Tongue."
"Fine. No tongue, mister sexy overlord man," Duo growled playfully, and Heero rolled his eyes.
"That's not helping you. Go to-NO BITING!" Duo, who had started to nip at the same delicious Heero ear, sighed in aggravation.
"You're no fun! All I got left's groping!"
"No groping."
"DAMN!"
Heero sighed. It was going to be a long night.
x---x
A/N: Wow! That was looong! So. Next chapter we have the fight! YAAAY! And I'm on fall break now, so expect that in a shorter amount of time than this one was. Now, on to...
READER RESPONSES (woohoo!):
TrenchcoatMan: Ahh, a fan of the smut, eh? My smut turns out more like porn, so that's obviously not something to go on a computer my family randomly uses.
Silver Cateyes: Ideas, you say? To take care of Relena? I'm intrigued...
Windy River: I'm insulted! You didn't even ask for the punch line! Well, it's "hi". So ha.
Priscel: Oooo! Explanation time! Alrighty, Duo doesn't know about the dog thing. Nobody does 'cept lil' Heero. It's just a coincidental comment that's supposed to hint at their connection. Confusing? A bit. I'm so glad you think it's funny! All this time I thought I was just amusing myself with my strange sense of humor...I think your other questions got answered in this chapter, so...thanks for reading!
The Rogue Prince: oh yes, a VERY large force. Huzzah.
Red Tail: Ooooh, I hope I convert you! I was converted to slash and let me tell you, it's so much more fun to write. If you wanna go read a great fic to convert you, look for Acheronia Atropos (which, by the way, is NOT where I got Hilde's name from!); that switched me, even though there's no citrus. I'm so glad you persevered. And you complimented my writing and grammar again! Kudos to you!
Mlaine: Not a fan of winter? Hmmm...guess you're not a member of MY family! But, it does have colds, the flu, and all that nastiness...but snow! Christmas! Snowboarding/skiing! Hot tourist boys! Woo! It's always been a pet peeve of mine that the antagonists' plans are always 'kill, take over'. How boring and unoriginal, not to mention stupid! Wow...this got long...(BTW, my favorite season's actually summer. Go figure...)
Magical-flyingdragon: Well, you just have to wait to find out if Relena dies or not! Oh, the anticipation.
Mistress Koishii: Yep. Angry Hilde. Oh, shit, I just remembered I forgot to put her part in! Oh well. First thing next chapter!
Myca: I stand corrected. My worst Covert Relena Bashing's gonna be in Prodigy. You oughta just wait for that...muwahahah! I'm so bad.
THANKS FOR READING! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE REVIEW!