Part 15

That night Duo dreamt. In the dream he stood in the ruins of an ancient city devoured by a forest he had no name for. Tree roots and grass had thrown up the paving of the path. Vines had split open the walls of the stone houses and branches poked through glass windows. Algae or moss obscured statues and carvings lichen. Although the houses were built in a Japanese style they were built of stone, the storm shutters were copper long since rusted through, and the screens were glass. This city had been beautiful once, and although greatly altered by the Forest it was still beautiful just in a very different way, and he knew with the terrible clarity one has in dreams that it was Forest not forest. This Forest felt threatening but oddly, as if it was trying not to be, as if it was trying to slough years of violence for him, and only for him. That was clear in the odd clarity of dreams. The Forest was alive and conscious, and it was as if it was trying it's very best to welcome him, but couldn't really remember how.

A fountain spewed water from a woman's head, and there was a triangular symbol half broken off on her forehead. Her jaw was missing but the water still spilled over her perfect hands as if she tried to stop it or catch it. It seemed to vomit water, as it was an uneven and sporadic stream over her hands, where the plumbing was failing. Her breast hands were stained green from the constant flood, but her marble head was a spoiled by moss, although that is reddish day in around her mouth iron in the water. It seemed that violence, more than neglect, had smashed in the back of the head and ripped away her jaw. There was a window of coloured glass looked over the plaza, but here and there the panes had fallen from the putty. The walkways had shed their paving stones in favour of grass and wild herbs, so they stood upright here and there like gravestones.

He walked over to the orchard; it was vastly overgrown. The branches tumbled into each other and clawed into each other's growth, so one tree seemed to grow both lemons and pears. There was a fig tree half strangled with choke weeds, the fruit was unripe and unfit to eat. All over the grass, underneath it there was fruit, the windfall of many trees left to ruin, the cherry tree stood alone, out of the reach of you the trees. Its roots had lifted the circle of paving stones that surrounded it, and its branches were smothered in its blowsy blossoms that were a bright dark pink.

One of the paths was lined with yellow roses and it was cleared to show him the way. Although the city had obviously been abandoned for centuries someone or something had pruned the roses. Duo was not in any way afraid. Not here, not in this place.

He walked along the rose lined path, his fingers brushing the smooth surface of the blowsy flowers. At the end of the path was a staircase that seemed to climb to the heavens, the stairs fixed into the hill with wooden beams and huge oak trees tied with ofuda prayers lined the path. Knowing what was necessary of him, he climbed the stairs.

He climbed for a while, enjoying the smells and odd light of the Forest when an old woman in a black shawl stopped him. She was spinning thread between her forefinger and thumb with spittle. "A long way from home, dearie," she said and she seemed to speak in many languages instantly but he understood them all. "You must have come a long way to be here in the Forest."

"I dream," he told her, "my body lies sleeping in the Halcyon palace."

She made an understanding noise, even further from home that I thought you were. Be careful to follow your thread back, or you'll be lost here amongst the ghosts and the roses. You take care now, dearie," she lifted the ball of unspun thread and began to descend the stairs into the dream twilight.

"Thank you. Obaasan," he said to her back, calling her grandmother, though he didn't know if she's been as kind as she seemed. He continued to climb.

After a while he came across a second woman on the steps. She was matronly with thick brown hair tied up in a loose knot, and she was knitting. "Why hello, young man," she said adding a cable needle to her wool and click clacking as she sat on the step and looked at him. "It must be pressing business to have brought you to the Forest."

"I dreaming, Obasan," he said calling her aunt, "I'm coming here in a dream because this was the path I was shown."

She looked at him clearly, then held up her knitting, "this will fit you, lad, and protect you on the way, just mind you remember the kind lady that gave you it."

"Thank you, obasan," he said taking the sweater she had given him.

She stood up and dusted herself down, "now mind how you go." She, like the old woman before her, descended the stairs.

By the time he reached the maiden he was expecting her. She was practicing with a long black sword, dancing back and forth as if fighting off unseen opponents. "You're not supposed to be here." She said, sheathing the sword at her hip. She wore a leather kirtle and a leather brassiere with chain mail hanging from it. Unlike the other women she was a warrior.

"I dream, onesan," he said calling her sister, "I go only where my dreams lead me."

"Don't put such stock in dreams," she said, "dreams are the tool of the enemy. Dreams betray." She said.

"The dream brought me here and I must climb on." He told her, "though I do listen to your words, onesan."

"If the Forest welcomes you then so must I," she said, "but it asks more than you can give. It is what it does. All our gifts are double edged, and we don't give you what you want," she clearly eyed the sweater that the matron had given him, "we give you what you need. Go on, Duo, but be warned." Then she was gone before he asked her how she knew his name, and she didn't descend like the others, but between one blink and the next she had vanished.

Duo took the last few steps up to a small temple under a wooden arch. A woman all in white sat in a pool of moonlight, even her hair and her skin were white, and there was a cloth over her eyes. "so have you chosen?" She asked. In the eerie moonlight it seemed almost as if she was glowing, the intensity of her hurt Duo's eyes.

"I didn't know I had to choose." He said.

"You must choose," she said, "or all is lost."

"I don't understand," he argued, "what do I have to choose?"

"It doesn't matter," she said, "only that you make the choice."

"I can't choose if I don't know what the choice is."

"One or the other, it is irrelevant, just choose."

He woke up with a start and found himself sitting up in bed. Beside him Heero slept peacefully, he looked boyish, curled on his side. With a sigh and a determination to swallow the dream Duo lay down next to Heero and took a deep breath of his smell, soaking up the warmth that poured from him, it was almost palpable how much it soothed him, a smell of sweat and rose hips from his bath. In his sleep Heero nuzzled up against him and out his arm over Duo's hip pulling him close. Duo took the comfort as best he could, noting almost idly how it didn't make him uncomfortable and closed his eyes and waited for sleep.

The second dream disturbed him more than the first. He felt like a voyeur as he watched the scene unfold before him. It was strange because although he was watching it happen it was as if it was happening to him.

Tobin lay on the bed in the warm pool of sunlight with the heady comfort of one who should long since be about the day's chores, but his head was on Avili's knee and he was warm, comfortable and utterly content. She was twisting his hair into little curls around her fingers, but her hair was still up, worn up in the night's plait. He lay welled in the pillow of her lap, with his head resting on the taut fabric of her nightgown. Though it was long past noon neither of them had risen. When he worked in the opera Tobin had often lain late simply because he hadn't retired till after dawn, but even then his brothers would have had him up and at practise by now, it was almost time to retire again. Lying in the halo of her perfumed breath he had slept silently and peacefully, as had she, nestled together like cats they lay in her wide bed, and now he lay on her lap with his knees raised in the warm sunlight utterly content in a way he had not imagined possible for himself.

"This is utterly wicked" Avili said with a girlish chuckle"we both have things to do, we shouldn't just lie here."

"I'm not moving" he said"for anything short of the rapture or food."

"I don't know" she said"I bet I could make you move."

"Well, probably" he said with a smile"but I doubt I have any left in me, you've drained me absolutely and completely so very much I can't get out of bed."

She laughed"I like your eyes, they're so very pretty, I almost want to cut them out and put them in a jar, but I like the way you look at me."

He almost squirmed with embarrassment"I keep telling you, Lee, there's none left, I'm all done."

"I like your eyes is all" she said"they're so bright and glassy, like they were made outside your body and put there later. I wish I had your eyes, I'd be pretty with your eyes."

"Avili" he said, he rarely used her full name, he always called her Lee"you are the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, I still don't understand what you see in me, and I like not knowing. I like looking and you and imagining what it is that intrigues you so. Your eyes are so dark that they seem black and then when i get close I realise they're green too. I really love your eyes, so you can't have mine, because they are nothing but trouble."

"You have D'Cevni eyes" she said"there are legends about those with eyes that colour, that they were blessed by the goddess and that they excelled at all they attempted, do you think that that is true"

"You tell me" he said archly"do I excel at what i attempt"

"no" she said glibly"I broke you, I keep telling you, I break all my toys."

"You didn't break me" he enunciated the words carefully"you've just used up all your goes for the moment. Try again later and I'll tell you if I'm broken."

"Are you rationing it at the moment" She laughed"any body would think it was wartime." She reached down and kissed him slowly on the mouth"I think I could talk you round." Her laugh was low and husky.

"Well, probably" he said with a smirk.

"Do you love me" She asked.

"I thought we agreed never to use that word." He finally broke off the almost claustrophobic nature of her gaze, it was amazing how when she looked at him that he thought that he might drown. "Love is for other people, we don't need that distraction."

"Do you love me" She pressed"because I love you, I've loved you since I first knew you existed."

"I don't believe in love, I spent my entire life peddling love, love is a thing to convince people out of their money or their chastity, love isn't for you and me, please, don't ask me that again"

"You are my toy, I'll ask you what I want to." She said petulantly, he wondered if he'd hurt her. Sometimes the strangest things cut her to the quick"and you'll learn to give me answers I like better."

"I won't lie to you, Lee, I adore you, you take over my entire mind when I'm with you, but I don't believe in love, and I don't think you want me to say it when I don't mean it. You are my earth moon stars and sun, I belong to you and would even if you had not claimed me as your toy, but I don't love you." A single tear welled in her eye before it tipped out and ran along her cheek, almost like a traitor. Avili was not easily given to tears and it shocked him. "It's fine, Lee, I belong to you, remember."

"You silly goose" she said batting at his chest with his fists, angry and happy and sad all at once"I'll kill you, you know that don't you, I'm going to take you out and kill you slowly, because you make me so mad" she was smiling though"almost as much as you make me happy."

It was only when he woke he realised that he had seen someone else's memory, and he suspected it was Avili's, as if she had taken the chance of his dreaming to remember a time that was fonder, and it was a fond memory indeed. He looked at Heero's shoulder, they were curled together like cats, and wondered what it would be like to do that, to share a lazy afternoon with someone you loved so much you couldn't recognise the emotion as love.

Heero's heart beat was steady against his arm where his bicep was pressed against his chest. It was a sobering noise, and outside the window the sun was rising. Soon it would be time to get up and they would start their journey to the city of Dramathen for the day of the dead.

"Heero," he whispered, "Heero," he shook him gently. "Wake up."

Heero blearily blinked his eyes open, "Duo?" he asked. "Nightmare?" Untangling his limbs he flopped onto his back, "jus' a dream." He mumbled, not fully awake.

"Are you in love?" Duo asked, suddenly desperate to understand the question Tobin asked him, to feel what Avili had felt for the man she chose to share her world with. After seeing that he felt so totally lonely.

"Am soldier," Heero murmured, "not believe in love," he yawned, trying to wake up more, it was a measure of how much he trusted Duo that he slept that deeply beside him, "partners."

Duo rolled unto his back and stared at the canopy of the bed and resolved to think about what Heero had answered.

Author's note

I just want to clarify what Heero said at the end, first things first he's half asleep bless him, imagine being woken up from just short of a coma and asked a deep metaphysical question like that… that he made any sense is a wonder. And two he answers with pretty much the same thing Tobin said, I don't believe in love, but Tobin loved Avili regardless, and he does say Partners, which is an admission. He does love him in this story, he just won't acknowledge it as love. Of course that just makes it really difficult for Duo.