Author: Keiran

Title: A World in a Grain of Sand 4/?

Pairings: 1+2, minor 4x5x4 and 3xD (don't ask .) really mild R+1 (doesn't last at all)

Rating: It probably doesn't deserve an R, but let it be so. Just to be safe and all.

Genre: There'll be romance, mild angst, now it's just historical sort of fantasy.

Warnings: Shounen-ai. Mild bastardisation of the pilots minus Duo. Smart and nice Relena.

Archive: my site: the URL is on my profile page. If you want it, drop me a line. ^_^

This fic has been betaed by Sundaire. ^_^ beams

****

Ever since the return from the temple, the great general had been rather moody and distant. The changes weren't too great to people he usually stayed away from (which basically meant everyone), but to the precious few whom he befriended the difference was monumental.

"Heero! That has to end!" Lord Quatre Raberba Winner was losing his legendary patience. The man, however, paid him no heed and continued staring out the window.

"Please, Heero. Is it still about that boy?" The general refused to answer. "You can't do this to yourself over a slave."

"The master healer said he was no slave."

"He was a slave to you," Quatre reminded. "You didn't seem to mind when he was warming your bed. Besides, what about that boy that Trowa and Dorothy found for you? He was pretty. Wasn't he enjoyable as well?"

Heero didn't answer. A few useless questions later, the blonde man gave up and left.

Coincidentally, he met the mentioned boy in the hall a couple of doors away from Heero's quarters.

"No my lord. I do not serve lord Heero anymore. His lordship said I'm not needed, and I am a servant of his highness now," he said in response to the diplomat's careful query. Quatre felt helpless.

Heero sat on a windowsill, thinking. It wasn't right, was it? That child was a slave. Yes, the law and common sense forced him to treat him with the greatest care and respect, but it said the very same thing regarding animals! Slaves might be humans, but they weren't people. It was natural that he had missed his Kirei, like he missed Wing every time he died. But he had never grieved for five years in a row after a horse. Even if the new Wing was always carefully chosen from among the best steeds in the country. Even if they were good companions.

No slave should mean more to him.

And yet, here he was, after five miserable – but bearable – years, he realized that Duo, for he was not Kirei anymore, had no desire whatsoever to have anything to do with him.

It was a stark contrast to all of the Wings, which were befriended with no trouble.

So what should he do now? He could see that he was of no use to his king now. Heero barely registered the presence of others, in fact. All he thought about was Kirei, his violet eyes, his warm skin, the softness of his hair, the sweetness of his mouth, a leaf-shaped birthmark on his inner thigh, the sound of his moans…

…his soft smile when he read a book, the way his eyes sparkled when Dorothy pulled him into a particularly heated discussion, the way his eyes would dart to Wufei when he tried to convince them that Mandarin was the most beautiful language on Earth (none of them had understood a word, of course).

It had never been so hard before. As long as he believed him to be dead, he could go on. He hurt. He dreamed. But never had the pain been unbearable.

But now, when he knew that Kirei was alive, that there was someone who could see him every day, he could not bring himself to go on.

The general knew he needed another's opinion. His friends' he already knew. 'Kirei was your slave. Duo is a healer. The first is dead. The other you cannot have.'

But then again he had always known that his elf was not a slave. In some way he had known. He had chosen to ignore it, but that was a totally different matter. It made him wonder, now that he was forced to acknowledge it, what was Kirei like as a person.

Heero always needed a goal, or else he would have gone crazy long ago. His mind didn't work like a precise machine, it needed to see the objective, to plan the course of actions necessary to obtain it. Since he couldn't get his mind off Duo Maxwell, then Duo Maxwell would become his goal.

Having set his mind, Heero went in search of his king. He found him in the library, analyzing maps.

"Heero. Looks like you're out of work for a short while. There are no direct threats to Sanq, and the indirect ones seem to have moved away," Milliardo Peacecraft said, gesturing to the charts he'd been studying.

"Then I need to request a leave, your majesty."

The king regarded him carefully.

"I was rather hoping you'll use this moment of peace and take a bride."

"Majesty?"

"Forget the title, for a while. You must have noticed that my daughter has become fond of you, ever since she became of age."

Heero couldn't, for the life of him, remember himself truly talking to any girl except for Lady Dorothy during the last five years.

"She is?"

"Yes. I was rather hoping you would find your bride in her, actually."

"Does she, by any chance, have blonde hair?" he asked cautiously. The comings and goings of the palace people usually escaped his mind. He took after his father in that aspect – Odin Lowe's solitude had become proverbial in Sanq. The only people he had spoken with were his wife, two or three friends and his son. After the death of Heero's mother he left the capital to journey with his child, leaving his other friends behind.

The only reason Heero had some friends at all was that the great general was required to present reports from his journeys to his liege, personally.

The king sighed. "I wasn't counting on it, but one can hope. What do you need that leave for?" Now Heero was in trouble. How was he supposed to tell his king that he wanted to pursue his theoretically dead slave? "Does it have anything to do with that long-haired, pretty, little boy you've had a couple of years back?" A stunned silence was his only answer. "Call that a lucky guess. Well?"

"Well what?" Heero was too surprised to care about manners.

"I am kind of curious, what kind of creature your slave had been, to leave you mourning for five years." The king paused at the general's expression. "Or were you too preoccupied with his… abilities to notice this consciously?"

"I don't know, Milliardo. I suspected he was not a slave originally, but now we have encountered him in a temple. He is a healer now. I do not know what to think."

"Let me guess. He vehemently refused to go anywhere with you, and you've realized what it feels like to be rejected. And now you want to know…"

"I want him back. He belongs to me. Even if I have to seduce him back."

"Interesting." The old man watched Heero carefully. Heero was staring out of the window, seeing nothing visible to the other's eyes. "And that's so important to you, that you decided to leave your post as the great general of Sanq?"

"No! I just…"

"I refuse to grant you permission to leave." The king's voice cut through the images in the general's head.

"Your majesty?"

"However I need someone trusted in the palace in northern Sanq. You will go and stay there for a couple of years. Lord Chang should be able to take over the duties of the great general should a need arise."

"Thank you, my lord." Heero bowed, relief evident in his features.

"I've been informed that some of the bailiffs were not respectable. Nothing too major, but the presence of someone with a reputation that states rather firmly that they are likely to neglect the negotiations might improve the situation." Pale blue eyes twinkled merrily.

"Yes, your majesty."

"You may go and prepare now. You'll leave within this month."

The general all but fled from the room. Almost as soon as the doors closed behind him, they silently opened again.

"Father? May I come in?"

"Yes, Relena."

The young princess smiled and walked over. "What happened to general Yuy? I saw him running to his chambers. He seemed… elated."

The king smirked. "I am sorry, Relena, but I'm afraid you have to forget about marrying him, once and for all. He's leaving for northern Sanq soon."

"Won't he come back?" The girl's blue eyes opened wide.

"He might. I doubt it, however."

"Why?" The princess's voice suggested she was near tears. Her father looked at her fondly and pulled her into a hug.

"Because he has been challenged. Men like him don't back out from such challenges," the king said finally.

"A challenge?"

"Something he needs to work hard to obtain. As far as I know that's an entirely new concept for him."

The girl's eyes lighted momentarily. "You mean he is going after Kirei," she stated calmly.

It was the king's turn to look at his daughter surprised.

"Don't look at me that way, father. Lady Dorothy is my friend, remember? I've spoken to Kirei a couple of times, he was one of very few people that were more or less my age at the time… although the general might not have noticed us speaking at all. He was too preoccupied with getting Kirei to look at him, to bother with looking at what Kirei was looking at."

The man chuckled. "He'll have to learn that now."

"You know what Dorothy told me the other day? You remember that Kirei fell of a cliff? They found him recently in a temple, in northern Sanq. He's a healer." The king nodded. Heero had said so too. "I was surprised, after all it has been only five years, and he was a little older than sixteen when he supposedly died. There is too much to be learned to be a healer to learn in five years, and he was not a novice, Dorothy said. Her husband had said that Kirei's name is Duo Maxwell."

"Maxwell?" Now that was new information. It didn't explain much, but it was a surprise that a slave had a surname to go by…

"Yes, I was surprised too. But Dorothy comes from Gaul [1] and she said that lord Maxwell was one of the nobles of Albion. She never knew them personally, but the late Lady Maxwell was rumored to have had violet eyes. They also said she was very beautiful."

"By the Goddess! It's a miracle we don't have an army going for our throats now!" the king exclaimed.

"Do not worry, father. Kirei didn't strike me as a person who would like to avenge their honor with the blood of others," the princess said soothingly.

Her father looked at her for a while and smiled. "You'll make a fine queen, Relena. We just need to find you a husband who'd be more interested in hunting than ruling a country."

"Just do not overdo it, father. I wish to be able to talk to him as well."

"Of course."

***

Heero meanwhile barely noticed anything even remotely resembling a human being. He ran through the corridors too fast to take safe turns, his mind too preoccupied to notice the mess he left behind when the circumstances forced him to change the direction of his movement.

His brain was overwhelmed with plans on how to seduce Duo to him. There was only the small problem that he had virtually no idea how to seduce a willing party, let alone someone who didn't wish to speak to him at all. Through his life his bed mates had been brought to him, and he had never questioned their presence. It's not like he only bedded slaves, he'd been with Wufei when they were both teenagers, he'd had both men and women in one country or the other. But – with the exception of Wufei – they had all been asking to get into his bed.

Perhaps that's what made Duo so special, Heero mused walking into his room. He had been the only one whom he wanted, but who didn't want him. Desired, perhaps. But never wanted.

"It doesn't matter now," the general told himself firmly. "He is mine. I will have him willingly this time." He walked over to the window in his chamber.

Far away on the horizon, a single star appeared on a deep violet sky, as if saying that a new day will soon arise.

[1] Gaul – ancient France. Catalonia sounds more like Spain actually, but I needed to have Dorothy as close to Britain as I could. ^_^