He was aware that he was somewhere cool, and that his body felt comfortable, if not stiff. Like it was lying on a cloud. There was the soft smell of something floral nearby and he thought it might have been lavender, like the shampoo his lover insisted on using even when they had to drive into the next town to get it. Behind that scent though, was the longer inhabited odor of old bricks and dust. In his mind, it resembled a library that had fallen into disuse, with spider webs now clinging between old tomes and window streaked with grime. Something was creaking, back and forth in a pendulum-like pattern. It would have been comforting if not for the throbbing ache coming from his skull and the spike of discomfort each 'creeeak' sent rushing.
Groaning as the pain sank it's roots more firmly into his awareness, he struggled to lift eyelids that seemed to have gained considerable weight, and at first saw nothing but a blackness so solid he wasn't sure he'd accomplished the task. Then gradually, shapes began to form.
Most noticeably was the faint outline of yellow light about him, in a weird square pattern that he couldn't remember seeing before. It was so perfectly formed, with only little trendles creeping off of it. It took him a long time to understand he was looking at light shining through floorboards, and that the square was a door or sorts. A small one, more commonly known as a trap door.
Did I fall? Did I trip going into the basement? I told Trowa to fix the light last week…
But their house hadn't had a trap door leading into the basement, which really only held yard supplies and cleaning tools, and the occasional bit of broken furniture. That house had a regular door, and then a descending stairwell. Not the ladder he was finally seeing leading down from that small opening. Whoever heard of a ladder in a basement anyway? The effort it would take to put anything down there would have been ridiculous.
So if not their house, then where?
He laid in the dark staring up at that shape of light and it's slowly revealing ladder for a few minutes, trying to get his head to stop aching, trying to make sense of the throbbing in his body. His sticky body.
Now that was interesting. Quatre frowned, clenching and unclenching one hand and noting the gritty feel along his palm, the sweat that made his stomach feel like someone had been playing with honey of him. He's been doing something strenuous…
The exact moment that things started to become clear for him was made obvious by the sharp gasp that rang out in the cottage's basement, like the last breath of innocence being explained before cruel fate decided to point out the truth.
It was not to Duo that his mind went, not immediately, but rather back to the tragic sense of loss he'd again felt while sitting in the middle of the wooden floor above, feeling the sun warmed air press stiflingly on his face as he'd unfolded the old note and read lines he'd placed there in better times. That memory stung worse than anything down here did, and so it was on that that he fixed as he blinked teary eyes blindly. It was like being loved and hurt by Heero all over again. It had been all of his regret and remorse unburied and thrust at him… And it hadn't been bad. Just to remember how happy he had been even in the midst of feeling that tidal wave of emotion had been good, with it's own bitter sweet taste.
That taste had turned sour though, right before… Before something caused this lapse in consciousness.
Heero…
That scent of lavender crept into his nose again, almost cloying as it over washed the mild stench of dust and mildew, and the blonde wrinkled his nose and turned his head to the side to escape it.
Creeeeak. Groan. Creeak.
The smell, that noise. They kept him from vanishing into his mind to sort out anything. He turned back towards the flowery breeze and opened reddened eyes.
Duo…?
The redhead sat in an old rocking chair a few feet away, head down and arms folded tightly across his stomach. His feet pushed off the ground silently and caused the chair to let out it low cry again, but nothing else moved except for a few messy strands of hair that had come loose from the teen's usual braid and now floated in clumps around his face.
As his eyes grew more accustomed, Quatre could pick out the splotches of dirt on Duo's black pants, like his friend had been wrestling outside.
That's just like him. Wufei will kill him if he got any in the house. His dry lips curled up into a small, tired smile, his voice sounding rusty to his own ears and driving another wedge of pain into his core.
"Duo? You should have-"
All reasonable thought left him, as did words, when his friend and lover's head lifted.
Duo's face was as empty as a doll's, his normally lively and glittering purple eyes now held the dull, dusty quality of a pair of marbles. His lips were a slack line of colorless flesh beneath his nose, his cheeks and forehead deathly pale and near glowing in the darkness. It was the way those eyes moved over his face, like a lizard on a wall watching the world creep along, that made everything come into bitter focus.
It was in Heero's wallet. It was always in Heero's wallet, and Duo has it now. Duo has it, because Duo-
"You killed him."
The soft accusation fell from his lips blandly. It was little more than a whisper, but Quatre thought it sounded like an echoing shout between them. It was the sound of guillotines dropping. Of a judge's hammer slamming into place. It was Romeo's hand releasing the poison vial so it could crash and break on the floor, and then Juliet's scream of anguish that rippled through the halls of the dead.
It was a gunshot.
Right between a pair of beautiful cobalt blue eyes.
Duo didn't react. He just lifted his feet, then lowered them, and that chair let out another moody cry. His eyes picked over Quatre's dirt-spotted features without recognition, over his quivering bottom lip and over the line of dried blood that had hours ago trailed from the back of his head and down the pale curves of Quatre's swanlike throat. That had likely happened when he sat upstairs with the unconscious Arabian in his arms, trying to slow the bleeding from his lacerated scalp and crying silently as he stared at the wet and red, the accusing, edge of the radio. His impromptu weapon. Grabbed in a moment of shock and it had been too late to turn back from the moment he had opened his car door.
"YOU KILLED HIM! YOU KILLED HEERO!"
He jumped as that hoarse shriek cut through the air.
Something at last blossomed in Duo's eyes, some awareness that had formerly retreated into the putrid corners of his mind. They narrowed coolly as they settled on the sobbing shape of Quatre. He looked just like some damsel in a movie, waiting for her rescuer.
The wrists that lay bruised in their silver cuffs were bruised with lilacs of color, thin and frail as they turned in the restraints weakly. His little hands with those perfect nails opening and closed like something breathing it's last. His platinum hair lay around him in upset clumps, still so pretty even with the dried maroon streaking it near the back. His tears swelled over his closed lashes, then pooled in the crinkled corners and ran down cheeks, leaving abused trails in the dust like the shining paths of snails. His lips, though quivering in misery and cut from either his teeth or the rough trip the radio have given him to the floor, were like two loving carnations. Their color was fair as that of a doll's, shaped so full and-
"Heero!" It was a wail. Something that hurt the eardrums and made the eyes water. "You killed Heero! You t-took him away! How could you!"
And those lips were -STILL- calling that asshole's name.
Selfish little brat. Why do I love you? He'd given Quatre everything. His friendship, his love, his sanity, and finally whatever innocence he'd had left after that war, and he was still calling for that cold son of a bitch who had never been able to give him any of that. Duo had been there when he was needed, had wiped away tears after their fights and had held Quatre close when the nightmares were too much. He'd protected him in battle, and from himself when those uncomfortable times arose. He'd picked him up and implanted him in a new life when that was what Quatre had needed, and this couldn't really be happening, now could it?
In answer to the incredulous question in Duo's mind, Quatre let out a little whimper, and though his lips moved silently, Duo could pick that hated name off of them. And why not? Wasn't it a name that had never really left the billboard in his mind?
He stood up from his chair, legs shaking and mouth sickening dry. Quatre heard the rocking chair hit against the floor one more time and stop, and those swollen aqua orbs opened and fixed on Duo as he moved towards him.
"I'll never be enough for you, will I? Nothing I do, who I am…"
The blonde stared up at him like a fish, mouth opening and closing with faint hitching noises and the breath escaping him like the building whistle of a kettle.
Duo answered himself as he stepped carefully over his boyfriend and grabbed hold of the ladder. "No. I won't. You're always going to cry for him. It'll always be his face you see above him when we fuck, and his lips when we kiss too, huh, Kitten? You're always going to be daydreaming about his fist slamming into your cheek when I'm hugging you, and that makes me sick."
He started up, hand over hand . Quatre had to wince his eyes shut when Duo pushed open the trapdoor and light flooded down him. When he at last managed to coax them back open, Duo was out of the basement, knelt on the floor of the pantry and looking down at him in a way that suggested his blankness was creeping back in.
"I love you, Quatre. I think I love you when I first saw you, and when we fought together."
He swallowed past his aching throat, "D-duo… Please…"
"And I love you now."
Duo looked sad as he lowered the door closed, watching the bar of light slide across Quatre's frantic features before he could see him no more.
XxXxX
He was almost too late.
He'd gone upstairs to wash himself off and get supplies. His body was working on auto, piloted by reason rather then actual brain power, as he splashed water over his face and started tucking back loose strands of chestnut and gold, and then as he opened the medical cabinet. It was into Quatre's traveling bag that he scooped handful after handful of pill bottles. More items to back up the assortment of drugs and bathroom supplies that had rested in that pale blue container. Miscellaneous medicines that they all had commonly at one point, when it had been necessary to tend to their own battle wounds.
Now, most of his own used up and in a state of disuse, the case he'd used scratched and filled with old magazines and other trash and the medicines scattered to the four winds, but he knew Quatre and bet that if anyone's was updated at least somewhat regularly, it would be the Arabian's.
He took a moment to stop in the bedroom and push the bed back where it belonged, then another few to thoroughly wipe the blood from the black exterior of the boom box, his face curiously black as his hand slid the rag back and forth over the hard plastic. He may as well have been washing windows. Then Duo dropped onto the bed, pawing almost blindly through the contents of the bag he'd just prepared.
A pad of cotton gauzing was set aside, along with the bottle of chloroform, it's plastic seal still in place. If he hadn't been so far from his usual demeanor, Duo would have laughed. The blonde had probably bought this thinking it would be 'kinder' than knocking some poor sap on the back of his head with a gun. It was just like him. A moment later, the sinister shape of a syringe joined it, and then after Duo had blandly scanned the label, a small clear bottle.
Morphine.
It would have to do for now. Later, there would be time enough for proper shopping. To find something safer to-
Love him. To love him and keep him. He doesn't know what's good for him! Doesn't know what he wants! He'll never understand how much I always wanted to-
- keep him calm and agreeable. Maybe some proper bedding too, and some more comfortable restraints, so that Quatre wouldn't hurt himself.
It was easy for Duo to feel no guilt as he inserted the sharp tip of the needle through the tin lidding of the morphine bottle and began to fill it, so long as he kept that 'truth' in front of him. He was hurt now, but this was still for Quatre's own good. He needed to take care of Quatre, just like he had after Heero's murder - accident - when Quatre hadn't been well enough to fend for himself or to think. He'd been there for him then, and had helped even when Quatre was furious and resentful to all of them for it, and he'd be there for him now.
He tapped the needle carefully and checked for bubbles, then stored away the remaining with a cold mental note to put it in the fridge later. It was going to be a lot of work, with all the medicine he'd need to get and the safe-guarding of the basement he'd have to do, but it would be worth it when Quatre was happy and smiling again.
He'd left the bag on the kitchen counter when he'd gone back down stairs, taking only the syringe in one pocket and the bottle of chloroform in the other, and a cloth already damp with the chemicals in his hand.
When he opened the door and saw the shaky pale hands trying to support Quatre as he boosted himself out of the trapdoor, it was his instincts that saved him.
Instincts, that perhaps, Heero would have been proud of.
Quatre lifted his head and flicked sweat sticky blonde bangs out of his glossy aqua eyes in time to see a hand dart forward. He was dragged up and out by the collar of his shirt, knee banging painfully into the flooring edge, and distantly, as the breath he'd been holding rushed out of him in a gasp, he heard one of the buttons on his shirt tear off.
The cloth descended.
He knew the smell, and fought it with an aimed punch at the neutral face of his lover. It was a face he knew almost as well as his own… But the limb that was already feeling heavy from that first breath of that toxin did little more than rise and seemingly caress Duo's cheek, then slipped away as he watched helpless with glazing eyes.
As Quatre sank down against Duo's chest and was enveloped in a pair of arms like clinging trendles of ivy, the last things he was aware of was the sharp sting of something sliding into his neck, and then the press of cool lips to the already numbing skin. A kiss; the proper chariot to send him off into the hungry oblivion that flowed like a river through his mind.
And the far away sound of a button bouncing down the many rungs of a ladder, to an darkness that was more reality than any one person should know.