They waited out the rain—and the night—in a small, old pit-dwelling home that looked to Relena to be straight out of a movie. A soft light came from a fire in a mid-sized hearth, sunken into the floor and taking up a most of the center space; the warmth had been an instant relief, and she fell into a deep sleep the moment she laid down on the dirt.
When she woke, she fully expected to be in her own bed. It took a very long few minutes of glancing around the room to remember all that had happened, but the understanding that it was not a dream began to settle in her stomach, sour and overwhelming.
Heero was gone. His pack and all of his things were gone with him, and she knew that meant he had no intention of coming back. But on a stool by the opening she spied next to a rucksack a plain kimono and hakama, and she gave a sad smile. Whoever he was, he was not all bad, even in spite of his attitude problem. For only a brief moment she considered not bothering to change, but the air was cool and she had no spare clothes of her own.
The items were tricky, but not too much for her to handle. There were layers upon layers, it feels like, and she does not bother tying the first very well. She was grateful she hit a second growth spurt in her last year of schooling, the wide pants falling just at her ankles. But she was on her own with shoes, it seemed, and pursed her lips as she looked down at herself. With no mirror, the upside-down glance would have to do, and she stuffed her original clothes down into the woven sack, slinging it over her shoulder.
She left the rugged comfort of the thickly-thatched home, the sunlight bright and the air rich with the scent of the tall grass through which the man had taken her on horseback the night before. She looked around, noting the sun's position in the sky. That her father had been so dedicated to her education was a blessing, and she thought back on all of the survival instincts she'd learned in her outdoorsman classes over the years. She would be stupid to leave the shelter that the pit-dwelling home provided, but she would be even stupider if she did not find a source of clean water to drink soon. Food was less important, but she would need to swallow her feelings about hunting and killing animals if she were to make it more than a week or so with any strength.
Sighing, she pursed her lips once more; perhaps, instead, she could forage for things to eat.
Well, she figured, better get looking. It did not yet look midday, but the sun held a strange quality that seemed almost silver as it shone down on her. She would need to see sunrise for herself to be able to tell exactly the time, so not a moment to spare, then, if she wanted to work in daylight and be back here by nightfall. She was not exactly keen on being alone again under that wide, mystical sky.
She took to what she was positive was the east, where she spotted treetops in the distance. A forest meant, potentially, all manner of edible wild things and maybe even a freshwater spring. Every hundred or so steps she turned, always measuring her distance from the small home. If it were once a farmhouse or something of the sort, it would stand to reason that its previous inhabitants settled here because it was, well, inhabitable.
...Nevermind that it'd been abandoned.
When she reached the forest, she was hesitant to cross beyond the first tree. They all were much bigger up close than she'd thought as she approached, and a certain air surrounded them that made her feel equal parts intimidated and intrigued. In the very breeze that rustled their high-up branches she felt something an awful lot like magic. But that was utterly ridiculous, and she took in a great, steadying breath, striding into the treeline standing tall as she could manage.
She looked here or there at the bottoms of trees for mushrooms or wild onions, searching the branches for any fruit or nuts and scouring the forest floor for any that may have fallen. And while she did find some, she was not confident enough in her abilities to identify them. If they did not look familiar to her, how was she supposed to trust that she wouldn't keel over and die from ingesting them?
The time passed, and after what felt like a few hours of searching, Relena gave up. She was sweating and feeling that same nausea from when she'd woke last night, but as she made her way back through the small landmarks she'd identified along the way, she felt an aura most unsettling. She spun, unable to shake the sudden feeling that she was being watched, but could not see a thing—not even an animal, which she then realized she'd seen nor heard any at all since she arrived. There were no rustling of bushes or fluttering of wings, no birdsong or the chirping of cicadas and crickets.
Shifty-eyed she turned, heading for what she was sure was the way she'd come, but when the forest spat her out, she was definitely, one-hundred percent certainly not in the grassy field that led to the old house. This field was narrow, a path cutting through it lined with thin shrubs.
She stared, her mind going blank. She had to be dreaming, right? Off somewhere to what she thought was west—but how the hell could she be sure now?—she could hear the ocean and the cries of gulls, and gasped when she realized she heard insects buzzing now, too. A rabbit darted past her, disappearing into one of the bushes on the far path, and she took one step backwards and into the forest.
Silence.
It'd made her nearly jump out of her skin, and she hopped back out of it and into this new field facing the trees. She did not want her back to it for how strange it made her feel, and she stood frozen for a time until she noticed, at her feet, the light imprints of horse hooves. There was only one set, and she followed with her eyes up along the path until she could see no further.
If she could not find her way back to guaranteed shelter, this was her next best bet. She set off, following them as closely as she dared. Being on what she assumed was the main road worried her, as she was a young lady all alone in what she was coming to know as a very strange land, and then she remembered that her birthday was next week.
Or, she supposed, it would be were she back home. She was turning eighteen, and the sheer caliber to which she'd managed to forget about it only proved how bizarre her present situation really was. She'd had the party all planned, the invitations mailed, the catering decided on, and a new dress picked out. Her heart sunk and she sighed; none of that mattered now, did it?
But if she'd somehow found her way here, there had to be a way to get back, surely. She thought upon everything she knew, which, though it was not much, had to point her somewhere. She had top marks in school, and knew world history well enough. The Earth Sphere Alliance and OZ were certainly not entities that existed in the era when men dressed the way the man from last night did. As far as she knew, the name "Heero Yuy" was not a name carried down through generations, nor was it the name of any prominent political figures she'd ever heard of before the Heero Yuy.
This combined with the other strange things he'd said, like calling OZ by the full name, the slight difference in Earth versus Earthen when speaking of the Alliance, and all of the similarities to those same two factions she'd known in her own reality. That he'd had not the slightest clue what a space shuttle was, and dressed the way he was, she wondered...
It truly did seem that she'd been flung into some long bygone past, one different from her own. And if she'd truly fell from the sky as he'd claimed, then perhaps her solution lie among the stars as well.
It was then that she saw a flash of white cross the road up ahead, and as she neared she recognized it to be Heero's steed. The man himself stood nearby, and she felt such an immense relief to see the only familiar face she had here.
When she called his name, though, she instantly knew that her relief was misplaced. She could not have conjured such a severe look even in thought alone, but he wore it plain as that strange sunlight overhead as he glanced at her from over his shoulder.
Across from him stood another man, draped in thick black pants cinched at the ankles and silken red shoes, his black jacket finely embroidered in patterns of whites and golds. In his arms and slung over his shoulder was a long-handled scythe, the blade of which was short but menacing, glinting in the sun. His hair was so brown that it nearly shone red in the light, captured in a thick braid that hung most of the way down his back.
"Friend of yours, is she?" this man asked in such a way that Relena thought the two of them must have already known each other. She relaxed, but only slightly as he looked her up and down.
When Heero did not respond, she gave a polite dip of her head. "Actually, we've only just met."
He hummed, shifting his scythe to rest upon his other shoulder.
"Colonial?" he asked, the smile on his face plain and unassuming.
"My father travels between them often," she answered, returning his smile easily. It could not hurt, she figured, to pad it out into a lie; a persona would do her well if she was stuck here until she could find a way out. "How could you tell?"
"We've all got a certain look in our eyes." His accent was different even than Heero's, and almost shockingly similar to her own. He stuck out his hand in greeting. "Name's Duo. Though, I guess I should introduce myself in the traditional way: Maxwell Duo. When in Rome, right?"
He'd laughed at his own joke, or whatever it was, and she took his hand and gave it her best professional-grade shake. "Relena Darlain. It's wonderful to meet a...contact of Heero's."
Beside her she could see as Heero tensed as Duo shot him a glance that was almost playful.
"And what brings you out here, Miss Relena?"
"I was separated," she covered quickly, "from my father on our last voyage home."
"Stay out of his way," Heero all but snarled at her then, that look he'd been shooting her before now aimed directly at Duo. "And you both stay out of mine. I'll be taking my sword back now."
Duo sucked at his teeth as if he were about to gently chide a child. "You've got some nerve, you know that? I'm just a lowly priest, making my way on private business."
Relena's suspicion grew at that. What business could a monk possibly have that involved a scythe? Were they not forbidden from manual labor? And judging by Heero's reaction...
"But I'm not sure that you can claim such pure intentions. Think you can fool me into thinking those are he r own clothes? Look, man, I don't know what you want with her or what you were doing with a blade like this, but what I do know is that the shogun have all lost their goddamn minds if they're letting dogs like you parade around out here."
They exchanged no further words, because Heero had lunged at Duo, who dodged with ease. With a gasp Relena backed away so harshly that she fell flat onto the ground. From inside his obi, Heero pulled a knife and threw it with such ferocity that she thought it could have pierced through iron, but Duo gave a swift half-spin of his scythe and deflected it before sucking his teeth once more.
"Mind your manners," he said. "We've a lady present."
When he turned to face Heero once more, she noticed two things. The first was that the throwing knife had landed mere inches from where her hand rest on the dirt path; the second was that a sheath of stark white glittered at Duo's side when his jacket caught in the breeze.
In her mind's eye, she saw that dazzling pair of angel's wings.
If any doubts had remained that Heero had been telling her the truth about pulling her from the ocean depths last night, they were gone in a flash. Whatever that sword was, it—and Heero—were responsible for saving her life. And as the two men continued to clash, one well-armed and the other barely so, she knew that she could not let that kindness go unpaid.
But she had to act fast, for Duo had just managed to perfectly parry one of Heero's throwing knives into his thigh. He hissed in pain, but did not cry out as he grabbed at his leg. Still though he did not back down, and just as she managed to get to her wobbling knees, Duo hefted back his scythe and she saw, thus far, the most unbelievable thing yet.
The small blade became engulfed in a sickly green light, its power so intense that it seemed to suck the sunlight dry from the very field in which they stood. It took form, the blade elongated by that beaming light in a way that made her think of a thermal laser from her own time. Something, though, about its aura reminded her of that forest she'd stumbled through this morning, and deep in her bones she understood that this was not the work of science, but of magic.
There were no coherent thoughts in her head; she saw only the swinging of the scythe as he brought it down in a graceful arc towards Heero, its unnatural glow lighting his face just as she flung herself between them.
The black of her shut eyelids was tinted with that horrid green, and a drop of sweat fell from her temple and down the side of her face. Her brows were furrowed so deeply that they ached, and when she cracked open her eyes she was all but blinded by the scythe's light, its heat so intense that she might've thought she was sitting by the fireplace in her father's study back at home.
"He's defenseless," she said, her voice betraying her panic. "What honor is there in this?"
Behind her, she heard a breath catch in Heero's throat. She paid it no mind; she couldn't be bothered if her words had damaged his pride.
"Listen, ma'am," Duo said, pulling his scythe back. Its light vanished, and he carried on. "I don't know what he's told you, but you should keep your distance. It's not about honor; I'm under orders—"
"You're under no one's orders," Heero spat. "That brand on your wrist is no different from mine!" At this, he'd pulled back the sleeve of his kimono and lifted his arm.
Duo stared down curiously, and that was the first time Relena saw the mark on either of their wrists, a slightly arcing line with a circle dotting the bottom like a meteor.
As if absentmindedly, Duo brought down his arm and put his hand on the hilt of the sword in the sheath at his side. "Right. I'm not the one hiding mine, though."
"That's enough," Relena said, channeling all of her father that she could manage. "He's hurt, and he lost his sword saving me. That's all there is to it, so can you return what's his and just leave us be?"
He deliberated for a long moment, giving a hum before letting out a big sigh. "I guess everything adds up when you put it that way." He unfastened the sheath, spinning it in the air once to take it by the covered blade-edge and pointing the hilt down at Heero, who at first offered only that glare in response.
When he grabbed the hilt, Duo held onto the sheath, using the force to help hoist Heero to his feet. Then he held his hand out to Relena, who took it after only a short moment of thought. If he were a threat to her, he would've killed her already.
"Now that that's out of the way," he said, giving the two of them one last once-over, "why don't we go get you patched up over at mine, and you can tell me just what the hell you've been up to with a sword like that in a place like this."
Well, he hadn't offered an apology, but she supposed it was good enough. Heero took a step, then winced and began to fall to one knee before she bent to steady him. When she made to loop his arm over her shoulders, he sneered at her and flinched away.
"Don't need your help," he said, then turned to follow Duo, who'd already begun to make his way back to wherever it was he called home.
Fine, then.