Expected a comment or two after the last one. Ah well, hope this explains.

Part 10 of ?

"Duo?" Wufei's head whipped around at the painful whisper behind him. He hurried back to Duo's bedside and took his hand in his. He expected Duo to pull his hand away in dismay, not hold tight and pull him to sit on the edge of the bed.

"Al.. always did love Death," Duo whispered, a hint of his usual grin on his pain wracked features.

Wufei smiled for him, using his free hand to push the sweat soaked bangs off the other pilot's brow. "That's one of the things that drew me to you, my priest. You loved Death with the same fervor you loved Life, but only needful Death, only honorable Death."

"P... priest?"

"You dedicated your life to me, in a way I could accept, and were the first to do so in years beyond counting. Your kills were always of the guilty, or those who served them, not indiscriminate slaughter. Since you dedicated yourself to me when you were six, through blood, pain and tears, every death you dealt after that has been a sacrifice to me. Every time you called yourself Shinigami, and made others believe, you spread my worship. That makes you, not only a priest, but also my high priest. You intrigued me, in a way no others have done, ever. I wanted to get to know you.

"So I became a pilot. And to my surprise, I found that there were things on the mortal plane that I hadn't dreamed of in millennia." Wufei stopped for a moment. More than anything, he wished to go find the antidote and cure the braided pilot. But he couldn't. He knew how important it was to Duo that he say all of this. That *this* point in time would be when he won or lost the mortal for all eternity. He also knew that the pain his beloved was in was interfering with his concentration upon the words. Shinigami drew his power into himself. He couldn't heal, it wasn't in his nature, but he could strengthen his priest, push the pain into the background so it didn't interfere so much, and slow down the spread of the poison.

The other pilots were standing at the side of the room just watching. In truth, they didn't know what to do with the revelations that had come today. One thing they did know, they were not going to interrupt the outpouring that was going on across the room.

Quatre gasped softly. Trowa and Heero turned to him quickly, faces questioning. The Arabian pilot was staring towards the Chinese boy on the bed. "How could I have missed that?" he whispered, awestruck. "The pure power in him."

"Evil?" Heero bit out.

Quatre shook his head slowly. "No evil, just power beyond anything I've ever seen."

Duo sighed as the pain seemed to fade from his consciousness. The violet eyes he turned towards Wufei were clear and sharp. "Go on," he ordered.

Wufei nodded and seemed to look out into the distance. "It seemed as if I had finally found a place to do some good," he started. "As Quatre said, my job is Justice. I judge the souls and send them on to the reward or punishment they deserved by their actions in life. But lately it had all seemed so worthless. Do you know what the number one emotion I see in the people brought before me now is?" He doesn't wait for an answer. "Surprise! Disbelief! Incomprehension! Most of them don't even really believe that they're going to get judged!" He surged off the bed and started pacing. "They think that now that their life is over, nothing they did during it has any relevance on their afterlife! It used to be that part of the reason for punishment was to deter others from doing the same thing. To make people think about their actions and decide against the ones that would hurt others! It used to be I could look at people's souls and say, this one would have become bad, but he feared for his immortal soul and chose rightly. Now it's all, 'hey, if the humans didn't punish me for it, what right do you have?' Or even worse, 'I'm powerful, rich and in charge, nothing I do is wrong.'" He turned to stare at the boy in the bed. "Where is the Justice in that?" His voice got softer. "Where is the *good* in that?"

"Here on Earth, it's different. The Justice Nataku and I give is real, immediate. It makes people think. It saves lives. It is Justice, not just for the dead, but for the living as well."

"I can no longer think, 'now those he tormented can have some peace, because they know he's getting what he deserves in Hell'. People no longer say, 'she's gone to her eternal reward.' The only ones nowadays who believe in Justice beyond Death are those living it."

"You mean afterliving it," Duo chuckled.

Wufei glared.

Duo "eeped" and muttered "sorry" but the twinkle in his eyes belied his sincerity.

Wufei shook his head in exasperation while holding back a smile by force of will. "Then along came you. A boy, a *mortal*, when I had given up on mortals. You called, and I was compelled to listen, you worshiped and I watched. You sent sacrifices to me, and for the first time in a very long while, I took an interest in their judgment. Whether it was conscious or not, you truly believed that those you sent to me would get the justice they deserved, and I could not let you down."

"I came to Earth when you joined the war. At first, my main interest was in keeping you alive until I could come to you and claim you as my consort. But the longer I was here, the more I realized that this war was worth fighting, that this was an injustice worth being stopped. It became my war, as well as yours. I buried Shinigami deep within Wufei Chang, so no other gods knew I was involved and so that Quatre didn't notice that I wasn't all that I seemed. But I couldn't stop myself from watching you, not only out of worry for you, but because I enjoyed watching you do what you loved to do."

Wufei finally ran out of words and settled down on the foot of Duo's bed. Duo just looked at him solemnly for a long moment.

"I didn't hear anything about love in there," was all he finally said.

Wufei winced. "At first there wasn't any. When I came down it was because I was intrigued... curious... because you were mine. My worshiper, my priest... *mine*." He looked away for a moment. When he looked back his eyes were intent, focused. His dark eyes caught Duo's violet ones and held them. "Then I got to know you. You were so much more than the parts I had seen before. You were a child when I first saw you, now you were a man, no matter your age. A beautiful, courageous, complicated, strong, wise, happy, puzzling and extremely sexy man. I was falling in love, but I don't think I even realized what it was until I realized that I was jealous of Quatre."

"Quatre?" Duo said in disbelief.

"Quatre?" Trowa echoed.

"Me?" Quatre's voice was just as confused as the others were.

Wufei blushed slightly. "Yes, Quatre. I knew you weren't involved with him, but..."

"But?" Duo prompted.

"But he could get *real* smiles out of you, true smiles you didn't give anyone else, especially me. You were always with him when you had a choice and you trusted him and talked with him. I was lucky if I got a 'good morning.'"

"You weren't exactly the easiest person to get to know yourself," Duo shot back. "It seemed like every time I did try to talk to you, you shot me down. Either started ranting, or got as silent as the stoic twins over there!"

"Well, I'm sorry, but it's not as if Heaven's full of great conversationalists! I'm usually so busy that the only people I ever get to talk to are the people I'm passing sentence on or my secretary. I'm not used to dealing with mortals! And I got better didn't I?"

Duo sighed, and settled back down with a small smile on his face. "Yes, you did. Except for the telling me you're in love with me part."

"I couldn't do that without telling you I was Shinigami, and I wasn't supposed to do that until you were of the age of consent, which is still over a month away. I pushed the rules enough by kissing you." He looked away, embarrassed. "That's why you suddenly got tired that time. I didn't think I'd have enough self control to back away by myself, but Kami-sama's way big on being of age, and he'd have fried me if we'd gone much further before you turn sixteen."

"You think he'd mind?" Duo said with a leer. "Seeing as I'm not going to turn sixteen?"

Wufei shot from the bed and glared down at his boyfriend. He couldn't believe he'd almost forgotten what had started this in the first place. "Don't talk like that! I already told you you're not going to die. You're going to lay right here, go to sleep, and they," he tossed his head to indicate the other three pilots still against the wall, "are going to watch over you while I go find someone who has an antidote." He bent down and kissed the other boy deeply, before nudging him gently to sleep.

"Take care of him," he ordered, before turning and sweeping out of the room.