Title: The Ribbon and the Ring 24?

Author: Seraphim Grace
Archive: if you want it ask, I just like to know where they are. http/seraphim-grace. http/ Always appreciated and replied to.
Rating: 18 (This is an open rating so I don't have to worry).
Pairings: 1x2
Warnings: Angst. Some gore. Some incredibly bad French.

Notes: AU, and features necromancy.

Just outside Amitre was a wall of arches that had once supported some fantastic building that had since collapsed in on itself. In its place was the arches. They piled upon each other and from some of the highest, where the keystones had held, because some were in ruins, bodies hung as grim object lessons.

Duo studiously didn't look at them. The Cadacus had insisted despite Heero could ride that he sit with Duo in the carriage, Fenrir had climbed in with him, and Aia facing him. Fenrir lay across their laps like a giant breathing blanket, which caused Duo to chuckle sadly. Heero had hoped that he might make up for his sleepless night by sleeping in the coach as Aia talked inanely about how handsome Trowa was. Trowa was pining for what he considered his one true love, the woman who had seduced him and left him in Dathyl.

Quatre was looking brighter than he had for days, but Wufei had stayed behind to help Sir Cameron with his studies. Although Heero had reservations about that he trusted Wufei's discretion and it was the one thing in this world that might have made him happy.

Heero tried to block the hanging figures with his body and Duo offered him a tired smile. "I love you," Heero said softly, hoping Aia wouldn't hear.

"Baka," Duo repeated with the same soft smile.

Amitre was a city of excesses built around a massive cathedral, but always with the sobering view of the arches to the north-west. In the streets people cavorted with the worst sort of prostitutes and in the palace the best sort advised the Bishop, Emithi D'Aino. The palace itself was a honeycomb of small interconnecting buildings amidst vast courtyards and reminded him, deliberately, of the Dramathen Dairai, but here in stone and with Dathylian flourishes, but to the north-west, in the city, was the real seat of power, the Catedrale d'Acuya, where her beauty was immortalised in a thousand statues under her golden veil.

The Bishop of Amitre was a tall woman, easily as tall as Tobin or Josian, with short grey blonde curls framing a round face. Her dark eyes were painted with wide dark slashes, and her mouth bare, hanging from the centre of her forehead was an elaborate twist of diamonds with no chain to fix it in place. She wore lavender silk with a slightly darker lavender velvet cloak and it was clear that she was wealthy. She opened her arms to them all, "Well met and welcome to Amitre," she said hugging each of them in turn, "Jored, you've gotten so big," she gave him a powdery kiss on the cheek, "anyone would think it had been years and not months since I had last seen you." She appraised Deakon with a canny eye, "and you just get more and more beautiful," she pressed him against a rather magnificent bosom, "and you best be keeping him happy, or so help me." Deakon just laughed. "And my little Bunny," she said kissing both cheeks, "the light of my twilight years."

"And Tobin, these must be the Lord of Meirin and his cronies I have heard so much of, Devlin spoke a lot of them in his last letter." She looked at them as if deciding whether or not they would break in her embrace, she moved Trowa's bang, "such a good looking boy to be hiding behind all that hair," she tutted pushing it out of the way, "you'll never catch yourself a lady if she can't see you." Then she hugged him as tight as she had the others, Trowa looked as if he might want to escape. "And who is this little blonde pixie," she said, Quatre hugged her back as tightly as she had him, "Oh I could keep this one,"

When she went to hug Duo Heero growled low in the back of his throat. She laughed and clapped her hands together in glee. "And you must be the Senshisha," she said and hugged Heero instead, she smelt sweet and powdery and was soft to the touch. "such a handsome boy, those eyes, why, even ten years ago I would have walked across fire for those eyes."

"Emithi," Tobin chided, "never mind ten years ago, you'd do it now."

Emithi blushed and giggled then shrugged, "ah, it was a long time ago I rode through the streets of Dathyl wearing nothing but my smile." Devlin blushed bright red at his mother's fond reminiscence. She waved him away, "so you must be Duo," she said, "such a small boy to carry the weight of the world on such slender shoulders, come in, my home is your home." She didn't embrace Duo as she had the rest, she offered him her hand instead. "Any friend of Devlin is a friend of mine," she waggled her eyebrows lasciviously at that and Jored laughed.

"Shouldn't that be any friend of mine is a friend of Devlin's?" Deakon asked with a laugh, and Heero knew that all these men loved Emithi. The Cadacus however, looked a little scared.

Josian noticed Heero's puzzled look at the Cadacus and whispered in his ear, "you're too young for Emithi's taste, he's not."

Duo offered him a sad smile before they walked into the palace proper.

Heero ran Duo a bath, swirling the water around with his fingertips whilst looking at him. He didn't like to see Duo so sad; he was usually so good at hiding it. "Ro," he said looking at where Heero sat beside the bath. "I'm scared." He said. Heero just offered him his embrace with the same ease that Emithi had and Duo curled up on his knee beside the bath. "I'm out of my depth and I think I'm going mad."

Heero just cooed in his ear. "You're not going mad, I'm not going to let you." He started to undo the long braid. "Do you wish to skip dinner?"

Duo looked up at him, his lip wavering like he might at any minute cry, "yeah, can we just stay like this?"

"Forever," Heero said softly resting his cheek on the crown of Duo's head, "forever."

The Cadacus knocked on the door just before dawn. Heero had created a little nest of blankets for Duo in front of the fire and had held him to dawn. Neither of them had slept. "Are you ready?" The Cadacus asked softly, "this can wait a couple of days if you want."

Duo stood up, quickly gathering his hair, which Heero had undone sometime during the night, into a loose knot. "It's not every day you get to meet the Shinigami himself," he said but the humour was forced. "Besides, what's the worst he can do?"

"Kill you," the Cadacus said abruptly. "And damn you forever."

"And on the bright side," Duo said, "at least then I can see my own dead."

The Cadacus made Heero wait at the door of the Temple of the Death God as Duo kissed him on the cheek. "I won't be long, love." Heero heard the words but the Cadacus stopped him as he went to step forward.

"He has to do this alone," the words weren't as much of a salve as they had been intended.

Duo had expected things of the Temple of the Death God, things like skulls and pyramids of bones and monstrances built from human corpses. There was nothing like that. There was simply a room with a covered throne, and before it three small stone stools.

"Hello!" he called out, "anyone here," there was no answer, "olly olly oxen free!" he tried. The room remained silent.

"I was told to come here," he said, wringing his hands in his jacket, "they said that you would help me."

"And with what do you want our help?" It was a woman's voice, soft and silky with a strange accent that Duo did not recognise. When he turned around she was behind him, she wore a heavy lace veil but her wrists were slashed.

"I," he stopped, searching for the words, "I can see the dead, and I hoped, well, I thought, you could help with that."

The second voice was like stone grinding on stone, quiet and sibilant, "what is born within death cannot erase." The figure was heavily hooded and carried a censer that gave off the faint smell of cherries, the hand he revealed was rotten and covered in warts and sores.

"I don't know if I want you to take it away." Duo shocked himself at that revelation, sometimes the dead smothered him with their presence, but now he thought about it he was never alone and that alone was worth the torment. "I want to understand it. I want to know it."

"And what makes you think we can do that?" This voice boomed. The figure was like Sir Cameron, tall and broad, in heavy armour with a sword strapped to his thigh and a snapping red cloak.

"I," he stopped, "I can't serve you if I don't know how to use my gift."

The armoured figure laughed, a deep belly laugh that made Duo feel tiny.

"Shinigami," the woman said reaching out a bloody wrist to touch him on the face.

"Die," the hooded figure said, "and die again, and again, come into your own that you may be cleansed."

"I have a guardian," Duo protested, "I don't want to leave him, he won't do so well on his own."

Under her lace veil the woman smiled, "if we claimed you then he would be mine," she showed a terrible gash at her throat, "but we will not claim you, we will forgive you."

She stepped forward, broaching the gap between them though she moved in a strangely fluid motion, as if she floated or was on wheels, and kissed him.

Duo died.

He died as his mother gave birth to him.

He died as the kidnappers who had taken him crashed their plane.

He died in the hands of an old woman with too many cats.

He died of knife wounds in the slums of L2.

He died of plague again and again and again.

He died with everyone he had ever seen die.

He died of the passing sickness in the orphanage.

He died shielded in Sister Helen's arms.

He died being thrown from the Sweeper's ship.

He died.

But he didn't die with the Oz soldiers he had killed. He didn't die with the members of White Fang he had had murdered.

He cried for them, but he didn't die.

When it was over he smiled at the woman with no face hidden behind the lace veil, he smiled at the hooded man with his censer of incense to cover the smell of his sickness, and he smiled at the tall armoured man with the great red beard.

He bowed his head to the empty throne, "I understand now," he said, "but I am not forgiven."

"I know," said the shadowy figure who was almost out of focus behind the black throne. "You have chosen your penance, take it with my love, and know, my child, that you are blood of my blood and go with my blessing."

When Duo stumbled from the Temple into Heero's arm his back had almost been completely flayed by the whip but despite the pain he must have been feeling he offered Heero a genuine smile, "I understand now," he said, "and I am forgiven."