Title: The Ribbon and the Ring 28?

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. Lime this chapter

Notes: AU, and features necromancy.

The Cadacus had managed through some dedicated argument managed to convince Emithi and Danev that the best course of action was to take both Deakon and Duo to Meirin where they could learn to use their gifts without serious damage to her town. She was loath to let them go but with so many advantages to her case despite being the Bishop of Amitre she had to cede the point. However she did have her own stipulations, Trowa, Bunny and Quatre were to stay under her care, because they weren't specifically linked to Meirin and he couldn't override her on them.

She arranged a boat to take them from the city of Romaine to Jimpachi and then onwards to Meirin, Aia asked if she could remain behind and the Cadacus allowed it as long as Fenrir travelled with them. She got them tailors because "boys grow so much at that age," and made sure she fed them enough for five. She treated each of them like her own sons, a fact ratified by her own son, Devlin, and when they finally left her care in a large carriage belonging to her it was with a sense of both relief and regret.

She mothered them, and to boys who had never known such attention it was new and wondrous, but also stifling. Devlin, as Deakon's Senshisha, travelled with them, and Jored because the Cadacus' convincing argument put him outside the reach of his father's men who might try to kill him.

The boat fascinated Duo as being something out of what he considered to be a pirate story; his exclamation of "a pirate ship" had upset the captain and made Heero laugh. None of the others seemed to know what it was that Heero found so amusing in the captain's foul temper.

The desert slipped by them as they travelled, almost hugging the curve of the land around the city of Danev. The City of the Damned looked almost peaceful from the boat but Duo could see the gathered dead that haunted the city, and clutched at Heero's arm. It was night and to him they were shining silver stars along the houses and cities.

"The city is so lost," he said quietly as Heero wrapped himself around him, "all those people massacred and there is nothing I can do to ease them, almost all the Ladies of Meirin visited there and couldn't soothe their anger and rage and pain."

"I know, love," Heero said quietly, "you want to help them, but even if we could convince the ship to dock you couldn't help them."

Duo just leaned back into Heero's arms, "I'm scared."

Heero rubbed his face into Duo's short hair in a soothing gesture, "I know, love, I know, and I understand."

"You can't go there," Deakon said quietly from where he sat on the deck with his legs through the railing at the side, "it calls and it calls but when we go there it just drives us away. She's so sad."

"It doesn't mean I don't want to." Duo told him, he disentangled himself from Heero's arms and stood directly behind Deakon, his hands resting on his head, "She's so lonely, she won't let them go."

"Who is she?" Heero asked.

"The Lady of Danev." Deakon said quietly, "she would have been like us but for the massacres, they killed him, they killed him and left her alone so she surrounded herself with the dead."

"Lady Vorador," Duo said listening to the name that the dead chanted on the wind, "only she can free them and she never will, she's so alone, immortal and alone."

Heero didn't know what to say so he said nothing, he just took Duo's hand in his own, "go inside, Deakon, Jored will worry if you are up too late alone." He told him, "It is late. It is best that you go to bed, we shall have passed this terrible place by morning."

Deakon offered him a ghostly smile, a smile that looked as if he might at any moment burst into tears or fly into a thousand pieces. "You truly are a Senshisha," he said, "you watch over me, Mina has such lovely things to say about you, I wish you could see yourself with the love your dead do."

Heero said nothing for a moment, "my dead are silent to me," he said quietly, "but I thank you for telling me. Now it is best that you retire, Jored is foul tempered in the morning when forced to sleep alone and I have no interest in listening to him complain before my first cup of kir."

Deakon climbed up and laid a soft kiss on Heero's cheek. "You are as sweet as a candy." Deakon said with a smile, "how lucky, Duo, that you got there first, I would have stolen him away and left you with Devlin." Then he left with soft steps into the underbelly of the ship where the cabins were.

"He's teasing you, you know." Duo said quietly then took Heero's hand, "it's time to go to bed." He said, "we can discuss the city in the morning."

The gods of death had told Duo that death and dreams were interwoven, that dreams of the dead were the only way that normal people could see the dead, but it also meant that he was to treasure his own dreams because it was the dead talking to him in a way that they couldn't normally. After those that the dead haunted passed on the dead themselves were undone, they travelled to the next land, but in dreams they talked to the lords and ladies of Meirin because they couldn't any other way. The dead warned Duo of the dead of Danev but hoped that Heero's very presence would calm him.

They were wrong.

He dreamt of Danev before the fall. He dreamt of the Lady Vorador in her prime. She was beautiful, with long white hair that trailed behind her. She wore a corseted dress with a rich fur stole. She stood in the tower of Danev in front of the balcony looking out over her city.

The door opened behind her and she turned with her long white hair and she smiled and it was like starlight. She was beautiful and the man in the doorway was tall and strong. He had thick features and a clear forehead. His eyes were like cave sitters under heavy brows and Duo knew that this was her Senboshi, her star knight just as Heero was his own knight. And she loved him, she loved him completely, there was no doubt in her mind at all that she loved him. She loved him with the whole of her being. And as he looked at her Duo knew that he loved her too.

She almost threw herself into his arms; his hands were strong and firm, coarse and dark. His fingernails were rough and broken, but she tilted up her face to kiss him. He had dark hair that was long about his face and he wore golden armour that her white hands reached up under. She appeared to be made of starlight and he of earth but his eyes betrayed him, they were the same pale candied green as Tobin's. Whoever the Senboshi was Duo knew him for a D'Cevni.

He smelt of cordite and rain as he pushed her back to her bed and she went gladly, his tongue in her mouth and his hands on the curve of her hips. He undid his armour with practised speed throwing it aside as he made love to her, he didn't undo her dress as much as push it out of the way to give his hands and his mouth room to play and then as he sank into her the vision subtly altered.

She watched from the tower balcony as the Dread Pirate stormed the bay and her Senboshi, and she never thought of him as anything but her Senboshi if he had a name she did not use it, brought his cadre of armed men against them.

He could feel the sensation of him slipping and sliding inside him into parts he didn't have as he watched, unable to act, as her Senboshi was cut down. She ran, ran into the tower as her orgasm bubbled through him, he felt it at the same time he felt her bare feet against the cold stone steps of the room that she had never left. He felt the weight of her Senboshi against him as she ran and ran, unable to do anything as she entered the heart of the tower. Just like the ladies of Meirin she called it the Aegis.

It enveloped her, it destroyed her and she was reborn in its power. Outside her people were being massacred but she was reborn and through it all she felt the slip slide of him inside her.

Duo woke with his back against Heero's chest and wedged into the gap between him and the ship's wall. He was hard.

He wasn't just hard he was so hard he thought he'd burst as he felt the lingering touch of Lady Vorador and her Senboshi on his skin.

Heero was asleep and there was no way that he could get out from the bed, so he began to think the unsexiest thoughts he could think of. He could smell Heero- that wonderfully calm scent of cut grass and cordite and his erection was not giving up. He was going to have

He rolled over slightly shifting his thigh back so that he could touch himself. He pushed his fist into his mouth and the other ran lightly over his hardness. After a few quick jerks he felt the lingering feel of Heero's fingertips on his hip and his face pressed against his own. "Shush," Heero said softly, "you hold yourself back so much, let it go, shush, my love, shush, and let it go."

He rolled over so that his face was buried in the curve of Heero's neck as his hand moved back and forth, biting back gasps and moans as Heero shushed him and stroked his hair and cheek and his breath against him. He came jerking and weeping into Heero's neck and Heero just enfolded him into his arms as the tears came and came and came. He fell asleep like that, with Heero's hands on his back and he didn't dream of Vorador born again of starlight in the Aegis of her tower, he didn't dream of the blood of her D'Cevni Senboshi spilled upon the shores of her bay, he didn't dream of Heero. He didn't dream at all.