Title: The Devil Has Blue Eyes

By: Aina Song

Fandom(s): Gundam Wing

Genre: Yaoi (with some Het thrown in)

Rating: PG-15

Warning(s): Contraband; Fusion; Language; Death; Murder.

Pairing(s): Heero/Quatre (constant mentionings of Het pairings)

Reviews: Yes, please.

Author's Note: (I'm afraid my usual Disclaimer will not be enough this time, so bear with me.) I, Aina Song, hereby acknowledge the illegality of the following fusion fiction, which is based very thickly upon Clara Wimberly's The Jeweled Heart of Rosemont Castle. I do not claim any rights or privileges her book may have earned her, nor do I claim credit for the book itself. This fanfiction follows her plot almost to the letter, with few changes tossed in here and there, but I must again press that it does so without the explicit permission of Ms. Wimberly, her editor(s), or her publisher(s). This fiction was not written for money; I do not profit from this in any way, shape, or form. Please excuse the illegality of it all, and I do hope my own readers will try to look past my unlawfulness and enjoy the fiction nonetheless. Thank you.

Teaser: He did not care that he was the lost heir to a winery fortune - especially since he couldn't remember that earliest piece of his childhood. He only wanted to reclaim the family that had been kept from him. But there was another who was determined to unmask him as an imposter. And, at the same time, a strange cold presence stirred again at his return, anxious to finish what it had started so long ago…

Chapter Twenty-Six

Once they were away from the cabin and in the shelter of the trees, Quatre turned to Heero. He was trying so hard not to cry, but he couldn't seem to help himself. He was welcomed into the darker man's arms, and Heero held the blond tight against his chest. "It's all right, warabe," he murmured. "I'm here. I won't leave you."

"I should never have come here," Quatre whimpered. "I can't listen to any more about my mother… can't stand to hear she might've been murdered…"

"Shh," he whispered. "We'll find out; we'll do it together."

The blond lifted his head, staring. "You'd do this for me?"

Heero smiled gently and cupped his jaw. His lips brushed lightly, lingeringly, against Quatre's. "Don't you know by now, kawaii? At this point I'm afraid I would do anything you asked of me."

His kiss was sweet torture, different from any other time Heero had kissed him. Quatre could feel the hunger in the darker man, Heero's need of him in every demanding touch of his hands. When at last he pulled away, they were both shaking, their gasping breaths mingling.

Quatre looked toward the house, wondering if Duo could see them from there. "W-we should go…"

Heero kissed him again, softly this time, as though he could not bear to let the blond go. Drawing away again, he closed his eyes, seeming to struggle to compose himself. Then, with a deep sigh, he turned and brought Sandi to her rider.

They rode in silence back down the mountain and through the vineyard. Neither made an effort at conversation. Quatre's mind was filled with Duo's words, and he sensed Heero was thinking about it, too… perhaps even wondering how they could determine whether Leia Khushrenada was dead or alive.

Dinner that night with the family was barely tolerable. Each face Quatre looked into around the large table seemed different, now that he had heard the story about his mother. Which one of them hated her enough to want her dead? It was hard for him to confess, even to himself, that he began that night to have doubts about his own father. Could Duo be right? Was Treize's drunkenness caused by guilt? Had he killed the woman he loved?

Several times during dinner Quatre saw Treize watching him. The older man seemed to sense the turmoil that stirred within him, and Quatre thought he saw a sadness in his father's eyes.

The blond also began to see Zechs Merquise in a different light. His touch no longer seemed meaningless to Quatre, and Zechs' poised half-smirk made him uncomfortable. Each time he moved near Quatre wanted to turn away. The younger blond had to force himself to behave normally, as if nothing had changed. For he knew that if he really wanted to find out what had happened all those years ago, he would have to pretend… and it was one of the hardest things he'd ever had to do.

As soon as the meal was finished, Quatre excused himself and went to his room. He wanted to be alone to think about what Duo had said.

It must have been nearly midnight and still he paced the floor restlessly, unable to rid himself of his troubled thoughts. Finally pulling his hair free of its gypsy's tail, he glanced out the window. His eyes fell upon the tower. Suddenly he was filled with an undeniable urge to go there, perhaps to feel the presence of his mother as he had before.

It wasn't until he entered the library that he began to feel uneasy and to doubt his decision to go there in the middle of the night. He had brought a lamp with him from his room, and he used it to light another in the library.

But even the light did not offer comfort to him that night. He hesitated a moment, thinking he heard a noise outside in the hallway. He held his breath and cupped his hand lightly around the lamp's chimney to shield its light. After a few seconds of complete silence, the blond decided he had only imagined the sound and turned to go up the winding stairway to the tower.

He stopped again on the second level, certain he had heard the slamming of a door somewhere in the castle below. Shaking his head at his own ridiculousness, hearing no other noises below, he continued on to the tower room.

Nothing had changed. The jewelry still glittered upon the table, surrounding the perfume bottle he had found before. Quatre moved in front of the portrait, letting his eyes take in every detail of the work that he knew now to belong to Zechs Merquise. There was no denying the man was an exceptionally talented artist.

Quatre wondered what his father thought when Treize looked at this painting. Surely he could see the passion in her eyes, the look of flirtatious mischief. But had that look been real, or was it simply the impassioned view of the artist?

"Mother," Quatre whispered. "I-I wish you could tell me what to do. What happened, all those years ago?"

Suddenly the scent of orange blossoms seemed to surround him. He glanced quickly at the perfume bottle, but found it still stoppered with its glass cork. He turned around, eyes searching the small, curving room. For as much as he longed for her presence and her guidance, he was nervous. This was too bizarre. Was he going mad, or was someone playing tricks on him?

"M-mother…?"

He heard a scraping noise outside the door. Quatre quickly blew out the lamp; he could think of nothing more unpleasant than having to face his father here in this room in the middle of the night.

He wondered at the loud whoosh he heard outside the door. Then, in an instant, the darkness turned to bright orange and yellow.

Fire!

Quatre ran to the door; it would not budge. He grabbed the doorknob and rattled the door on its hinges. A numbing sense of alarm ran through him then, for he knew he was trapped… and he knew someone had intended this to happen to him.

He ran to the windows; they all had been sealed shut. He picked up a chair and hurled it at the thick glass panes. Several of them broke, leaving jagged shards of glass hanging upon the wooden frames. But the fresh air from the broken window only formed a draft, pulling the thick black smoke into the room and hurling it out the window and over the rooftops.

"Help!" The blond shouted, choking and coughing as the smoke burned his lungs and throat.

He could not see down into the other level of the tower. But there was absolute silence around him, and he knew no one had heard him.

Flames lapped now beneath the door and he could hear the roar of the fire. Soon it would burst through the wooden door and into the small room. Everything inside would be incinerated within minutes. Quatre had to get out, even if it meant dropping to the rooftops two stories below.

He turned to looked at the portrait, searching it almost as if it held the answer to his escape. Leia Khushrenada's eyes looked back at him, and he could swear in that moment they were troubled, even tear-filled. She was there with him; he could not doubt it any longer.

Quatre grabbed the portrait and used the edge of it to break the rest of the glass and splinters of wood from the window. Then he dropped the portrait to the rooftops below, praying it would not be ruined in the process.

From somewhere below him he heard a scream; loud at first, then it was gone. Someone was there. Quatre shouted for help again, just as the fire seared a path through the doorway and boiled like an inferno into the room.

He no longer had a choice; he had to climb out the window, perhaps even jump to certain injury or death below. Quatre saw that there was a row of decorative bricks built into the wall below the windows. They were set out from the rest of the wall, to match the crenellated row at the top of the tower. The heat from the flames behind him was terrible. The fire roared, consuming everything in the room and coming nearer and nearer to him.

He heaved himself to his knees upon the windowsill, then carefully pushed to his feet. The bricks held, and he managed to inch his way around the wall and away from the heat at the window. He dared not look down, and he dared not think that at any moment the bricks might crumble away and drop him to his death.

"Quatre!" Someone called from below. "Are you up there?" The voice was masculine, but he could not tell whether it was Heero or his father.

"Help!" He shouted in answer, looking down toward the open level of the tower. He could see the shadows of people moving there and hear the sound of excited voices.

Then he saw Heero, saw his dark hair as Heero looked out the window and up toward where Quatre clung to the bricks. The blond heard his startled murmur, saw the alarm flash in his eyes.

"Quatre…"

Flames began to shoot from the broken windows of the tower only a few feet from the blond. He could feel the heat against his skin, even through his clothes. Heero saw them, too, and it seemed to throw him into action. "Move closer… this way," he shouted. "Can you do that, kawaii?"

Quatre nodded, even though his entire body was frozen in terror. The bricks scraped against him, burning the palms of his hands, but he managed to move until he was standing directly above the window where Heero was.

"Listen to me carefully now, Quatre," the darker man said, his voice steady and calming. "I'm going to climb up onto the windowsill here and reach as far up as I can, but what you have to do is much harder. When I tell you, you must lean down and hold onto the bricks with your hands and let your body down toward me. Do you think you can do that?"

"Yes."

"You're going to have to trust me… please, kawaii, do not doubt me."

"I'm ready," Quatre shouted down to him.

He heard Heero moving below; there were other voices now, murmuring in concern for Heero's safety as well as the blond's. Suddenly an explosion shook the tower as the fire burst through the other windows, throwing pieces of glass and debris out into the night air. The glass struck Quatre, and he heard Heero's soft oath, layering a grunt of pain.

"Heero? Heero!"

"It's all right." The darker man grunted, sending a rush of relief through the whole of Quatre's being. "I'm still here. We have to hurry now. Ready?"

"Yes."

"Now."

Quatre swung his body downward, hands holding tightly to the bricks even as they cut and dug into his fingers. Then he felt Heero's arms reaching around him, grabbing him firmly about the hips and swinging him with one quick movement onto the window ledge with him.

For a second Heero leaned back against the bricked archway of the window, pulling Quatre against him and holding him fiercely, as though he'd never let go. Quatre felt the other's hands on his face, on his shoulders and neck, as if Heero wanted to make sure he was all right.

The blond sucked in a quiet breath as he saw the blood on Heero's face. "You're hurt."

"It's nothing, kawaii. I'll be fine."

Then other hands were reaching for them, helping them down to the safety of the floor. But Quatre was unaware of anyone else, could only hold on to Heero. He was still shaken by what had happened, didn't believe himself safe outside of Heero's presence.

The floor of the tower was wet, and he saw now that servants ran back and forth up the stairs, throwing buckets of water into the tower room. The stench of smoke and burned wood filled the air as tiny pieces of ash drifted down upon them like sullied snowflakes.

"Son, what on earth were you doing up there at this time of night?" It was Treize who asked the question. His face was filled with worry, and he reached his arm out as though to touch his hand to Quatre's shoulder.

But Duo's warning still rang in Quatre's ears, and the blond flinched away, pulling himself tighter within the circle of Heero's arms. He saw the hurt surprise on Treize's face, but he didn't care. At that moment he was confused enough to believe he couldn't trust anyone but Heero.

"S-someone tried to kill me," he stammered.

Zechs was there, as well as Hiromi and Dorothy. He stared at each of them, expecting someone to disagree with him, even hoping that they would. But he could see by their looks that they knew it was true.

"I'm afraid he's right," his father said, the hurt from his rejection still evident in Treize's eyes. "The door had been jammed from outside with a board, and the smell of kerosene was strong when we arrived."

It was then that Wufei came into the circle of people. His obsidian eyes were bright with alarm. It was not Treize he came to, but Heero. "Mister Yuy," he gasped, and for the first time his voice sounded unsteady. "Come quick… down below. He… he must have jumped from the tower…"

"Who?" Heero asked, his voice filled with authority.

Wufei seemed unable to say any more, sprinting to the window at the front of the tower and pointing down toward the lawn.

Everyone moved to look where he pointed. There were gasps and muttered oaths as they all saw the figure lying on the ground. Cinnamon hair lay spread about his head, and his body lay twisted within his tattered black clothes.

Beside him sat the wolf he called Shinigami. It lifted its great head toward the sky as its plaintive howl filled the air and drifted up toward the tower windows.

Heero's choked voice was a mere whisper beside Quatre.

"Duo."