Crossover With Non-anime Series Fan Fiction / Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ On a Pale Horse ❯ It's Not All Clicks and Whistles ( Chapter 3 )

Disclaimer: As far as Mobile Suit Gundam Wing goes: Bandai has rights. Sunrise has rights. Sotsu Agency has rights. Rally does not have rights; she just likes to play with the characters. It's so much fun. As far as the world of Valdemar and Velgarth go: Mercedes Lackey has rights. DAW books have rights. Rally (again) does not have rights; she just loves dropping confused bishies in and waiting to see how long it'll take them to swim. (Again) it's just so much fun!

A/N: "Italics" is Duo speaking in Standard. No italics mean he's speaking Valdemaren. After this chapter, he should be speaking mostly in Valdemaren, so you've only got to be confused for a short while.

On A Pale Horse
-It's Not All Clicks and Whistles-

Duo screamed his head off for all it was worth. No sound came out. He couldn't move. He couldn't see, but he damn sure remembered what had happened with the book. Just thinking back the thing gave him a mental shiver and the image of the book sprouting a tongue that lazily lapped at the pool of cooling blood invaded his thoughts. He violently shook that vision away. Well, he would have if shaking were possible. What the hell had G gotten him into this time?

But then again, it didn't matter. He was dead. It was sad that he had to go out in such an uncool way, bleeding to death in the middle of friggin' nowhere. On his list of lamest ways to die, bleeding to death made number three. It was beat out only by old age and falling down the stairs. What happened to his Blaze of Glory? He wanted his Blaze of Glory, goddammit! A guy deserved his Blaze of Glory, didn't he?

"Duo?" The voice was a little melodic and had a sweetness to it that could only belong to a female.

What the hell was invading a guy's perfectly decent death rant?

"Wake up, Duo."

Wake up? But he was already—

Duo's eyes popped open. He was in a small blue room. The single window above the head of the bed was thrown open and a small breeze tickled the edges of a sheer curtain. There was a single chair next to the bed, occupied by a young woman in an emerald green dress. Her expression was one of exhaustion, but her grey eyes sparkled as she smiled down at him.

"Were you the one who woke me up?" His question was met with confusion and a slurry of some language he didn't recognize. When Duo indicated that he didn't understand, the woman jumped up and ran out of the room.

"'Kay. That was kinda weird." That unfamiliar language bothered him. He was positive that he could at least identify any of the 300 or so spoken languages left in the system. He couldn't speak all of them, only about half. Still, that one was completely alien. When he'd snatched the book he was in Germany. Now, Europe had as many languages and dialects as Treize had roses but this still wasn't anything like those. Now, if she'd only come back and talk some more, he might be able to get somewhere.

He struggled to sit up but there was pain in his abdomen from the gunshot wound and his arms were unwilling to cooperate. He managed to use the headboard rails to pull himself upright before the woman entered again, followed by an older man and a woman. The newcomers were dressed in identical white uniforms.

The man was thin as a rail even though he topped both women in the room by at least three heads. He kept his brown hair trimmed short and it was easy to tell that the huge smile that graced his face was a common feature. He said something in that same strange language and then he placed a hand on his chest and said, "Dean Ayden." He gestured to the woman who also placed a hand on her chest. She introduced herself as "Anndreth."

From Duo's position Anndreth looked to be about Trowa's height, but she resembled Relena in many ways. Same light brown hair and blue eyes. Same determination behind those shiny blues. She nodded to Duo and then claimed the empty chair, crossing her legs and leaning forward. "And you are?" she asked.

Duo didn't recognize a word but the meaning was clear so he grinned, pointed to his nose and replied in kind, "Duo Maxwell."

"Doh Mackswell?" Anndreth repeated.

Duo shook his head and pointed to his nose again. "Duo Maxwell. Duo." He pointed to the man, "Dean Ayden," and then the woman, "Anndreth. I learn real quick. Keep talking."

That only served to confuse her so he tried, "Where?" and pushed both palms toward the floor.

"Where?" Anndreth repeated this time in her own language. "Haven."

Haven? Where the hell was Haven? "Haven where?"

Anndreth's jaw dropped for a split second. "Haven is in Valdemar. Where——?" Duo didn't understand the last bit of what she'd said but she'd pointed to him. That was easy enough to decipher.

Now, how to answer? He was on Earth when he passed out and the breeze was direct evidence that he wasn't on a colony. He pointed up. "L2."

She shook her head and turned to Ayden. She said something and then turned back to Duo. "Where did you come from?" she repeated, this time a bit slower.

"Come from L 2," said Duo, just as slowly and pointed to the ceiling again. "You come from Haven in Valdemar." Her jaw dropped again. "Keep talking." He gave them the universal keep going gesture. At least, he hoped it was universal.

This time she seemed to understand.

Ayden and Anndreth were patient people. They talked with Duo, teaching him as much as he could handle and correcting his syntax when necessary. Still, it took several hours for Duo to absorb enough Valdemaren to be capable of asking the questions he most wanted answered. The sun had nearly set and Ayden had fetched several candles to light the room.

The candles bothered Duo even more than the unfamiliar language and country name, but not quite as much as the fact that aside from a lot of stiffness and some bruise-like pain his abdomen was completely healed. "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Toto," he muttered.

"Pardon?" asked Ayden setting the last candle in a sconce attached to the wall.

Duo shook his head. "Never mind. Um... It is not."

"It is nothing," provided Anndreth. Duo wasn't positive but she almost had to be a linguist to be able to figure out his mangled attempts as her language.

"Nothing." Duo nodded, filing the new word away in his mental dictionary. "I be here, how much time?"

Ayden corrected his sentence before holding up both hands, fingers splayed and then a single hand with two fingers bent. He counted off his fingers aloud as he did. "Thirteen days."

Two weeks? He'd been unconscious for two weeks? Holy crap. "You're kidding? A joke right? Ha ha." He mimicked laughing.

The man shook his head. "It is no joke. You slept for thirteen days. You were hurt." He indicated Duo's wound. "Very sick."

If he had been missing for two weeks, Heero was going to kill him when he caught up to him. No one ditches Perfect Soldier Boy when on a mission. Well, not without major repercussions. Y'know the ol' omae o korosu. Right back at you buddy! What did Heero do, anyway? Leave him for dead? And he promised that he wouldn't.

Or maybe Duo really had died and this was Hell? He took a moment to look around. Okay, there was no way that this place could be Hell. Heaven maybe? Yeah, right. Shinigami in Heaven. That was about as likely as Wufei standing above a crowd of women, smiling and then revealing his love of all things pink and fluffy. He shook his head. He needed to stay on track.

"Thirteen days. Okay. I get here how?"

Ayden and Anndreth cast each other a glance before Anndreth replied, "That is what we want to know. You were found inside the walls, near the Palace. No person should be able to get that far without being spotted. Did Onette bring you here? She is the one who got help for you even after your heart stopped beating."

Duo only caught half that. "Say again?" The woman repeated herself, describing or pantomiming any new terms. "Who is Onette?"

Anndreth had glared at him as if he'd sprung a second or even a third head and then told him that Onette was his friend. Not that he ever recalled meeting someone with that name.

"My companion she is not," he protested past the glare. "Met her I have not." Anndreth's glare morphed into a blank stare, but Ayden gave him a small smile.

"She is not my Companion. I have not met her," the man said gently before he caught Duo's eyes in a sincere look. "Duo, what do you know of Valdemar?"

"Nothing," he admitted immediately. "I know of Valdemar not—I do not know of Valdemar." Duo knew the location of every satellite of Earth and had a map of the entire planet in his brain. Valdemar was not on it. Suddenly, he didn't feel so well.

"Where do you come from? Where is Eretoo?"

"L 2," Duo corrected. It was only fair. "Far away. Too god dammed far away."