Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Eternal Series ❯ Eternal Mourning ( Chapter 8 )

Warnings: References to obscure things, puzzling comments, things will be explained soon though.

Also, the title is tentative; I welcome better suggestions with as much gusto as I welcome reviews. ^_^

Unbeta'ed

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Eternal Mourning

I'm comforted by your warm body settled against mine, your hot breath ghosting over the back of my neck, the weight of your arm dropped casually over my waist, hand pressed flat against my chest possessively. With a smile I brush the end of my braid down your arm lightly.

You stir in your sleep but don't waken.

I let my thoughts drift, eyes unfocused but staring into the purple hazed night, through milky moonlight and sinister shadows. Somewhere out there, away and yet near by, I can feel the hunger and wanting of a great beast, one searching for a master. The beast lets out a mournful cry from somewhere in it's soul and the psychic currents carry it from it's source on invisible winds straight to the gifted. I repress a shiver and blink, focusing on the dark clouds half obscuring the moon.

Another mournful cry slides through senses that can't be explained and uncovers something hidden in my soul. I can taste old blood in my mouth.

You haven't even stirred.

Easing out of your arms gently wakes you and your hand wraps around my wrist lightly, holding me back, eyes sleepily questioning.

"I'll be back," I murmur. "I'm going to go clear my head."

A thousand thoughts slide through your mind, all burning white against the dark background of the room. Of course they're not really there but on some level they exist and I see them burned behind my eyelids when I blink.

You let go slowly and nod, settling back into place, eyes closed. I know you won't sleep until I leave, and probably not even after until I come back, so I don't linger any longer than it takes to pull on a t-shirt and slide my feet into flip-flops.

I have no destination in mind, only the need for some illusion of freedom. My feet carry me downward. I slip the flip-flops off at the top of the stairs to let my bare feet come to know the unfamiliar floors, they really were just habit, and now I can feel every groan of the wood, every creak and sigh. Energy practically slides up from the wood and into my skin, making me feel as if I can take leave of gravity and fly.

Somewhere nearby there's the creak of aged bones and I follow the sound to the kitchen. Tom is sitting at the table, a steaming cup of coffee held loosely between his hands. I lean against the doorway and study him in the flickering light of the lit candles around him.

"You're not Asoc's child." He lifts his head, dark eyes piercing. I meet his gaze. "You're too young."

I lift an eyebrow.

He waves vaguely toward the chair across from him and I take it as an invitation. He waits until I've settled.

"You're too young to be Asoc's child," he tells me. "He would never create one so young. But I..."

Another mournful cry raises the hair on my arms and suddenly the old man can't look me in the eyes.

"I'm his blood."

"I know." His voice is barely a whisper.

"Second generation." I draw a leg up to my chest and study him. He's gripping the mug tightly in his hands.

"What are you doing here?"

"A lot of things."

"You're from the Society?"

"Yes, but isn't everyone?"

"No." His voice drops and he sets the mug gently on the table. "Not everyone."

Poignant statement, though I'd be hard pressed to say why exactly. There's a warning and a plea in his voice, cutting through the words spoken, but there's nothing I can say to words that shouldn't have been born on air to begin with.

"Too young to be Asoc's child," I muse to myself. "How do you know him?"

The silence falls around us and I begin to feel my luck's run dry and he won't answer when he clears his throat. "He fashioned himself a god here," he says softly. "And blinded by his power my people's ancestors believed in him, worshipped him, and he sacrificed them by the hundreds for his hunger. When he grew bored he drifted away and the survivors moved from their old homes deep within the land to start over here."

"Is that all?"

"It's a simple story, nothing more, nothing less." The old man half shrugs. "Of course we're still chained to him, one cannot escape the blood that flows through their veins and live."

"Why did he come here?"

"I don't know. He simply came one day with his... child. He spoke with my father, I was just a boy then but I remember it because he, so young to my child eyes, could make my father tremble with a look. That's power not soon forgotten. But he just came, spoke with my father, left for several days and then came back. When he came back he brought people with him. This little town was built outside the village, roads were made to lead out into the jungles, technology was brought to us and people showed up to stay in our few rooms. For days and nights everyone here could hear the singing of metal as something was built out in the jungle."

He waves a hand around as if to dismiss the thoughts. "We never thought much of it, not my father when he ran this place, nor I. Supplies came, we met people, learned things, and it all seemed rather nice."

"I sense an until, or a but, or something similar coming up."

He gives me a wan smile. "All good things... Things changed, subtly at first, just the feel or look of things, and then people started to disappear, and finally one night about four years ago there was an explosion and we could all hear as things came down where they had been built up and people went down with it. And then..." his expression darkens and he quiets, giving me a distrustful look.

"I know already." I study him a moment. "What I don't understand is the business with Peridan."

"He got in the way," he says quietly. "He was convenient."

I lean forward and put my elbows on the table. "He got in the way of what?"

"How am I supposed to know? I am but a servant."

"In a Free Society?"

Tom's eyes jump to a point beyond my left shoulder, face drained of blood. It isn't Wufei's sudden appearance that's unsettled him so, though that has to have come as somewhat of a shock. No, it had been the words, meaningless for just that, the words themselves, but the message actually behind them, now that is something else altogether.

I join the game.

"Free Society, Confidant?" I ask softly, leaning back against Wufei as he lets his hands come to rest on my shoulders. "I certainly don't call this freedom."

The honey taste of fear is overpowering, covering the faint memory of old blood that still lingers in my mouth, the heavy musk of power and body from Wufei. I'm drawn to it, no matter how much I hate the fact that I had to be cruel to bring it up, that I had to remind him of everything he has, and doesn't, and what I could take away.

Wufei leans in, arms coming around my shoulders in an embrace, an embrace that serves to remind me to keep myself in check. His unbound hair slides down my neck and shoulders and without thinking I turn my head and nuzzle the side of his face, breathing in the sweet herbal scent to drown out the fear.

"You don't understand."

Slowly I turn my head just enough to focus on him, eyes half closed, and I wait. Focused silence unnerves humans. Focused silence downright unhinges human servants.

I still can't believe I hadn't picked up on that earlier.

Wufei's lips brush against my ear and his thoughts are like whispered words.

*I hadn't either. It's the place, the energy build up. It distracts. It distorts. *

Tom breaks with a choked moan. "There's nothing I can tell you. Really. We're struggling as it is. We don't need you to come in here and destroy things anymore than they've been destroyed. There'll be consequences, things are bound to happen, there's nothing you can do-"

I cut him off. "And Peridan?"

"Harmless. He doesn't want us hurt, He cares for us, we're His. He just wants us to behave, and we will, we have. Peridan's a pet, nothing more, he's perfectly controlled, you've seen the town. Peridan's just a reminder-"

"A reminder of what?"

He's speaking fast now, like going through rehearsed lines he doesn't want to forget. "A reminder to behave, to keep to ourselves, that there'll always be good fortune and we'll never want for something, just as long as we do what we should. We're free, we don't need to have anyone breathing down our backs, He just agrees, He's making sure-"

"You don't honestly believe that, do you?"

He stills, and in the unexpected silence another mournful wail rises onto our psychic consciousness and drives itself into my very being, chilling and hollow. It fades away, but the silence remains, and the silence is my answer.

"You do."

He says nothing.

The images come then, unbidden, unwanted, of the man across from me when he was a young man, full of life and energy and ideas, and of the vampire child offering something he could never truly understand but thought he desired. And then I'm staring into a face lined with age and life, eyes still bright with that same innocent devotion of his youth.

The reality makes me tremble as my thoughts stray to you, still blissfully unaware of the cruelty of my kind, of the options left to a human ensnared by a vampire.

Wufei draws me up from the table with ease, an arm settled around me, and excuses us for all the good that would do. The old man is lost in that special world of illusions and dreams, longing for the cold caress, the draining kiss.

"Don't be silly, Maxwell," Wufei breathes into my ear as he moves us along the hallway. "Yuy would never fall."

I turn into arms that are already open and bury myself in the comfort he's offering. "But he's just human."

Off my feet, into the air, Wufei's pulled me up into his arms with a silent grunt and he starts for the stairs. I wrap my arms around his neck and hope he doesn't trip on my flip-flops.

"You've really got to stop and think before you plunge into things headfirst, Maxwell," he chastises softly.

I relax in his arms. "I know, Fei, I know."

"Not that my saying anything ever makes a difference." He nudges his door open then pushes it shut behind him.

"Some people just can't learn, right?" I nuzzle his throat, aware of the blood moving through his veins just beneath the skin.

"Right." He drops me onto the bed.

I'm expecting it, so I just prop myself up on my elbows and watch him from beneath my jagged bangs as he steps out of his shoes and then joins me on the bed, sitting with his back against the wall. I find a way to wiggle myself into his arms, not that he's stopping me from doing so.

My thoughts drift back to other days, when we were strangers in a club, both looking for the same target and finding only each other in the gloom, both of us starved for human contact, hungry for something neither of us could put a name to. These remembrances almost make me wish for long nights and sweaty skin and kisses and nibbles and bites hard enough to draw blood, neither of us afraid of what our abilities could do to the other if we lost control.

"Dreamer," Wufei whispers.

"Realist."

He buries his face in my hair, holding me as if I could be broken. "One of us has to be."

A comfortable silence falls between us, each of us lost in our own thoughts, granted sometimes they collide and overlap and blend and we lost track of whose thought is whose. After a time Wufei speaks and I'm surprised to find I'd been drifting away into a dreamless slumber in his arms.

"Hmm?"

"I really wish I knew what was happening here."

"Oh. You realize before we can do anything else we're all going to have to have a talk with Heero."

"Thought had crossed my mind."

"Several times."

"It crossed yours too." Wufei stops for a moment, rubbing his cheek against my hair. "He was distracted easily enough earlier and we just steered clear of discussing the photographs and our findings and everything else, but he certainly didn't forget it. I was half expecting him to interrogate you as soon as you two had gotten back to your room, but he didn't even say a word."

"He's avoiding it until it makes sense. He doesn't like to be caught surprised by things."

"We can't wait for him to make sense of it. We're going to have to explain it to him, from the doctors to the Society to the Gundams to... us."

"I know."

"Tomorrow morning."

"I know."

"We can't do anything else before he knows."

"Dragon, please," I murmur.

His breathing falters. "You haven't called me Dragon since..."

Since that night, I finish silently. "I know."

Another hush falls and after a few minutes I slowly begin to draw myself out of his arms. He doesn't hold me back or say a word though in every other way he protests my leaving.

"I can't stay all night."

"Of course."

"And you need some sleep."

"I do."

"Tomorrow should be an eventful day."

"It should."

I hesitate in leaving, though I can't say why. He touches my arm lightly and I lift my head slowly to look at him only to have him cup my face with his hands and draw me closer, feather a soft kiss across my forehead. "Go back to Heero. He's waiting for you."

There are no words left to be said so I don't try in vain to create them. Instead I nod and draw away, taking his advice.

You don't stir when I come back in but I can tell you're awake. I slip under cool sheets and settle against the warmth of your body as your arms come around me, locking us together. I find I'm back where I started.