Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Legend of Shinigami and the Angel of Death ❯ The Shuhan and the High Priest ( Chapter 3 )

Title: Legend of Shinigami and the Angel of Death 3/?
Author: Makiko Igami
Archive: ...
Category: AU, Supernatural
Rating: this chapter... PG? May go up soon...
Pairings: It might take a whole chapter to put all in here... but main: 1x2
Warnings: Yaoi, a bit angst, ... more to come
Spoilers: Since this is AU... none.
Summary: My version of the Legend of Atlantis, mixed with the characters of Gundam Wing.
Heero is an ex-slave who is to marry his ex-masters daughter Relena. But one day on the market he meets somebody whom fate sent him...
Notes&Comments: My first try on a AU... I always liked the legend of Atlantis... I kinda make my own one up here, it may not fit into the ones you know... And I don't know exactly what might happen further on...

*bows before the reader* I AM SORRY!!!
I am most utterly sorry. I didn't mean to let you wait this long! *bows even lower*
I've been in a slump! *hears people gaps* Yes, I have been. ;_; I'm not even sure if I'm completely over it yet, but I recovered enough to finish this chapter.
I also did a bit of research on Atlantis and found out that I did get a LOT of things wrong. *sweatdrops* So... Don't use this story as a reference for anything historical about the Isle of Atlantis, please?
During my slump and the reasearch I've been doing some plotting, too, and I'm quite sure now how Duo and Heero will meet again, I just need some more chapters before I can let them. ^^;;
I hope you enjoy this chapter just as much as the previosu ones... And sorry again for the lag. *bows again*

"..." spoken words
'...' thoughts
*...* emphasis
{...} Author's comments
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Shuhan Treize woke up when rays of the sun tickled his nose. He stirred slightly and smiled when he heard clothes rustling. Hugging the pillow he was resting on, he peeked an eye open and looked up, just to see his wife changing her clothes. She tried to be silent but even the softest fabric that was available on Atlantis made too much sound in an absolutely quiet room.

"My dear Lady..."

She turned her head sharply, just to look at him surprised. Then she turned away to fix the last strap of her tunic, smiling slightly.

"Long sleeper aren't you? The sun rose almost 4 hours ago."

"So Taiyou kissed you awake? I always thought you liked Hisakata more than him?" He smiled and got up, standing close to her back. "Though who can resist such a beauty as you are?" He brushed away her long hazel hair, kissing the exposed neck and felt her shudder.

"Treize..."

"Hm... You should stop wearing these kinds of tunics. You look too good in them. Do I have to be jealous of your soldiers?"

Lady Une turned around to look directly into her husbands face. She glared slightly. "Only if I have to be jealous of your secretary."

Treize stepped back, looking rather hurt. "My dear Une, you know that I would never be able to love any other woman than you. And you know I would never lie to you."

She glared at him a few more moments before her features became soft. She stepped forward and touched his cheek gently. "I know. It's just that I have the feeling as if you are hiding something from me. Like... you are cheating on me. But how can this be? Didn't we swear to be always truthful to each other at our bonding ceremony?"

"Yes my dear and I assure you that I never lied to you in those nine years that have passed since then," Treize mumbled against her hand, nuzzling it and kissing the palm. "Hm, you smell good... Did you use the rose-scented perfume I gave you for our anniversary?"

She smiled and let him caress her hand for a few moments before she pulled it away gently and turned around. "I always do... and you always notice." She glanced lovingly at him over her shoulder. "I have to go." And with that she exited the room.

Treize sighed and got dressed as well, bracing himself for another boring day of paper work.

.oOo.

"Miss Noin, can you tell me how this lamp works?"

Noin sighed at this nosy questions of the girl she was teaching the knowledge of the temple right now. Relena was smart and interested, but she didn't believe in the Gods as some mythical beings. She believed then to be actual persons who looked exactly like the Atlanteans. In her opinion Taiyou and Hisakata once lived and were dead now and all the magical devices that were used all around Atlantis could have been made by Atlanteans nowadays as well. Which Noin didn't believe. She knew how to repair those things like the lamp Relena was pointing to, but she could never invent something as highly advanced as this. At least she didn't believe it. She tried to smile.

"Relena, I explained it to you about twenty times yet. It's a wire that gets heated up by the electricity that's running through it."

"But where does this elec... ilac... what is it called?"

"Electricity."

"Exactly! Where does it come from?"

Noin smiled again at the girl with the flushed cheeks. She wondered how one could get so excited about something as simple as a lamp. "It comes from the big device that the God and the Goddess left in the big mountain of Atlantis. Which is powered by Tuaoi-Stones... the ones that Taiyou and Hisakata brought with them."

"Oh." Relena looked a bit disappointed. But she caught herself quickly again. "What do they look like? How does this device work? Can you show it to me one day? Please?"

Noin couldn't stop the small laughter that escaped from her lips. She had never met anyone before who was as inquisitive as Relena. "Of course, my dear. When you go and visit the temple with me one day."

The girl frowned. "But only the High Priest and the disciples of the temple are allowed to go into the temple."

Noin sighed. "Yes. And the Shuhan and his wife. It's a sacred place and we don't want anybody disturbing the peace and quiet of it." She put a hand on the girl's shoulder. "I know you don't want to become a disciple because you don't believe in the God and the Goddess..."

"Oh no! I do not doubt that they were once here, just like you and me, but I don't believe that they were some kind of higher beings! I think they were just like Heero and me..."

She trailed off as her voice gave in. Noin smiled sympathetically.

"You love him, don't you?"

"Yes! With all my heart!" the sand-haired girl insisted heatedly. "But he seems so cold..." she added, quieter now. "Even when he saved me and father told him he was free, I didn't see any emotion in his eyes. Sometimes I doubt that he has any emotions at all..."

Noin stood up and walked over to her, hugging her around the shoulders from behind. "He saved you. That means he cares about you in some way. And he didn't resist when your father offered you as his wife. I think he likes you, even if it is just as a friend. But don't you think that being friends is a better base to build a relationship on than silence? Or Coldness?"

She winced inwardly as she remembered that day seven years, two months and thirteen days ago, when the new High Priest Zechs, the man she had always looked up to, even as they both were just young novices of the temple, came back from his first meeting with the newly elected Shuhan Treize. The once lively young man had lost all of his mirth and looked broken. It only showed in his eyes and not to someone who didn't look closely, but being a long-time friend of the blond man with the ice-blue eyes she knew where to search for any signs of discomfort. And these signs always showed up in his now dull eyes whenever the name 'Treize' was mentioned. She wondered what had happened between them at their first encounter...

.oOo.

High Priest Zechs stood in the doorway of Shuhan Treize's office and all he wanted to do was run away. But first that wouldn't have suited the religious leader of the Atlanteans and secondly it would have shown his fear for the elected leader of the famous and peaceful island. And that was the last bit of satisfaction that Zechs wanted to give Treize.

'I've given him other bits of satisfaction," he grumbled to himself as he raised his eyes and saw the tall man sitting on his desk, reading one of the transparent sheets that were used to record transactions, news and other events. The ginger-haired man looked at it with a frown.

"Zechs, did you read that?" he asked, waving the foil towards the younger man and acknowledging his presence at the same time.

Zechs moved mechanically, wishing he didn't have to get closer to that man, but he preferred the way it was now, him standing and the other sitting. He didn't know if he would have screamed when Treize had come closer to him, with the document in his hands. He knew he would have been trapped between the slightly smaller but more powerful man and the door with no way to escape. Now he could still back away whenever they got too close.

He looked at the headline of the document that was held out before his eyes.

'HAS THE BIEST OF THE EARTH RISEN?'

Zechs blinked. And read it again. And after that he snatched the foil out of Atlantis' leader and read the whole article. He didn't pay attention to how the darker-haired man leaned back in his seat and watched him. Eyes as blue as the sea around the isle of Atlantis scanned over the long white tunic of the High Priest and lingered on places where he knew that plain muscles were hidden underneath the rough white linen. He loved his wife dearly and he didn't lie to her when he said that he could never love any other woman than her, but this man was different. The moment that long-haired semi-god had stepped into his office on his first day; he knew he had to make that shy but powerful man his. And that he did.

And destroyed something inside this ethereal being. The little bit that made him godlike.

Treize sighed inaudibly when his eyes finally reached the pale man's face. It was blurred in concentration while he tried to memorize every word that was written in the finest Atlantean script. Simple lines, a set of about one hundred symbols, symbolizing both abstract terms and syllables. His title, 'Shuhan', for example was a special sign of various curved lines. It was quite cute, considered to the simple way of writing it with the syllable-based font that children learned in school. He smiled contentedly when he remembered the long and tiring debates that he held with his senate about this matter. Although those men were the ten most intelligent and wisest people in Atlantis they were all quite headstrong and didn't believe that they needed a system that allowed every child to learn the everyday font of Atlantis. 'Too expensive!' 'Who should teach them? There aren't enough people who know how to teach besides those of the temple.' All very nice arguments, but Treize had an even better argument against that and in the end the money for these extra courses was sold out of the fund of Atlantis' metal-exchange. The main reason for the island's wealth. Gold, Silver and Orichalcum mines in the mountains around the beautiful city with its circular channels.

Treize sighed again, but this time audibly. Zechs shoulders jerked up and with a very high effort that made Treize smirk slightly, the platin-blond head turned around to see what was the matter.

"So, my dear High Priest, what do you think of these news?"

"Has this been published yet?"

"No..."

"Good! We have to stop every one of these news! Those would only cause a turmoil!"

Treize blinked incredulously as this usually silent man burst out fiercely, words spluttering out of him like water of a spring as if this was the end of the world. Blinking again, Treize remembered what he had read when he studied the Temple's documents.

"High Priest... I will take care of this matter myself, but what is so wrong about this? It's just a few pieces of glass that broke. Probably just because of Taiyou's heat."

"No! That isn't it! It's..."

Zechs stopped, noticing that his cheeks were flushed and that Treize was smiling at him, probably because of his pink cheeks.

"Has this to do with the reason why you wanted to see me?" Treize asked straight away and didn't even wait for an answer as he added. "You never come here on your own..."

Zechs looked away and nodded, putting the piece of paper onto the Shuhan's dark wooden desk.

"In less than a year... Shinigami will rise."

The faint smile that always graced Shuhan Treize lips, vanished at these words. He was about the only man that would shudder in fear when he heard this name, because the knowledge of this being was sealed away inside the Temple's walls.

"Shinigami... God of Death. Legends say that he alone might bring peace to the world. By death."

Zechs nodded, hearing the words he just looked up after he found out the miserable fate of Atlantis. Nothing of this knowledge ever got outside the sacred gold and silver walls of his small realm. There were about a fistful of people who knew about this legend.

"How?"

"I don't know. I just know that none of the devices that the God and the Goddess left with us would help us against those savage powers that are threatening us."

Treize nodded, staring down at the innocent piece of news that lay on his desk. And this was only the very first sign that was known of.

"What about the lost child of the God and the Goddess? Isn't it supposed to help us?"

"We don't have any clue what it might look like."

"Not even one?"

"No..."

"Then why are you still here? We need to figure this out! This matter has top priority."

Zechs resisted the urge to salute, hit his heels together and say, "Yes, sir," although he had never been in the Atlantean navy. Instead he just nodded callously and turned to leave.

He had almost escaped out of the door when he felt a soft breath in his hair. He started to shudder although everything inside him tried to resist this strange and very disturbing urge.

"I wish you'd visit me more often..."

Zechs fled out of the room before he could turn around and drown in the eyes of this powerful man, afraid that he might loose himself just like he did once before. He didn't want to admit that he wanted the ginger-haired man's touch just as much as he knew that man wanted to touch him.

He fled to the safeness of his Temple, into his rooms and started working on what he was told to do, just to distract himself from the strange and contradiction feelings inside.

To be continued...
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O.o! Neither a bit about Heero NOR a bit about Duo... I think I'm ill. Though I am afraid... no. Neither Treize nor Zechs is anything like Heero or Duo...