Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ The Fellowship of the Gundam ❯ Canoes ( Chapter 12 )

Chapter 12: Canoes

In the morning, the elves began assembling supplies and gear for them. The soft gray cloaks with leaf-shaped brooches that they were all given were light and warm, but in certain light they tended to look green rather than gray. This sparked a debate about what the cloaks were made of.

“It feels kind of like wool,” Wu-Fei said, “but I don't know of many sheep that tend to have greenish wool.”

“I think it's some kind of plant fiber,” Treize said.

“Yeah, it could be dyed cotton,” Zechs agreed.

“But the weave seems awfully dense for cotton,” Trowa put in.

“Maybe it's a blend,” Quatre said.

“Hm.” Wu-Fei slid the material through his hands. “It could be a blend of all three. There are linen-like qualities to its flexibility.”

“I bet there's elf hair woven in it,” Alexa announced. “Look at all these gold strands.”

“That's gross!” Duo examined his cloak closely. “I don't want to wear someone's hair.”

“Your hair's practically a cloak when you take it down,” Trowa said.

“But that's different. It's my hair. And it's still attached.”

“I never knew you were so squeamish,” Trowa teased.

“I'm not squeamish!” Duo said archly. “I'm just sensitive.”

“Hey, you guys!” Pippin waved at them from over near the edge of the river where the elves were loading up several canoes for them. “You should come over! Galadriel is handing out gifts!”

“Gifts?!” Duo's eyes lit up. “Let's check this out.”

Quatre rolled his eyes. “Like he needs any more stuff.”

They went over to where Galadriel was placing a crystal vial of clear liquid in Frodo's hand. She turned to face them with a warm smile.

“You are all still such a mystery to me,” she said with a sparkling laugh. “I am so delighted to have met you.”

“It has been our honor, my lady,” Treize replied gallantly. He lifted Galadriel's hand and brushed the back of it with his lips.

Zechs stepped forward and caught her other hand. His deep blue eyes gazed hypnotically into hers. “Your beauty has been a tonic for our jaded hearts,” he purred.

Galadriel blinked. “Your heritage,” she said a little breathlessly, “surely contains some elvish blood?”

“That's what the elves at Rivendell thought,” Aragorn murmured to Haldir.

“I could see why they might think so,” Haldir murmured back. “He is quite… remarkable.”

Duo leaned toward Wu-Fei. “He should be glad Treize can't hear him thinking those thoughts.”

“Just keep it to yourself,” Wu-Fei responded quietly “We'll be out of here in a minute.”

“Not until I get my gift.”

“You don't need a gift.”

“But accepting it blesses the giver.”

Wu-Fei stared at him.

Duo grinned. “Anyway, that's how I feel every time I gift you with a good banging.”

Wu-Fei groaned. “I should have known you would figure out how to bring it back to sex.”

“That's a good place for every conversation to end up.”

Wu-Fei just shook his head.

Roku padded up from somewhere licking his whiskers. “What are we waiting for?”

“Galadriel's handing out gifts,” Duo replied.

“Oh, yeah. I already got one.”

“You did?!”

“Um hm. Galadriel rubbed my belly for an hour. It was great.”

“You get belly rubs all the time!”

“But I never say no to another one.” Roku plopped down on his haunches. “I'm going to have to be human to fit in the boats. The elves say it's pretty far and I shouldn't try to swim it.”

“Really? How far?”

“They said it will take us a couple of days to reach some big waterfall where we'll have to abandon the boats and continue on foot.”

“Two days in a boat,” Wu-Fei grumbled. “Great!”

“Eek!” Duo yelped. He rubbed his temple and looked at Galadriel. “She has got to learn to tone that down.” He walked over to the golden-haired elf queen. The two of them just stood there looking at each other for a few minutes and then Duo grinned. “Thanks, my lady! I'll remember that!”

Heero glared at him suspiciously. “What did she say?”

“She showed me a trick for keeping people out of my head.”

“I thought you liked knowing what people are thinking.”

Duo grimaced. “Not all the time. I saw some pretty ugly images coming off those orcs when we were in Moria. I'd just as soon be able to keep that kind of stuff out of my head. It messes up all the sexy thoughts I get from the rest of you.”

“I don't have sexy thoughts!”

“No all the time,” Duo agreed, “but when you do, they're whoppers. Just like your…”

Quatre clapped a hand over Duo's mouth. “That will be quite enough of that.” He bowed to Galadriel without taking his hand off Duo's mouth. “Thank you for your kind hospitality, my lady. It's been a pleasure.”

Galadriel inclined her head. “I would say come again, but I fear it is not in our future to meet again.”

“Oh, I don't know about that. Hadeya could probably call the Rainbow Bridge into the Undying Lands the same as he calls it into Asgard.”

Haldir's eyes narrowed. “Only elves can navigate to the Undying Lands.”

“You say that like there's a trick to it,” Quatre shrugged. “It's just magic.”

“J… Just magic?” Haldir stammered.

“Yeah, magic,” Quatre said patiently. He held up his hand and made a light ball. “You've seen us change shape. What makes you think navigating through a magical fold in space-time is any harder?”

Haldir's mouth worked silently for a second. “Please excuse me.” He hurried away.

Galadriel laughed softly. “You've confused poor Haldir.” She captured Quatre's light ball and balanced it on the back of her hand. “It is easier to function in a world with well-defined boundaries.”

“Well, that's true.”

“Please take care on the road ahead,” Galadriel continued. “Evil walks beside you.” She didn't look at anyone in particular, but both Frodo and Boromir ducked their heads.

But now it was time to finish packing and get going. So everyone went to the riverbank to help out with the supplies that the elves were loading. Legolas looked into one pack as he put it into a boat and his eyes lit up.

“Elven waybread!” he exclaimed to Merry and Pippin. “One small bite will fill the belly of a grown man for a whole day.” He trotted off with a happy smile to get another pack.

Pippin and Merry exchanged a look.

Duo overheard the comment and took one of the cakes out of the pack. He bit into it with a thoughtful expression. “Did you try these?” he asked the hobbits.

“Yeah,” Pippin said. He passed a little gas. “They're pretty filling.”

Duo took another bite. “Well, you know, I'll eat pretty much anything, because it's better to be full than hungry, but I'm not sure these things qualify as food. They're pretty tasteless.” He looked around. “Hey, Jett! Come try this.”

The little girl trotted over and Duo handed her the half-eaten cake. She bit into it and chewed slowly, a slight frown on her face.

“Needs salt. And jam. And maybe a strip of bacon inside.”

Duo patted her on the head. “We'll fix them up at dinnertime.”

“Papa Heero says I have to ride in the boat with him,” Jett pouted. “I want to ride with Alexa.”

“I think she's going with her Mom and Dad, and the boats only hold three people.”

“Three big people,” Jett pointed out. “Alexa and I are small.”

“I'll talk to him.”

“Yay!”

So they sorted themselves into the boats and set out. Treize and Zechs took Alexa and Jett in their boat and Heero, Duo and Wu-Fei took another boat. Quatre and Trowa took a boat, and Hadeya and Roku took a fourth. With the three boats carrying the other members of the Fellowship, the little canoes strung out in a long line as they floated down the river.

Alexa and Jett promptly leaned over the side and stuck their arms in the water, nearly tipping their boat over.

Girls!” Treize exclaimed sternly. “If you want to hang over the sides, you need to do it on opposite sides, or we're all going to end up in the water.”

“Sorry!”

“What a beautiful river!” Zechs remarks. “It reminds me of home.”

“Indeed it does,” Treize agreed. “I used to canoe down a river like this to go hunting on my estate. Or sometimes I'd just fish. Nothing tastes as good as fresh caught fish roasted over an open fire on the banks of a river in the wilderness.”

“I'd have to agree with that.”

“Can we have fish for dinner, Daddy?” Alexa immediately asked. “That sounds good.”

“Well, we don't really have time to fish.”

“We do! Do you have some string and a hook? I read about line fishing like that in a book at school.”

“I don't know.” Treize searched his pockets and the packs while Zechs steered. He finally found a bit of wire that he twisted into a hook, and then used a piece of string he found in the bottom of another pack to make a line. “I'm getting as bad as Roku,” he muttered. “Why do I have all this junk?”

“Because you never know when you'll need it,” Zechs chuckled. “At least that's what Roku always says when he starts pulling stuff out of his storage space.”

“I'll need some bait,” Alexa said.

“Right.” Treize rummage around some more and found a bit of rather old bacon. “We probably shouldn't eat this anyway.” He handed it to Alexa and she broke off a small chuck, jammed it onto her hook and tossed it into the water, keeping a firm grip on the other end of the string.

“I'm not sure we'll catch anything that way,” Zechs said, and something immediately tugged on Alexa's line.

“I got something!” she cried out excitedly and hauled it in. A good-sized trout struggled on the end of her string. She pulled it into the boat and Jett held it still for her while she worked the hook out of its mouth. “That's one!” she said triumphantly. She put another bit of bacon on her hook and flung it back over the side.

From behind them, Aragorn called out, “What are you doing?”

“Alexa's fishing,” Treize answered. “She already caught one.”

“Really?”

The hobbits immediately began scanning the water. “There's fish all over the place down there!” Sam exclaimed. He immediately began searching his pockets and promptly produced a hook and line. “I didn't think I'd need this, but I brought it along just in case. What are you using for bait, Alexa?” he called out.

“Old bacon!”

“That'll work,” Sam said. He scrounged some old bacon out of his pack and immediately started fishing. He met with the same success as Alexa and grinned broadly at Frodo. “There'll be fresh fish for dinner tonight!”

Frodo smiled back, but he said nothing.

Alexa and Sam fished as the canoes paddled downriver, until Zechs and Aragorn started complaining about all the fish underfoot. When the sun started to go down, they put ashore on a tiny stretch of sand so they could set up camp before it got dark. Everyone joined in to help clean the catch, except for Quatre and Wu-Fei, who collected wood and started a couple of fires. Soon, the smell of cooking fish filled the air.

Back in tiger form, Roku waded into the river, snatching fish out of the water and eating them whole.

“Roku!” Quatre complained. “Can't you just eat cooked fish like the rest of us?”

“But you took all the guts out. That's the yummy part.”

“Ugh!” Wu-Fei groaned. “Does he have to say that out loud?”

“He is a tiger at heart,” Duo said. “You know he prefers his kills fresh and warm.”

“Fish aren't warm,” Wu-Fei said.

“You know what I mean.”

They ate the tasty trout right off the skewers they were roasting them on and everyone declared it an excellent meal. Gimli promptly went to sleep, his mighty snores rattling the tree branches. Legolas sat down a short way away and amused himself by poking Gimli with a stick whenever his snores got too loud to make him turn over.

It was quite dark when Boromir, who had been sitting rather morosely by the edge of the river, squinted across the dark flow. “Do you see that?” he whispered to Aragorn.

“Yes,” Aragorn replied. “It's Gollum.”

“How could he have tracked us through Lothlorien?” Boromir asked with a shudder. “Those elves seemed to know everything.”

“Forget that,” Heero said from behind them. “How the hell did he get out of Moria after Gandalf destroyed the bridge?”

“There must have been another exit,” Aragorn said.

“No wonder the dwarves got overrun by orcs,” Heero snorted. “They go to all the trouble of making that skinny defensible bridge over that chasm and leave other entrances? Stupid!”

“Just a minute!” Gimli snorted. “The masters of Moria were more concerned about theft than invasion.”

“So clearly they were focused on the wrong problem,” Heero concluded heartlessly. He gestured at the river. “Anyway, what are we going to do about Gollum? I say we kill him now and save ourselves the trouble later.”

“He's made it to shore on the other side,” Boromir reported. “It may be impossible to catch him now.”

“Nonsense!” Heero said. “Roku could take care of him.”

“You are not turning my sweet little boy into an assassin like you,” Quatre interrupted. “If you want to kill that creature, go ahead, but leave the rest of us out of it.”

“It's stupid to leave an enemy alive when you know right where he is!” Heero exclaimed.

“Gandalf seemed to think Gollum wasn't an enemy,” Treize said. “At least that's what he implied.”

“He said Gollum still had a role to play,” Zechs added.

“Maybe his role is to get his head hacked off for being irritating,” Heero grumbled.

“We need to get in a fight,” Quatre said. “It sounds like Heero needs to kill something.”

“I don't need to kill something,” Heero growled. “I just hate leaving something alive that should be dead.”

“That's not much of a distinction.”

“It's a huge distinction. If Gollum wasn't there, I wouldn't be talking about killing anything.”

“Just thinking about it,” Quatre said under his breath.

Heero glared at Quatre. “I could be thinking about killing you, you know.”

“Don't talk that way to Quatre,” Trowa frowned.

“He doesn't mean it,” Duo said.

“But I still don't like it. Quatre's much too adorable for anyone to say things like that to him.”

“Adorable to you,” Heero muttered.

“Wu-Fei, would you please take Heero somewhere and spar with him?” Trowa said. “Try to cut him a few times.”

“Sure.” Wu-Fei rolled to his feet. “I wouldn't mind a light workout.” The two of them went a short way down the beach and immediately attacked each other.

The hobbits stared.

“That's a light workout?!” Pippin exclaimed. “It looks like they're trying to kill each other!”

“Oh, they're just playing around,” Duo assured him. “If they were serious, they'd have gone to where they had more room.”

Pippin swallowed and exchanged a look with Merry.

“Truthfully, Wu-Fei's a better swordsman,” Duo confided. “He has more finesse. Heero makes up for it with speed and strength. But it's fun to watch them.” He leaned closer. “But the best part is that it will put them in the mood. I expect I'll get lucky later.”

Sam blushed and suddenly got very busy bustling about the fire. “Did you get enough to eat, Mr. Frodo?”

“Yes, Sam, I'm fine.”

“That's a blatant lie if I ever heard one,” Quatre said calmly. “You didn't eat anything.”

“I'm not that hungry,” Frodo confessed.

“You should give that thing to Hadeya. It doesn't affect him.”

Frodo clutched at the ring hidden under his shirt. “I'm fine!”

“Don't freak out! No one's going to take it from you. But you should still eat something.”

Reluctantly, Frodo accepted a bit of fish from Sam and choked it down.

“I can see this is going to be loads of fun later,” Zechs murmured. “That ring is starting to get on my nerves.”

“You can hear it, too?” Treize asked.

“Yes, and it's annoying.” Zechs scowled. “It reminds me of the Zero System, except you can't talk back or tell it to shut up.”

“I never knew you could make the Zero System shut up.”

“Well, you can't,” Zechs admitted. “That's probably why it makes us all go a little crazy.”

Treize gazed speculatively at Frodo. “Maybe that's how the ring affects people. It makes them crazy.”

“So it would appear.”

“Crazy people with unlimited power are never a good thing.” Treize grinned. “We lost a space station or two because of that.”

“You better not be talking about me,” Quatre said.

“Never,” Treize replied, but his grin said otherwise.

Quatre scowled at him.

“Dammit!” Heero cried out. He leaped back and Wu-Fei lowered his sword.

“I win,” Wu-Fei said. “You're bleeding.”

“It's barely a scratch!” Heero exclaimed. Blood ran in a steady stream down his arm from a long cut on his shoulder.

Wu-Fei lifted an eyebrow. “But I still win.”

“Fine! You win!” Heero stamped back to the others. “But it shouldn't count.” He displayed the cut for Duo. “It barely split the skin, right?”

Duo shook his head. “It's a solid cut and it totally counts. Now sit down so I can put a few stitches in it.”

“It doesn't need stitches.”

“I can see meat.”

“Oh, all right!” Heero plopped down on his butt with a sharp scowl. His expression didn't change while Duo calmly stitched up his wound.

Boromir watched with interest. “That's good wound care.”

“Yeah, we used to be guerillas,” Duo said, “so we had to know how to fix ourselves. Heero could do this himself if it was easier to reach.”

“But I wouldn't have bothered!” Heero snapped.

Duo chuckled. “I know. You would have tied a rag over it and forgotten about it.”

“Because that's all it needed!”

“Probably, but I can't have you bleeding all over me during sex.”

“What?!”

“Now that you and Wu-Fei are done playing, it's time for sex.”

Heero put his good hand over his face. “I can't win.”

“That's why you love me.”

Heero groaned.

“I'm going to wash the dishes!” Sam announced loudly.

“What dishes?” Hadeya said. “We ate the fish off of sticks.”

“Well, um…” Sam looked around wildly and snatched up a pot. “This pot! It's dirty!” And he raced to the riverbank several paces upstream.

“Sam has got to over that shyness if he's going to hang around us,” Zechs said. “Besides, lust is perfectly normal.”

“Oh, Sam knows all about lust,” Merry said with a wide grin. “Ask him about Rosie Cotton.”

“Do not bring up Rosie in such a context!” Sam cried out in a strangled tone. “She's too refined for your coarse conversation!”

“But not your coarse thoughts!” Pippin snickered.

“Is Rosie his girlfriend?” Alexa asked.

“No!” Sam shouted.

“He'd like her to be,” Merry said with a laugh.

“That's… that's…” Sam stammered.

“Completely true,” Merry finished for him.

“Leave Sam alone,” Frodo said. “He's the sort of decent fellow a nice girl like Rosie will end up with. You two will end up lonely bachelors drinking alone at the inn.”

“Nonsense!” Pippin declared. He threw an arm around Merry's shoulders. “We'll be lonely bachelors drinking together at the inn!”

“And from there it's only a short step to screwing in back of the inn,” Duo said. “Or in this case, screwing in the woods.” He grabbed Heero's arm. “On your feet, my love.” He beckoned at Wu-Fei. “You, too, handsome. Time's a-wasting.”

Heero rolled his eyes, but Wu-Fei stood up without a word. The three of them strolled off into the darkness together.

Sam stood on the edge of the river with the pot dangling from one hand. “They can't just go off and… and…”

“Yes, they can,” Quatre said. He yawned. “I want to sleep, however.”

“Really?” Trowa said.

“Yes, really!”

“Right now?”

“Yes, right now!”

“But you could just as easily sleep an hour or two from now.”

“And get an hour or two less sleep tonight!”

“You've always functioned better on six or seven hours of sleep than eight, I've thought.”

Quatre's mouth worked silently.

Trowa took his hand. “I'll be quick, ok? Half-an-hour, tops.”

“Do you think I buy a word of that?!”

Trowa grinned. “Of course! Have I ever lied to you?” He started pulling Quatre toward the trees. “You know you want to.”

“Argh!”

They disappeared into the trees. Roku, Alexa and Jett looked expectantly at Treize and Zechs.

Treize blinked innocently. “What are you all looking at?”

“Just go, Daddy,” Alexa said with a sigh. “You're not fooling anyone.”

“But…”

Zechs sighed. “Give up, Treize. I don't have to be Duo to read what's on your mind.” He stood up. “But I don't want any scratches. Or mud on my clothes.”

“You make me sound like a pervert.”

Zechs smiled. “But you're my favorite pervert.”

Treize smiled back. “Very well. We will engage in a chaste, clean, but passionate coupling.”

They glided off into the darkness hand in hand.

“Finally!” Roku exclaimed. “Now we can get some sleep.” He stretched out on the ground and the girls curled up against his warm side. Hadeya stretched out on his other side and pulled his cloak over his head. The hobbits settled down near one of the fires, because Gimli and Legolas were taking up most of the space by the other one.

Aragorn looked at Boromir. “I guess we're keeping watch.”

“Apparently so, but I'm doing it from right here,” Boromir stated emphatically.

“That's probably fine,” Aragorn said with a soft chuckle. “I daresay any orc that stumbled across us tonight would come to regret interrupting our companions.”