Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ The Sea in I ❯ XVIII ( Chapter 18 )

Unbeta'd
Italics ~ thoughts
Warnings: Angst, MXM goodiness, death, NCS and Mpreg in later chapters, just thought I'd bring up now so all will be prepared when it happens
Pairings: 1x2/2x1, and the pen dabbles around a bit

 

Thank you guys for reading ^_^ Input/feedback is much appreciated

 

Here some art work I commissioned from link_worshiper at LJ http :// link-worshiper . livejournal .com /253067 . html . No spaces. Thank you again!

 

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Disclaimer: I don't own any of the sexies in Gundam Wing AC, I just love to help them live a little.
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XVIII

 

He was too used to the constant clatter or scurry of things in Maheran's alleyways and markets for this quiet to be natural. It was the same for Acai, although there had been times when he'd found himself alone, there was always something going on.

 

…The mountains. They were still there. Duo opened his eyes and saw a jumble of things all once. He squeezed them shut just as quickly and gritted his teeth against the sharp pain that stopped him from trying to open them again. Temporarily blind, he should have stumbled, but his steps were measured and easy. It was almost like his feet weren't touching the ground.

 

The next thing he was aware of was grass. He could feel the sun heated soft blades crinkle beneath his feet. They had come down from the mountains somehow. He had the disorienting feel of not being in control of his body, his movements but there were no hands holding him. Before his anxiety could grow, he was calmed by presence of his bonded nearby and then his attention was brought back to the whispering ground beneath his feet.

 

Alive.

 

The grass felt good and he felt connected again. He bore down, feet pushing down into the dew kissed cool depths of the growing grass stalks as the rose up over his ankles and stopped at his knees. He twisted the stalks around his toes and wiggled them.

 

Duo blinked. Seeing them suddenly with his head already tilted down was dizzying, but his feet stayed under him. He stared down at his bare feet resting in the small thatch of it. More grew around him, greener and fuller than the sparse scattered bits gracing the plain they stood upon. He wanted it all to be this way. He felt the pressure build in his chest and with his next exhalation, he watched it spread out. The pressure leaving him as the grass grew tall, trapping the roaming sand beneath its roots and trees sprung up in the distance bringing life back to the sparse, low plain.

 

Relena …restored… The name drew an image of a girl to his mind and then it was gone. He remembered that she could only make things happen like this but it slipped away again because she wasn't there and that wasn't right. The wind picked up around him and for a delirious moment, he felt, heard, saw everything.

 

He was everything.

 

The world doubled and overlapped to show him what was, what had been and what could be… and there were bodies. He felt fevered and nauseated by the sense of malaise over the lack emotion he felt when he looked upon the dead. It was as if it meant nothing and then the echoes of what once was pulled him away from what he'd seen. They called to him like they did in the dead village tucked inside the mountain. They called to him from deep within the sand, stretching over a distance he couldn't reach yet.

 

He couldn't. He wanted to fulfill the yearning that pulled at like any number of hunger pained dreams. He needed more - needed to be more in order to make that happen. For a moment, it all overwhelmed him with such intensity that he gasped out.

 

“Amadahy,” fingers brushed down his clothed back, before they caught his hand and the owner's white head of hair entered his vision on his right. “Do not tax yourself.” Then the connection with himself was gone again and he was blanketed in nothingness.

 

* * *

 

The world rushed back at him, leaving him startled and trying to catch up. His head cleared enough for him to see without the nauseating disorientation from before, but there were people everywhere. They cheered him on bringing carts of more food than he had every seen in his life. They introduced themselves offering their services along with baskets of their finest cloth and wares as their tribute. They asked him to touch their children, saying that his touch blessed them and thanked him for healing their crops.

 

Then that too was gone in a swirl of white hair, a placid face and soldiers carrying two prone bodies - one with dark hair and the other light hair. Both were covered in grim and he felt the need to go to them but he didn't understand it. He couldn't act even though he knew they meant something to him. He slipped away again with the image of the unconscious dark haired man being taken inside the temple, followed by phantom touches and strange voices talking to him.

 

The voices gave way to the sound of dripping water and then the feel of it being poured over his body. Duo shook under the hands touching him, drying him and then something was being put on him.

 

Clothes? When had I…? He remembered his feet being bare but being still clothed. The thought of being naked in front of whoever was washing him didn't bother him as much as he thought it should. He was smiling, he could feel it in the twitching muscles of his cheeks, and he felt oddly safe in this place. But it wasn't him smiling. It was the voice that had been calling him. She was free and smiling through him and he could see the women who washed and dried him wore fine clothes that allowed their left shoulders to be bared.

 

Acolytes. His bewilderment never reached his face.

 

…servants…

 

The voice was faint but came from everywhere. The acolytes who attended him seemed to be unaware of it. Who-

 

Servants. Nothing of importance to us. Duo shook at the cold disregard in which the voice spoke of them... she spoke to him. He took in the blushing faces of the women before him and he felt little interest in them. He gasped at the sudden sight of them slowly turning into sundried, burnt jerky. He felt separate from them and trapped in cloying warmth that grew colder the more he pushed the image away. But it… she called him back soundlessly and he almost let her pull him back in when one acolyte reached for him and he knew this short haired teasing sprite of a woman.

 

Hilde? Duo smiled, but it wasn't a smile that could be seen by Hilde or anyone else. She, like the other acolytes, continued to glance at him in guarded wonder. She's safe. His relief was shorted lived as the voice spoke to him again.

 

As are... all the ones who yielded to us. She... may be of further use.

 

Duo frowned at that, pushing away the cloying feeling completely and found himself floating free. He wondered what the voice meant. Of use?

 

In response, Duo was in his body again but he watched mutely as he caught Hilde's hand. She jerked slightly then bowed saying something he couldn't hear. Then a faint pressure and low heat left his body to enter hers. He saw her gasp, a flush appear high on her cheeks as she looked to him. She tried to shake off the flush threatening take over her face, but held tighter to his hand. Hilde glanced at him in question, then nodded and led him from the bathing chamber with the other acolytes trailing behind them unaware of anything.

 

Receptive. She fears us but it's for us. She can be used to aid us.

 

What?

 

There are others that could serve the purpose of bearer. Many have come so you may make the first selection of those for our use and those that will serve the purpose of cattle.

 

Duo let go of Hilde's hand and the being retaliated by disconnecting his hold on the physical, leaving him floating free again. Images of people dying - the common people of the market, the wino at the front of Celi's tavern who always spared him coin for bread, the farmers, the Gaults - flashed before his eyes. He saw many more deaths including Nartob soldiers, and then Heero... Duo shook his head and the force behind it pushing the being back, revealing a blob like glowing mass. It - she reached for him and he quickly floated further away from her. A female form took shape before him in the strange suspended world he was being held in.

 

Ah… it changed to what she truly feels. She distrusts, fears what you've become. Duo bit his lip, wanting to see for himself but not wanting to go back inside the ball of light he seemed to have been inside of all along - inside her inside him. An arm took shape, fingers unfurling from the round knob like end and beckoned him to come closer. I'm here because you called. I'm here to meet out the wrongs done.

 

That's not what I felt from you. Duo frowned in concentration, You came here to kill... his brows disappeared beneath the fall of his bangs, I didn't call you for that.

 

She said nothing.

 

I wouldn't! He knew the doubt in those words. It was a half truth. There had been many times he had wanted to get even. He wanted to see several people dead.

 

The being made her shape more definitive and oval eyes blinked into being where they should. They were a depthless black that swallowed all light and made their sockets look empty. They regarded him curiously.

 

You refuse me? Her tone was colored with the light disapproval one would give a small child. Her head tilted, conveying her disappointment and Duo realized she had no mouth.Me, who has always been with you?

 

You are not... Duo sucked in a steadying breath then shook his head, drawn by the near hypnotic sound of her voice. It inspired a sense of belonging and trust. He blinked back the moisture in his eyes, it sounded like his mother.I don't… He gritted his teeth, need you. I don't agree with what you intend to do.

 

The black eyes disappeared inside the ball of light that made up her head as she gave him a slow blink. I see. Her eyes glanced off to the side, their corners tilting in a remorseful way before the black orbs turned back to him.

 

We shall see…you will see that they are but dirt like all things. The black oblong orbs tilted at the corners again, but upward. Duo was sure that those cryptic words were accompanied by a smile she didn't show.

 

He didn't like it. Give me back my body!

 

As you wish...

 

Heard startled voices as the hard floor rose up to meet him, clipping him in knees. He saw Hilde there, falling with him as she dove to catch him. He shook, the world crashing into him and he opened his eyes to see a ring of curious, cautious faces staring down at him.

 

“Tha... that hurt...” He muttered, his body felt like it was weighed down and then came the shudders that made his teeth chatter. He was freezing. He tried to burrow into the warm arms with soft malleable parts that held him but his movement was uncoordinated. The soft body he was laying on squeezed him across the shoulders.

 

“Duo...” Duo heard the relieved whisper and it was like he was being grounded, his body relaxing in the arms around him. He hadn't known his name with the being. He opened an eye he hadn't known was closed and saw a brown haired and eyed stranger looking back at him. He squinted, he had seen her before, she had brought someone earlier but it was hard to recall. He turned his head and blurry blue-violets met a familiar blue that weren't his. The blue that belonged to him were darker and deeper. He wanted to ask so many questions. One in particular was centering on the whereabouts of Heero but as soon as the thought came it left him. Things were slipping away from him, words and movement with a lethargy that gave it all a dreamlike quality.

 

“Wake ...me when it-it's- this... over.” He muttered catching a glimpse of Hilde's sad face before awareness slipped away from him completely.

 

* * *

 

Duo lifted one heavy hand up to rub at one sticky eye crusted with sleep. He felt off in his own body, tired more than he thought he should have been and his sense of time was skewed. He opened his eyes gingerly in the sunlit room and gasped at the white haired man leaning over him. Duo choked, his throat was too dry and scratchy. He swallowed several times between coughs as his body tried to produce enough saliva to ease his parched passage.

 

Jirrad pressed a wet sponge to his mouth, the cool water soothing his throat. He didn't have enough energy to pull away when Jirrad brushed aside his bangs, the fingers sending an off sort of crawling sensation across his skin. Jirrad smiled down at him, his flat gray eyes burrowing into him every passing moment. He wished he could rub off the almost tangible touch of the man's eyes everywhere the flat gaze landed on him, but all he could managed was a heavy lidded glare.

 

“Welcome home.” Jirrad's thin lip grimace contradicted his airily pleasant greeting. Duo tried to shift in the bed and away from the white haired man, but his body was too sluggish to do anything other than shiver. The world spun and tunneled out of focus while hands lifted him, propping him up against the pillows and headboard.

 

“My, what a surprise this turned out to be.” Duo squinted through the nausea. He could care less about anything that surprised Jirrad. He just wanted the raunchy old bastard to stop touching him. His vision faded out even as Jirrad leaned down into his face and he struggled to stay conscious, “…ow long I waited! Do you know how many times I've called for her?! How many times-” his teeth clenched shut on whatever else he was about to say, “I did it all to bring her back to me and you sent her away!”

 

Duo could feel the hands that held him up by his biceps digging into the sensitive skin just before his armpits and pressing him back into the pillows, “…Amadahy! Bring her back, if you want them to remain alive!”

 

Duo was surprised he could still hear him, but he had no idea what he was talking about. The name felt familiar but held little meaning to his sleep heavy mind. Despite the pain in his arms, he started to slip away again and jerked back to semi-wakefulness with two long, lazy blinks. His eyes focused on Jirrad's shocked face as cold tendrils slithered through his head. He struggled to stay awake and saw Jirrad cradle one of his hands as he stared at it in confusion.

 

Duo didn't know why he was, it was his own hand. He watched Jirrad jerk back a second time, his right hand had barely reached Duo's sleeve when the force of the jerk had Jirrad taking a cautious step away from him. The white haired man examined the redden skin of his hand with a thoughtful, but irritated lift of his brows.

 

“Rest.”

 

Duo didn't want to obey Jirrad but his body left him no recourse. He glared, or at least he thought he did, until Jirrad left the room. He slumped side ways until he felt the soft sheets beneath his cheek. His eyes fluttered open when the sound of the door closing didn't reach his ears. Duo glimpsed a ginger haired man standing rigidly in the open doorway. Even though the man gazed at him with sharp pale and dispassionate eyes, he could tell there was something more to the soldier. Duo let his heavy lids close. The queasiness eased its hold on his stomach and allowed sleep to pull him under.

 

Duo woke up several other times but he hardly remembered what he did or what was said. He did remember what he felt and it was an uneasy feeling attached to everyone he'd encountered since he'd woken up with Jirrad drooling over him. This time he didn't feel quite as off and he hoped to see a familiar face like Hilde or Sophil's, but instead he felt uncomfortable. There was someone in the room with him that he hadn't invited.

 

He glanced around through his lashes, the dinner he hadn't touched was gone. He felt better than the yesterday but he still didn't feel like himself. He was more disoriented and felt overwhelmed by the new role he'd been thrown into.

 

Stranger still was being back in Maheran as the center of attention. Before, it had always been easy for him to fade into the background or hide. Now though, eyes followed him everywhere he went. They let him leave the palace-temple twice but it disturbed him when people fell at his feet and tried to touch him, touched his hair which some how always ended up unbraided. He barely made it back inside the mock safety of the white walls without being groped again.

 

He remembered Jirrad not being pleased and telling old man to go stuff himself. Though, from then on he was followed by a combination of soldiers, priests or acolytes. The more they watched him, the more he felt trapped. The palace-temple was a decorated prison, one that Relena was accustomed to and probably didn't even see it as such. He asked about Heero, Relena and the others but no one would answer him. Hilde had told him that Sophil found her caked in dirt in the bathing chambers and that she had no memory of how she had gotten there. He didn't doubt her but she'd cried when he asked if Fraix was with Heero. That had driven her away from him for several days. He didn't want to think of what it meant so he wandered the palace-temple. Someone along the way had relented and told him they were in there with him but he looked everywhere and couldn't find them. He couldn't get to the lower levels because someone in his entourage alerted Jirrad or the guards kept him out.

 

No one but Hilde or Sophil called him by his name and that was in private. But he was seeing less and less of them. Jirrad limited the reasons Hilde would have to come see him by having the ginger haired captain, Treize, do them or he'd come tend to him his self. He wasn't free to move about the temple commons anymore either. The white haired man was really trying to keep him confined to Relena's rooms period, saying that it was because of his increased fatigue and grogginess. That he didn't want Duo to hurt himself.

 

Duo snorted. It was more like he didn't want him to find out what was going on in Maheran or find away to get into the lower levels. The last time he spoke with Hilde, she had told him of the large number of people migrating to Maheran and he knew something big was going to happen. It was going to happen soon and Duo wanted no part of it.

 

Gotta try to get to the lower level. Duo fidgeted then gritted his teeth, trying to ignore his guest by staring out the window. He could see more people entering the temple commons, overflowing Maheran and its streets. Even the rooftops seemed flooded with people if not activity. Duo glanced up and the ginger haired man with clear blue eyes was still observing him.

 

“Stop watching me!” Duo snapped and the ginger haired man's eyes widen slightly before they relaxed into amused crests that matched his slight smile.

 

“Like insects to a flame in a dark room,” the ginger haired said with a shake of his head and stepped away from the wall that he'd been holding up since he walked in with the acolyte who'd brought his lunch. “You can't help looking at and admiring beauty. Word alone of the land you restored on our trek back from the mountains and the restored failing crops on the eastern border has drawn an unprecedented number of people to Maheran.”

 

“It wasn't me who made that happen. You've got the wrong person, I can't do anything.” Duo washed up in the washroom and walked back into the room to sit on one of the crest shaped, cushioned long chairs around the table near two large stone glass windows that also served as balcony doors. The sucky part was that Relena's room was filled with windows and he couldn't open or break any of them. The stone glass looked sleek and delicately thin with the frost pattern of snowflakes all around the edges but was just as hard. He'd made one of the chairs lame after several attempts at breaking them.

 

Sharp blue eyes meet with Duo's across the table and Duo gave the man a narrow eyed glare. “You draw them here without even knowing that you are. Even now,” Duo sat rigidly on his chair as the man approached him then stop to lean against a wall by a large unshuttered window with a grooved area filled with cushions on which to sit. Treize gestured toward the window and Duo refrained from following, too weary of taking his eyes off him. He was an arm's length away from him, “you call to them in your weaken state.”

 

“Are you saying you're here because of that?”

 

The ginger haired man shook his head, glancing at him briefly before his eyes returned to the window.

 

“They- the wielders are safe, innocuous among the other people because we can't see them anymore.” Treize smiled, “My guess is that Jirrad has been waiting for Heero to lead him to you.”

 

Duo felt groggy and agitatedly stab at the food on the plate then shoved it in his mouth. He glared at Treize as he chewed, until the sky blue eyes returned to the window. The sun's rays made Treize's hair look like spun sugar laced in ginger.

 

“Do you- have you seen him?” Duo looked at the man curiously but Treize kept his gaze focused on some point beyond the grounds.

 

Duo peered out the window out the corner of his eyes. The mountains? He'd forgotten that you could see their cloudy tops over the white wall from Relena's room.

 

He heard the man take in a shaky breath. Duo glanced at him, his eye were closed and he didn't look away when the calm face turned openly sad and the dark ginger lashes opened over downcast eyes.

 

The blue eyes shifted and he became their main focus, “Tell me you've heard something of a pregnant wielder?”

 

Duo shook his head at the desperate look the man was giving him. Duo crushed the bread in his hand when the man stood away from the wall and approached. Treize's gait was too smooth and his instincts told him the ginger haired man intended to do something.

 

“No word of a pregnant man with fair hair?”

 

Millie. Duo's eyes widened, but he was too slow to cover the reaction. Treize grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him.

 

“Is he-are… they ok?!”

 

“Let go of me!” Duo threatened, even though he felt closer to vomiting from all the shaking. Perhaps being covered in vomit would dissuade the desperate man to not touch him again.

 

Treize let him go, taking a step back as if he'd been burned. “It's true. No one can touch you but the acolytes now.”

 

Duo dropped back down on his chair and watched Treize's hands shake before he clasped them behind his back.

 

“No wonder…” He shook his head, “Please just answer my questions. I won't ask where he is, just if he's safe. If…” Treize half looked away but returned his anguished gaze back to him, “Is the baby …safe?”

 

Duo glared, tired and wanting the man to go away. “Why should that matter to you? He's going to die anyway.” He raised a brow as what little color Treize's emotions had flushed through his face disappeared at his words. Duo couldn't dredge up much sympathy for his captor.

 

“I did what I did to protect him. With me…I-” The man stopped, lips pressed in a tight line of self contempt and shame.

 

Duo smirked darkly, “Right, getting him pregnant with a child, no children, without you by his side so that they'd die horribly is protection?”

 

Treize looked devastated and Duo slouched in his seat as the blade made of the man's own guilt and suffering filleted him open before him. Duo sighed, it wasn't like him to be so apathetic and cruel but he felt numb and disconnected. He picked up the cup and looked into its clear contents then sipped it.

 

Treize took it from him, opened the window and threw it out. Duo paused in swallowing what water he had in his mouth.

 

“Don't swallow it.”

 

Duo frowned at Treize still holding the water in his mouth. Duo looked into anguished blue eyes as Treize gave him the emptied cup back and gestured for him to use it. He spat the water out, grimacing because he was thirsty and he followed Treize's instructions without pause. Treize took the cup away again. The quick motion was slightly nauseating to Duo, who blinked lazily at Treize. Duo arched a brow in question at the sudden appearance of a different cup in front of him on the table. It was empty. Duo looked to Treize in confusion.

 

“Call to it.” Treize held up a hand, silencing his denial at being able to wield. “Don't think about it just call, will it to come.”

 

Duo did, it was easier than in the mountains because he could barely feel anything let alone think. The cup filled and he drank it without hesitation. He was on his third cup when he couldn't call to his element anymore. He also didn't feel like a slow moving slug or disconnected from himself. His head felt clear.

 

Treize stepped back seemingly satisfied, “It's been laced.” He gestured to the half eaten food on the table before Duo. “All of it. Jirrad seems to have increased the dosage.”

 

“Why?” Duo wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and left his shaking thumb pressed to the side of his lower lip. It wasn't anything he could taste but he could feel the difference.

 

Treize's eyes were once again fixed on some distant point in the mountains. “Perhaps, to make you more compliant.” His brows furrowed in pain as he squeezed his eyes shut - thumb and pointer finger rubbing his eyes through closed lids. “Perhaps, Amadahy-”

 

“Th-that's not my name.”

 

Treize's smile looked like it hurt, “but he truly thinks you're her.” He turned to lean sideways against the glass, pressing his shoulder then his forehead against its cool surface. “Or at least,” sad eyes focused on him from out their corners, “he believes you to be her when you're the One-”

 

“No. No, I'm not. Relena-”

 

“You are.” Treize faced him, his head still resting against the glass, “You are the One.”

 

His head throbbed in time with his heart, “No. Where's Relena?”

 

Treize averted his eyes toward the ceiling. “No one knows. Trowa said she may be dead.”

 

The name sounded vaguely familiar, but the face it brought to mind he knew immediately. He scowled at the table, “And the old man believed that?”

 

“No.” Treize smiled tiredly, “I'll help you leave. Whatever it is that's protecting you is starting to fade.”

 

Duo set turbulent violets on the ginger haired man, “Not without Heero or the others.”

 

Treize gave him a confused look. “What others? There were no others. There's the merchant's son…”

 

Duo pressed his lips into a thin line.

 

Treize shook his head, “be glad I have no ulterior motives for doing this.”

 

“You do.”

 

Treize stared at him for a long moment, his despair a perfect distraction from his calculating eyes. He nodded his assent, “Tell him Treize… Tell him that I'm sorry f-”

 

“Tell him yourself.”

 

The muscles in Treize's jaw bunched slightly as he clenched his teeth, sharp eyes looked off to the side and Duo could tell the man didn't think that would happen. “I'll come for you, early in the morning like I usually bring your breakfast.” He pushed off the window, shutting it much to Duo's dismay. He collected himself and bowed to him. “Be prepared for anything.”

 

“Don't bow to me.” Treize stiffened but remained in the humbling position. “Your back's gonna be bitching at ya soon. Just…” Duo sighed, rolling his eyes when Treize didn't rise right away, “can you bring me a soldier's garb?” Duo flushed at the merriment alight in the sky blue eyes that looked up at him.

 

“It might be best to continue to dress you in female wares, an acolyte shall serve you… an acolyte will leave as well. It's time for me to go.”

 

“He's fine.” Duo blurted snootily, freezing Treize at the door. Sighing, Duo picked at the cushioned seat covering and spoke again, his tone gentle. “The children are fine. They will live.”

 

Treize shuddered, bunched shoulders relaxed as he sort of sagged where he stood. He didn't turn back to Duo. He gave him a shaky nod before he left.

 

 

Tbc…