a/n: It's all Jenny's fault! All of it, I tell you! She forced me to post
this, and I have about three or four other fics to work on, and I wrote
this on a whim and then showed it to her, and she. . .she. . .oh well. I
secretly wanted to post it, anyway ^_~ 13x5x6, 1x2, 3x4. Maybe slight OOC
because I've never written the G-boys before. Heero's enigmatic Japanese
reply translates to "That is a secret", the anime it was taken from is
Slayers, the character who the slogan belongs to is Xellos. The story I had
Duo write in this actually does exist; its author is Madam Hydra, a very
wonderful writer whom I admire a lot. Unfortunately, I can't recall her
site's address. Eheh. Anyway, enjoy, minna!
Disclaimer: If I owned Gundam Wing, you think I'd be writing this? Nope. I'd be busy killing Relena and getting Duo and Heero together, and also not getting Treize killed, in the actual SHOW instead of here. Go figure.
Chapter One: The boys have an unexpected visitor, Wufei stays up very late,
and the origin of some monikers.
In a rather shabby house, roughly in the neighborhood of Russia, five boys sat around a rather shabby living room. Bright blonde hair and huge, innocent sea-green eyes leaned contentedly against mid-brown hair that concealed one of its owner's darker green eyes. The other was half-closed in almost feline silent pleasure as it watched the others, one arm wrapped possessively around blonde. Black hair and equally black eyes sat alone, observing his companions with secret amusement and a resigned expression. Dark brown hair and almost navy blue eyes watched chestnut braid and glittering, almost manic amethyst sparkle with cheerful, far from innocent mischief. These last two also sat together, like blonde and mid-brown, and dark brown was watching his partner with exasperated, but still obvious, affection.
"C'mon, Hee-chan! Have you or haven't you? It's a simple question!"
"To quote that exasperating character from the latest anime you forced us to watch. . ."
"Aww, you know you liked it!"
Heero continued, ignoring the interruption. ". . .sore wa himitsu desu."
"Heeee~ro!" Duo complained, then clapped his hands over his mouth, unclapping them to ask fearfully, "Tell me I didn't just sound like who I think I just sounded like."
"You could never be as bad as her. Not even on your worst days."
The playful bantering was plainly about to degenerate into something much more intemperate, and Wufei was plainly about to tell the pair to get a room, when the doorbell buzzed. Silence fell fast and hard, and the pilots exchanged puzzled looks. The safehouse was several miles out of town, in the middle of some quite deep forest, and no visitors were expected. The buzz continued, as if whoever-it-was was leaning on it for support, and then abruptly stopped. The pilots sat in a frozen tableau for a moment, then Duo broke the silence.
"Speak of the devil. Guess we should check for the pink limo, huh?"
Heero groaned, the others looked wryly amused. "Ha, Maxwell," Wufei retorted. "I'm simply dying of amusement." The corner of his mouth turned up a bit, softening the retort, and he went to the door just as a soft thud sounded from the porch; the quiet but unmistakable noise of a body hitting the ground. The others exchanged looks and followed Wufei.
The Chinese boy cracked the door open, bracing a foot behind it to prevent it from being forced open by any unfriendly parties on the other side. The only visible party, however, was a tall figure wrapped in a rather tatty blanket, sprawled full-length on the porch, face hidden by aforementioned blanket. The obscuring folds of cloth were stained with a rusty red substance that might have been blood, and might have been something else. The latter, however, was very unlikely in Wufei's opinion, and he had seen enough blood to know what he was talking about.
"Well, who is it?" Duo demanded impatiently from just behind the Chinese boy's shoulder. "Please don't say Relena."
"Duo!" Quatre protested, but his heart wasn't in it.
Trowa noted the set of Wufei's shoulders and stepped up behind Duo. "It's not, is it? Wufei?"
"No," Wufei stated, pulling the door open more fully after checking around carefully for any other visitors and finding none, not a sign in the trees or along the path, which was cleared for several yards to the right and left for several hundred feet in front of the house. "I think it's safe to say that it's not."
"Oh, god!" Quatre caught sight of the collapsed figure and pushed past Wufei. "But why. . .how did he get out here? What could have happened to him?"
"Take him inside and let's find out," Duo suggested. Heero shot him a look, but he only raised his eyebrows. "What? It's not like one presumably wounded guy is any threat, especially not to all five of us."
"He has a point," Wufei pointed out. Trowa nodded once in agreement, and stepped forward to help his blonde lover. As they lifted the man together, however, his concealing blanket fell back, revealing a pale, strained, and familiar face. Quatre almost dropped him in shock. Trowa was calmer, but his eyes widened, and then narrowed. Duo leapt slightly backward with an exclamation of "Holy shit!" Heero's eyes narrowed, and his expression went completely blank. No one noticed Wufei's eyes widen and shimmer, or noted his initial, quickly stilled motion towards the unconscious and bloodied figure of Treize Kushrenada.
* * *
"So what are we going to do now?" Duo asked, fifteen minutes later. The pilots were seated around the small living room of their current hideout, in varying attitudes of tension.
"I say we dispose of him as quickly as possible." Heero voted. "The man's our enemy, and he poses a threat to us as long as he's alive."
"He's injured fairly badly," Trowa pointed out.
"Yes, and that leads up to what I want to know," Quatre said. "Why is he injured, and how on earth did he find his way here? Is he running from his own people? Did he come here knowing that we'd be in this house, or was it an unbelievable coincidence?"
"It was a hell of a coincidence, then," Duo said. "Out of all the cabins in all the woods in the world an injured Treize could drag himself to he ended up here? No fucking way that was by accident, Q."
"That still leaves the rest of my questions," Quatre replied. "Why come to us? Who shot him? It's fairly plain that he was shot, at least."
"I still say we can't afford to keep him here," Heero insisted. "He's a threat and we should get rid of him."
"C'mon, Hee-chan, the guy's injured. Shot in the leg, shoulder, and back by god-knows-who, and with a few broken ribs to boot. We can't just dump him in the forest to bleed to death, and I definitely don't want to be the one to shoot him while he's out like a light!" Duo sat back and crossed his arms over his chest defiantly.
"I agree with Duo," Quatre stated mildly. "In his condition, he can't do anything to harm us. We should keep him here, where we watch him. Isn't there a saying, keep your friends close and your enemies closer? He could even be useful to us as a source of information."
"He's likely to be unwilling to talk," Trowa commented. "Just as Wufei seems to be at the moment."
Their attention drawn to him by the usually silent green-eyed boy, the three main participants in the argument turned their gazes towards the silent Chinese pilot, who was sitting with his hands clenched in his lap, staring at his white knuckles. Duo exchanged glances with Heero, then Quatre.
"Wufei?" he asked, concerned.
Black eyes, filled with some indefinable emotion, shot up and met his with an almost physical impact. His voice, however, was calm and collected. "What?"
"You've been awfully quiet through this. What do you think we should do with Mr. K now that we've got him?"
"It's no concern of mine," Wufei almost snapped, then got himself back under a thin rein of control. "I'll go along with what you all decide. If you'll excuse me, I think I'll see if. . .Mr. Kushrenada. . .is awake yet."
He rose in a quick, abrupt motion like a striking snake and strode, almost jerkily, into the room where they had placed the General. Duo blinked after him.
"What the heck was that about?"
Quatre shrugged helplessly, the other two simply shrugged. After a moment, Duo shrugged as well, and continued. "So, about 'Mr. Kushrenada'. . ."
* * *
Standing at the head of the bed which contained the pale, unconscious form of Treize Kushrenada, Wufei fairly vibrated with constrained emotion.
"Who did this?" he whispered. "Why? I'll rip their hearts out!" The older man's wounds had been hastily bandaged and checked for lodged bullets; the one still in his back had been carefully but quickly removed before the hasty council taking place in the living room had been assembled. Despite these rapid ministrations, Treize looked far from his typical poised, aristocratic self. His skin was several shades closer to white that it should have been, and sweat beaded his brow. Blood seeped slowly through his bandages; there was no telling how much more he had lost before he had reached their door. Staring at him, Wufei's furious expression faded into sorrow, and his ebony eyes gleamed with unshed tears.
"Treize. . ." He reached forward and smoothed a strand of ginger hair off of the other man's forehead. Treize stirred and mumbled in his sleep, moving fitfully in the grip of some dream. His eyes flew open suddenly, without warning, and Wufei's widened slightly in alarm.
At first unfocused and hazy, the General's blue gaze locked onto Wufei like a starving man's to a banquet. "Wu. . .fei. . .?" His voice sounded as weak and dazed as he looked, and Wufei stroked his fingertips from the man's damp forehead to a pale cheek, rubbing his thumb along a high cheekbone.
"I'm here. Don't worry, Treize. You're safe." 'I hope,' he added silently, recalling the conversation he'd barely heard moments before and wishing he hadn't been too distracted to have a slightly more active role in Treize's defense.
Blue eyes trusted him, however, and Treize slipped back into sleep without worries, the corner of his mouth turning up slightly in an expression so sweet, and so unlike his normal self, that Wufei barely restrained himself from kissing the slumbering General. Instead, he stroked Treize's cheek for a few more moments before withdrawing with reluctance and reentering the living room.
". . .settled, then," he heard Quatre say as he opened the adjoining door. His heart skipped a beat, then settled down as Duo spoke again.
"C'mon, Hee-chan, don't sulk. I'm sure you're gonna have lots of fun with Treizy when he wakes up."
"Does this mean we've decided to keep him?" Wufei was distantly proud of how normal he managed to make his voice.
Duo chuckled. "Ya make him sound like a stray puppy, 'Fei. Yeah, I guess we're keeping him for a while. Got any objections?"
Wufei managed a small smirk and shook his head. "I suppose not. We should keep him under surveillance, though."
"What was that?" Duo placed a hand to his ear. "I do believe you just volunteered for Treize-watching duty!"
Wufei rolled his eyes, and moved to retrieve one of the battered folding chairs from the kitchen to place in Treize's room. "Whatever you say, Maxwell. I'll be sure not to let him kill any of you in your sleep. Except maybe you. . ."
"Ouch," Duo mock-flinched. "Stung. I hope you're not serious, Fei- man."
"As you would say, that's for me to know and you to find out." With Treize's near future assured, Wufei found it easier to slip into the comfortingly normal banter with Deathscythe's pilot, and he widened his smirk a little at the cheerful braided boy before dragging the chair he'd selected through the door and closing it behind him.
* * *
In a field of crimson, crimson sunlight, crimson haze in his eyes, crimson blood spread over the landscape from the countless bodies of those he had killed, blood like an impossible, gaudy lake, Treize Kushrenada stood trembling like a young sapling in a strong wind. He had been here countless times before, but each visit made it that much worse. He raised his hands, against his will, knowing and dreading what he would see (he had been here countless times before); his arms were coated from elbow to fingertips in the too-bright crimson of freshly spilled blood. Then a flash of bright silver-gold caught his eye, the first color he had seen here that was not the color of blood. He turned, knowing what he would see (he had been here countless times before) and dreading it far more than what he had already witnessed. This, this was the ultimate punishment.
Two bodies, curled together in that crimson field. Only two amidst the countless thousands (and he knew their names, all their names, if not their faces), but the two that he never wished to see here. Gold and black, curled in a grotesque parody of embrace with silver and platinum. Small and lean, his whippet-quick form never to leap again into the heart of the battle that he had been born for. Taller but still slim, long hair that once swirled and floated around him now flat, caked with that cursed crimson. Treize didn't want to speak their names, for he knew, with a terrible certainty (he had been here countless times before), that saying their names would somehow make it real, more real than just a terrible nightmare from which he could not escape. But in a moment, despite all he could do, he knew that the words would burst forth from his lips with the same dreadful inevitability as the rest of this horrible vision (he had been here countless times before).
He awoke, gasping with pain and fear that he normally hated to show, the names on his lips. "Miri. . .Wufei. . ."
"Treize?" There was a slight drowsiness in the voice that showed its owner had been dozing, but Treize didn't care a bit. It was one of the two voices that he was desperate to hear more than anything; he would settle for one. "You awake?" Wufei blinked, focusing on his lover, noting certain details. "Nightmare?" It was something they all suffered from, sometimes, but Treize's were always the worst.
Treize released a long breath in a not-quite-sigh, and nodded. Wufei smiled, just a bit, and leaned forward a bit to caress his cheek. Treize wanted more, and reached up to pull Wufei down for a kiss; he needed to hold him, stroke him, to assure himself that the dreadfully real nightmare was just that, a nightmare, but something in his shoulder gave a sudden protest, and Treize winced. Then the events of the past week came flooding back over him, and he groaned.
"What?" Wufei asked. "In fact, more that just what. You disappeared for two months! Zechs and I have been worried sick! What happened, Trei?" Treize was reassured to hear the Chinese boy use his pet name, the one only Zechs and Wufei even knew he possessed, and he answered after only a moment to collect himself and shove back the pain that was rapidly making its presence known.
"It's. . .a long story," Treize began. Wufei started to protest, and he held up his good hand to forestall the pilot. "Don't worry, I'm going to tell it anyway, Dragon." He smiled a little crookedly up at his lover, and continued. "About two months ago, when I 'disappeared', I was taken prisoner by Romafeller."
"Prisoner?" Wufei asked, his forehead wrinkling.
"Prisoner," Treize confirmed decisively. "They considered me to be something of a threat, I'm afraid. Especially after I declared my intentions to resign in a private meeting." He shook his head. "I should have done it in public. They feared, with good reason, that if I stepped down half of the soldiers would follow me, or rebel. They'd certainly lose Une and Zechs, although they may have already by this time." He shot a questioning glance and Wufei, who nodded.
"Zechs quit shortly after you disappeared. Une left right after him. Both of them were accused of treason, but they've gone into hiding and evaded capture so far. Tsuberov has managed to keep the rest of the army under control, but it's been a near thing."
Treize nodded, looking thoughtful, then shook himself, winced, and continued. "At first, I was placed under house arrest, but that was apparently deemed too good or too insecure for the likes of me. About three weeks ago I was moved to a prison somewhere to the north of here. I can't describe exactly where it was, but I could show you on a map or take you back if I had to. Anyway, I managed to sneak a couple of lockpicks in with me, and once I worked out the guard schedules and a few more details, I escaped. I would have done so earlier, but Tsuberov actually made a mistake in moving me to a prison. When I was under house arrest, the guards were focused solely on me. In the prison, they weren't even informed that the new prisoner was the famous Treize Kushrenada and so had no particular reason to pay special attention to me." Treize bared his teeth in an expression that was only marginally a smile. "It was a mistake I'm sure they won't forget in a hurry. Unfortunately, I was shot a few times before I managed to make the trees, enough to slow me down. I headed out a few hundred yards through the woods, then took to the trees and doubled back. I fear I left a rather spectacular blood trail on the branches, but there wasn't much I could do about that and they lost the trail once I left the ground. After that I. . .I'm afraid I don't remember too much. I knew I had to get to either you or Zechs, and I had no clue what kind of trouble Zechs was in, so I opted for you. I wasn't thinking too clearly by then, and I. . .passed out. . .a few times, but I managed to find out a few things in the next town I came to, and get rid of the prison clothes I was wearing. Fortunately for me, and by a strange coincidence, all of you were in a safehouse not too far from there. I hitched a ride with a farmer for a few miles, and I. . .suppose I must've walked the rest of the way. I really don't remember that part."
"Well, you ended up here, anyway," Wufei said, trying not to think about the nightmarish journey Treize must've endured, struggling through the snow and wind and evading guards with three bullet holes in him, and sighed. "You either have the most phenomenal good luck, or we really need to work on our security."
"It's not that bad," Treize reassured him. "I just asked around about any strange teenage boys making grocery runs, in particular one with a long braid and a manic attitude."
"Duo," Wufei groaned. "I knew it was a mistake to let him go into town, even if we were almost out of supplies." Then he smiled, and leaned down to kiss Treize slowly and thoroughly. The ginger-haired man responded with enthusiasm, and when Wufei pulled back they were both breathless. "This once," Wufei panted. "I'll forgive him. In fact, I may have to thank him."
"Please do," Treize agreed, then glanced at the digital clock beside the bed, where a number in the low am.'s flashed. "Good lord, is that the time?"
Wufei glanced at it. "Yes, give or take a few minutes. You slept all day and most of the night."
Treize's stomach rumbled suddenly, and its owner blinked. Wufei grinned.
"Hungry?" Treize gave a wry smile, and nodded. "I'll see what I can round up. We probably don't have anything up to your *exacting* standards, though," he mocked gently. "How about. . ." he considered their limited pantry, "a ham sandwich?"
"I'm hardly in a position to demand caviar, so a ham sandwich will be fine," Treize grinned a bit. "I secretly despise caviar, anyway."
Wufei slid out the door, closing it gently behind him. Only then did Treize allow himself to sag, hissing in pain that he *would not* show his lover. It would only worry him and make him even more furious at Romafeller, and that might make him careless. More than anything, Treize didn't want to add Wufei's name to a list that was already far too long, so he would not allow himself to make his dragon careless, or reckless, or lessen his chances for surviving this war by even the tiniest margin.
Wufei, meanwhile, slid like a ghost through the kitchen. He wasn't precisely sure how much it would take to wake up his fellow gundam pilots (except Duo, whom he knew normally slept like a log), but he was taking no chances. He retrieved a paper plate from the cupboard without a whisper of sound, and two pieces of bread were extracted from their plastic with equal stealth. Wufei then plunged into the refrigerator, retrieving the ham and a bottle of tea, before pausing to ponder. 'Let's see,' he thought, straining to remember everything Treize had ever mentioned in passing about his food preferences and blessing his own near-perfect memory. 'He doesn't mind mayonnaise, but he hates mustard, he doesn't like lettuce too much, tomatoes are good, so are pickles, but onions are something to avoid.' With this in mind, he loaded one piece of bread and covered it with the other, carefully letting the refrigerator door swing shut without a sound.
Treize greeted him with a smile as he reentered the room, still moving as silently as a ghost until the door was shut. Wufei proffered the sandwich and tea with a mock-servile air, and Treize accepted them, mock- lordly. The ginger-haired man peered at the contents of the sandwich, and pouted.
"What, no onions?"
"I thought you didn't like them," Wufei offered, uncertain if Treize was teasing or not. His lover relieved the teenager's worries with his reply, offered with a grin.
"I don't. I'm flattered you remembered, actually."
"And why shouldn't I? I'm a gundam pilot, after all!" Wufei smirked as he offered the first line of their old repartee.
"And this, naturally, makes you superhuman," Treize agreed easily. "I suppose we'll have to leave it there, since Miri is presumably out of range."
Wufei snapped his fingers. "That reminds me! I need to tell him that you're with me. Eat while I go get my laptop." He slid out the door again without waiting for a reply. Treize, wincing a little, obeyed orders and began by unscrewing the cap of the tea bottle, a task that was complicated by his shoulder wound. As the first drops hit his tongue, he suddenly realized just how thirsty and hungry he was, and almost chugged down the rest of the tea in one gulp. He managed to maintain his control, but even so, he was halfway through both the sandwich and tea by the time Wufei returned a moment later with his laptop tucked under one arm. One black eyebrow went up as he saw how quickly Treize was devouring the food, and he smirked a bit. Treize mock-glared at him, but he only grinned in reply as he settled back into his chair and unfolded his laptop. Treize kept eating while it booted and Wufei typed a hurried message.
FROM: [email protected]
TO: [email protected]
SUBJECT:
Lone Ranger,
Tigger is with me. Don't worry. Reply if you want to join us.
Daemon
The aliases had been established long ago, but as far as they knew no one had discovered who they referred to. Still, Wufei routed the message through a complicated series of twists that would hopefully keep anyone from tracing it. He wasn't the hacker that Heero or even Duo was, but he was still good enough. At least, he hoped so. To distract himself from this worry while Treize finished his sandwich, he scanned his saved copy of the message again, grinning at the familiar monikers as he recalled their origin.
They had wanted to call Treize simply 'Ginger', but he had laughingly demanded a name with more personality. Wufei had suggested 'Tiger', and Zechs, chuckling, had opined that Treize would make a much better 'Tigger'. None of them had gotten the reference at first (Zechs had an annoying habit of pulling odd things out of the old cartoons and comics he had a secret liking for), but Wufei had maneuvered Duo (who shared Zechs's fetish) into revealing it for him and had laughed until his gut hurt in private. As far as he knew, Treize still had no idea what it meant.
The 'Lone Ranger' for Zechs had come from Treize's suggestion of 'Silver'. Zechs had protested that he didn't want to be a color any more than Treize had, Wufei had sniggered and said that 'Silver' wasn't a color, it was a horse, and suggested that 'Lone Ranger' might suit him better. Especially with the mask. This had jogged Treize's memory, and they had both nearly fallen off the bed laughing with cries of "Hi ho Silver, away!" and "Who was that masked man, anyway?"; Zechs's completely clueless expression had only fuelled them further. The 'silver_kitsune' e-mail address had a complex origin that could be summed up in one simple word; Duo. The braided pilot, after declaring that their lives were entirely too much like a television show, had proceeded to write an extremely silly story in which he sent them all to China and had them fall into various cursed springs (except Heero, probably because Duo knew the 'Perfect Soldier' would *not* be amused at his lover turning him into any kind of furry animal). This apparently had something to do with another old comic, 'Ranma ½', which Wufei still didn't understand despite all the times Zechs had tried to explain it to him. Zechs had been written as a silver kitsune, a form which he thought suited him rather well. The most hilarious transformations had been those of Une into a panda, Relena into a sex-crazed, perverted teenage boy, and Dorothy into a sex-kitten. All three of them had been furious when they read the silly thing, which had made the rounds even faster than usual thanks to Duo e-mailing it to Treize and Zechs of his own accord, rather than Wufei having to sneak them a copy.
Wufei's alias came simply from his old nickname of 'Dragon'. Zechs and Treize had declaimed 'Dragon' as too obvious, however, and they had substituted another mythological creature, thus coming up with 'Daemon'. [email protected] was both a play off of Zechs's 'Lone Ranger' alias, since both were old western heroes, and a result of watching too many old movies with Duo. 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' had been too good for him to resist making a play on it.
Realizing that Treize had finished eating and was watching him with a soft smile, Wufei shook himself, deleted his copy of the message, and smiled back. Then his smile slowly crumpled, his eyes brimmed with held-back tears, and he almost flung himself at Treize, hugging him as tightly as he could while being mindful of the other man's injuries.
"God, I missed you," he whispered, nuzzling the base of Treize's neck, reassuring both of them with the firmness of contact. Treize wrapped his good arm around Wufei and squeezed, closing his eyes before his own tears could escape.
"I've missed you too. You and Miri are the only things that keep me going, you know? More now than ever. . ." They simply held each other for several minutes, comforting and being comforted. After awhile, Treize, sniffling a bit but trying not to show it, pushed Wufei off playfully.
"You know, you could get diseases from doing that. Or at least body odor. Do you have any idea how long it's been since I've had a bath?" The aristocrat wrinkled his nose disdainfully, trying not to think about it himself. He liked being clean, as well as reveling hedonistically in the pleasures of hot water and expensive soap.
"We can fix that," Wufei replied, coming up with a grin of his own and wiping his eyes surreptitiously. "That is, if you don't mind a sponge bath. You can't shower with bandages, you know."
"I'm not as thick as I look," Treize retorted, mock-frowning at Wufei for the affront to his intelligence. Then his expression became much more lecherous, almost a leer, and he continued. "Are you volunteering to give one to me?"
Wufei pretended to look thoughtful. "Hmm. I suppose, as no one else is awake, I am the obvious choice. . ." He smirked at Treize, who was looking like the cat who had swallowed the proverbial canary. "All right then. You do realize that this is going to be painfully arousing?"
Treize's Cheshire cat grin became even wider. "Oh, I think I can cope with that."
Disclaimer: If I owned Gundam Wing, you think I'd be writing this? Nope. I'd be busy killing Relena and getting Duo and Heero together, and also not getting Treize killed, in the actual SHOW instead of here. Go figure.
Chapter One: The boys have an unexpected visitor, Wufei stays up very late,
and the origin of some monikers.
In a rather shabby house, roughly in the neighborhood of Russia, five boys sat around a rather shabby living room. Bright blonde hair and huge, innocent sea-green eyes leaned contentedly against mid-brown hair that concealed one of its owner's darker green eyes. The other was half-closed in almost feline silent pleasure as it watched the others, one arm wrapped possessively around blonde. Black hair and equally black eyes sat alone, observing his companions with secret amusement and a resigned expression. Dark brown hair and almost navy blue eyes watched chestnut braid and glittering, almost manic amethyst sparkle with cheerful, far from innocent mischief. These last two also sat together, like blonde and mid-brown, and dark brown was watching his partner with exasperated, but still obvious, affection.
"C'mon, Hee-chan! Have you or haven't you? It's a simple question!"
"To quote that exasperating character from the latest anime you forced us to watch. . ."
"Aww, you know you liked it!"
Heero continued, ignoring the interruption. ". . .sore wa himitsu desu."
"Heeee~ro!" Duo complained, then clapped his hands over his mouth, unclapping them to ask fearfully, "Tell me I didn't just sound like who I think I just sounded like."
"You could never be as bad as her. Not even on your worst days."
The playful bantering was plainly about to degenerate into something much more intemperate, and Wufei was plainly about to tell the pair to get a room, when the doorbell buzzed. Silence fell fast and hard, and the pilots exchanged puzzled looks. The safehouse was several miles out of town, in the middle of some quite deep forest, and no visitors were expected. The buzz continued, as if whoever-it-was was leaning on it for support, and then abruptly stopped. The pilots sat in a frozen tableau for a moment, then Duo broke the silence.
"Speak of the devil. Guess we should check for the pink limo, huh?"
Heero groaned, the others looked wryly amused. "Ha, Maxwell," Wufei retorted. "I'm simply dying of amusement." The corner of his mouth turned up a bit, softening the retort, and he went to the door just as a soft thud sounded from the porch; the quiet but unmistakable noise of a body hitting the ground. The others exchanged looks and followed Wufei.
The Chinese boy cracked the door open, bracing a foot behind it to prevent it from being forced open by any unfriendly parties on the other side. The only visible party, however, was a tall figure wrapped in a rather tatty blanket, sprawled full-length on the porch, face hidden by aforementioned blanket. The obscuring folds of cloth were stained with a rusty red substance that might have been blood, and might have been something else. The latter, however, was very unlikely in Wufei's opinion, and he had seen enough blood to know what he was talking about.
"Well, who is it?" Duo demanded impatiently from just behind the Chinese boy's shoulder. "Please don't say Relena."
"Duo!" Quatre protested, but his heart wasn't in it.
Trowa noted the set of Wufei's shoulders and stepped up behind Duo. "It's not, is it? Wufei?"
"No," Wufei stated, pulling the door open more fully after checking around carefully for any other visitors and finding none, not a sign in the trees or along the path, which was cleared for several yards to the right and left for several hundred feet in front of the house. "I think it's safe to say that it's not."
"Oh, god!" Quatre caught sight of the collapsed figure and pushed past Wufei. "But why. . .how did he get out here? What could have happened to him?"
"Take him inside and let's find out," Duo suggested. Heero shot him a look, but he only raised his eyebrows. "What? It's not like one presumably wounded guy is any threat, especially not to all five of us."
"He has a point," Wufei pointed out. Trowa nodded once in agreement, and stepped forward to help his blonde lover. As they lifted the man together, however, his concealing blanket fell back, revealing a pale, strained, and familiar face. Quatre almost dropped him in shock. Trowa was calmer, but his eyes widened, and then narrowed. Duo leapt slightly backward with an exclamation of "Holy shit!" Heero's eyes narrowed, and his expression went completely blank. No one noticed Wufei's eyes widen and shimmer, or noted his initial, quickly stilled motion towards the unconscious and bloodied figure of Treize Kushrenada.
* * *
"So what are we going to do now?" Duo asked, fifteen minutes later. The pilots were seated around the small living room of their current hideout, in varying attitudes of tension.
"I say we dispose of him as quickly as possible." Heero voted. "The man's our enemy, and he poses a threat to us as long as he's alive."
"He's injured fairly badly," Trowa pointed out.
"Yes, and that leads up to what I want to know," Quatre said. "Why is he injured, and how on earth did he find his way here? Is he running from his own people? Did he come here knowing that we'd be in this house, or was it an unbelievable coincidence?"
"It was a hell of a coincidence, then," Duo said. "Out of all the cabins in all the woods in the world an injured Treize could drag himself to he ended up here? No fucking way that was by accident, Q."
"That still leaves the rest of my questions," Quatre replied. "Why come to us? Who shot him? It's fairly plain that he was shot, at least."
"I still say we can't afford to keep him here," Heero insisted. "He's a threat and we should get rid of him."
"C'mon, Hee-chan, the guy's injured. Shot in the leg, shoulder, and back by god-knows-who, and with a few broken ribs to boot. We can't just dump him in the forest to bleed to death, and I definitely don't want to be the one to shoot him while he's out like a light!" Duo sat back and crossed his arms over his chest defiantly.
"I agree with Duo," Quatre stated mildly. "In his condition, he can't do anything to harm us. We should keep him here, where we watch him. Isn't there a saying, keep your friends close and your enemies closer? He could even be useful to us as a source of information."
"He's likely to be unwilling to talk," Trowa commented. "Just as Wufei seems to be at the moment."
Their attention drawn to him by the usually silent green-eyed boy, the three main participants in the argument turned their gazes towards the silent Chinese pilot, who was sitting with his hands clenched in his lap, staring at his white knuckles. Duo exchanged glances with Heero, then Quatre.
"Wufei?" he asked, concerned.
Black eyes, filled with some indefinable emotion, shot up and met his with an almost physical impact. His voice, however, was calm and collected. "What?"
"You've been awfully quiet through this. What do you think we should do with Mr. K now that we've got him?"
"It's no concern of mine," Wufei almost snapped, then got himself back under a thin rein of control. "I'll go along with what you all decide. If you'll excuse me, I think I'll see if. . .Mr. Kushrenada. . .is awake yet."
He rose in a quick, abrupt motion like a striking snake and strode, almost jerkily, into the room where they had placed the General. Duo blinked after him.
"What the heck was that about?"
Quatre shrugged helplessly, the other two simply shrugged. After a moment, Duo shrugged as well, and continued. "So, about 'Mr. Kushrenada'. . ."
* * *
Standing at the head of the bed which contained the pale, unconscious form of Treize Kushrenada, Wufei fairly vibrated with constrained emotion.
"Who did this?" he whispered. "Why? I'll rip their hearts out!" The older man's wounds had been hastily bandaged and checked for lodged bullets; the one still in his back had been carefully but quickly removed before the hasty council taking place in the living room had been assembled. Despite these rapid ministrations, Treize looked far from his typical poised, aristocratic self. His skin was several shades closer to white that it should have been, and sweat beaded his brow. Blood seeped slowly through his bandages; there was no telling how much more he had lost before he had reached their door. Staring at him, Wufei's furious expression faded into sorrow, and his ebony eyes gleamed with unshed tears.
"Treize. . ." He reached forward and smoothed a strand of ginger hair off of the other man's forehead. Treize stirred and mumbled in his sleep, moving fitfully in the grip of some dream. His eyes flew open suddenly, without warning, and Wufei's widened slightly in alarm.
At first unfocused and hazy, the General's blue gaze locked onto Wufei like a starving man's to a banquet. "Wu. . .fei. . .?" His voice sounded as weak and dazed as he looked, and Wufei stroked his fingertips from the man's damp forehead to a pale cheek, rubbing his thumb along a high cheekbone.
"I'm here. Don't worry, Treize. You're safe." 'I hope,' he added silently, recalling the conversation he'd barely heard moments before and wishing he hadn't been too distracted to have a slightly more active role in Treize's defense.
Blue eyes trusted him, however, and Treize slipped back into sleep without worries, the corner of his mouth turning up slightly in an expression so sweet, and so unlike his normal self, that Wufei barely restrained himself from kissing the slumbering General. Instead, he stroked Treize's cheek for a few more moments before withdrawing with reluctance and reentering the living room.
". . .settled, then," he heard Quatre say as he opened the adjoining door. His heart skipped a beat, then settled down as Duo spoke again.
"C'mon, Hee-chan, don't sulk. I'm sure you're gonna have lots of fun with Treizy when he wakes up."
"Does this mean we've decided to keep him?" Wufei was distantly proud of how normal he managed to make his voice.
Duo chuckled. "Ya make him sound like a stray puppy, 'Fei. Yeah, I guess we're keeping him for a while. Got any objections?"
Wufei managed a small smirk and shook his head. "I suppose not. We should keep him under surveillance, though."
"What was that?" Duo placed a hand to his ear. "I do believe you just volunteered for Treize-watching duty!"
Wufei rolled his eyes, and moved to retrieve one of the battered folding chairs from the kitchen to place in Treize's room. "Whatever you say, Maxwell. I'll be sure not to let him kill any of you in your sleep. Except maybe you. . ."
"Ouch," Duo mock-flinched. "Stung. I hope you're not serious, Fei- man."
"As you would say, that's for me to know and you to find out." With Treize's near future assured, Wufei found it easier to slip into the comfortingly normal banter with Deathscythe's pilot, and he widened his smirk a little at the cheerful braided boy before dragging the chair he'd selected through the door and closing it behind him.
* * *
In a field of crimson, crimson sunlight, crimson haze in his eyes, crimson blood spread over the landscape from the countless bodies of those he had killed, blood like an impossible, gaudy lake, Treize Kushrenada stood trembling like a young sapling in a strong wind. He had been here countless times before, but each visit made it that much worse. He raised his hands, against his will, knowing and dreading what he would see (he had been here countless times before); his arms were coated from elbow to fingertips in the too-bright crimson of freshly spilled blood. Then a flash of bright silver-gold caught his eye, the first color he had seen here that was not the color of blood. He turned, knowing what he would see (he had been here countless times before) and dreading it far more than what he had already witnessed. This, this was the ultimate punishment.
Two bodies, curled together in that crimson field. Only two amidst the countless thousands (and he knew their names, all their names, if not their faces), but the two that he never wished to see here. Gold and black, curled in a grotesque parody of embrace with silver and platinum. Small and lean, his whippet-quick form never to leap again into the heart of the battle that he had been born for. Taller but still slim, long hair that once swirled and floated around him now flat, caked with that cursed crimson. Treize didn't want to speak their names, for he knew, with a terrible certainty (he had been here countless times before), that saying their names would somehow make it real, more real than just a terrible nightmare from which he could not escape. But in a moment, despite all he could do, he knew that the words would burst forth from his lips with the same dreadful inevitability as the rest of this horrible vision (he had been here countless times before).
He awoke, gasping with pain and fear that he normally hated to show, the names on his lips. "Miri. . .Wufei. . ."
"Treize?" There was a slight drowsiness in the voice that showed its owner had been dozing, but Treize didn't care a bit. It was one of the two voices that he was desperate to hear more than anything; he would settle for one. "You awake?" Wufei blinked, focusing on his lover, noting certain details. "Nightmare?" It was something they all suffered from, sometimes, but Treize's were always the worst.
Treize released a long breath in a not-quite-sigh, and nodded. Wufei smiled, just a bit, and leaned forward a bit to caress his cheek. Treize wanted more, and reached up to pull Wufei down for a kiss; he needed to hold him, stroke him, to assure himself that the dreadfully real nightmare was just that, a nightmare, but something in his shoulder gave a sudden protest, and Treize winced. Then the events of the past week came flooding back over him, and he groaned.
"What?" Wufei asked. "In fact, more that just what. You disappeared for two months! Zechs and I have been worried sick! What happened, Trei?" Treize was reassured to hear the Chinese boy use his pet name, the one only Zechs and Wufei even knew he possessed, and he answered after only a moment to collect himself and shove back the pain that was rapidly making its presence known.
"It's. . .a long story," Treize began. Wufei started to protest, and he held up his good hand to forestall the pilot. "Don't worry, I'm going to tell it anyway, Dragon." He smiled a little crookedly up at his lover, and continued. "About two months ago, when I 'disappeared', I was taken prisoner by Romafeller."
"Prisoner?" Wufei asked, his forehead wrinkling.
"Prisoner," Treize confirmed decisively. "They considered me to be something of a threat, I'm afraid. Especially after I declared my intentions to resign in a private meeting." He shook his head. "I should have done it in public. They feared, with good reason, that if I stepped down half of the soldiers would follow me, or rebel. They'd certainly lose Une and Zechs, although they may have already by this time." He shot a questioning glance and Wufei, who nodded.
"Zechs quit shortly after you disappeared. Une left right after him. Both of them were accused of treason, but they've gone into hiding and evaded capture so far. Tsuberov has managed to keep the rest of the army under control, but it's been a near thing."
Treize nodded, looking thoughtful, then shook himself, winced, and continued. "At first, I was placed under house arrest, but that was apparently deemed too good or too insecure for the likes of me. About three weeks ago I was moved to a prison somewhere to the north of here. I can't describe exactly where it was, but I could show you on a map or take you back if I had to. Anyway, I managed to sneak a couple of lockpicks in with me, and once I worked out the guard schedules and a few more details, I escaped. I would have done so earlier, but Tsuberov actually made a mistake in moving me to a prison. When I was under house arrest, the guards were focused solely on me. In the prison, they weren't even informed that the new prisoner was the famous Treize Kushrenada and so had no particular reason to pay special attention to me." Treize bared his teeth in an expression that was only marginally a smile. "It was a mistake I'm sure they won't forget in a hurry. Unfortunately, I was shot a few times before I managed to make the trees, enough to slow me down. I headed out a few hundred yards through the woods, then took to the trees and doubled back. I fear I left a rather spectacular blood trail on the branches, but there wasn't much I could do about that and they lost the trail once I left the ground. After that I. . .I'm afraid I don't remember too much. I knew I had to get to either you or Zechs, and I had no clue what kind of trouble Zechs was in, so I opted for you. I wasn't thinking too clearly by then, and I. . .passed out. . .a few times, but I managed to find out a few things in the next town I came to, and get rid of the prison clothes I was wearing. Fortunately for me, and by a strange coincidence, all of you were in a safehouse not too far from there. I hitched a ride with a farmer for a few miles, and I. . .suppose I must've walked the rest of the way. I really don't remember that part."
"Well, you ended up here, anyway," Wufei said, trying not to think about the nightmarish journey Treize must've endured, struggling through the snow and wind and evading guards with three bullet holes in him, and sighed. "You either have the most phenomenal good luck, or we really need to work on our security."
"It's not that bad," Treize reassured him. "I just asked around about any strange teenage boys making grocery runs, in particular one with a long braid and a manic attitude."
"Duo," Wufei groaned. "I knew it was a mistake to let him go into town, even if we were almost out of supplies." Then he smiled, and leaned down to kiss Treize slowly and thoroughly. The ginger-haired man responded with enthusiasm, and when Wufei pulled back they were both breathless. "This once," Wufei panted. "I'll forgive him. In fact, I may have to thank him."
"Please do," Treize agreed, then glanced at the digital clock beside the bed, where a number in the low am.'s flashed. "Good lord, is that the time?"
Wufei glanced at it. "Yes, give or take a few minutes. You slept all day and most of the night."
Treize's stomach rumbled suddenly, and its owner blinked. Wufei grinned.
"Hungry?" Treize gave a wry smile, and nodded. "I'll see what I can round up. We probably don't have anything up to your *exacting* standards, though," he mocked gently. "How about. . ." he considered their limited pantry, "a ham sandwich?"
"I'm hardly in a position to demand caviar, so a ham sandwich will be fine," Treize grinned a bit. "I secretly despise caviar, anyway."
Wufei slid out the door, closing it gently behind him. Only then did Treize allow himself to sag, hissing in pain that he *would not* show his lover. It would only worry him and make him even more furious at Romafeller, and that might make him careless. More than anything, Treize didn't want to add Wufei's name to a list that was already far too long, so he would not allow himself to make his dragon careless, or reckless, or lessen his chances for surviving this war by even the tiniest margin.
Wufei, meanwhile, slid like a ghost through the kitchen. He wasn't precisely sure how much it would take to wake up his fellow gundam pilots (except Duo, whom he knew normally slept like a log), but he was taking no chances. He retrieved a paper plate from the cupboard without a whisper of sound, and two pieces of bread were extracted from their plastic with equal stealth. Wufei then plunged into the refrigerator, retrieving the ham and a bottle of tea, before pausing to ponder. 'Let's see,' he thought, straining to remember everything Treize had ever mentioned in passing about his food preferences and blessing his own near-perfect memory. 'He doesn't mind mayonnaise, but he hates mustard, he doesn't like lettuce too much, tomatoes are good, so are pickles, but onions are something to avoid.' With this in mind, he loaded one piece of bread and covered it with the other, carefully letting the refrigerator door swing shut without a sound.
Treize greeted him with a smile as he reentered the room, still moving as silently as a ghost until the door was shut. Wufei proffered the sandwich and tea with a mock-servile air, and Treize accepted them, mock- lordly. The ginger-haired man peered at the contents of the sandwich, and pouted.
"What, no onions?"
"I thought you didn't like them," Wufei offered, uncertain if Treize was teasing or not. His lover relieved the teenager's worries with his reply, offered with a grin.
"I don't. I'm flattered you remembered, actually."
"And why shouldn't I? I'm a gundam pilot, after all!" Wufei smirked as he offered the first line of their old repartee.
"And this, naturally, makes you superhuman," Treize agreed easily. "I suppose we'll have to leave it there, since Miri is presumably out of range."
Wufei snapped his fingers. "That reminds me! I need to tell him that you're with me. Eat while I go get my laptop." He slid out the door again without waiting for a reply. Treize, wincing a little, obeyed orders and began by unscrewing the cap of the tea bottle, a task that was complicated by his shoulder wound. As the first drops hit his tongue, he suddenly realized just how thirsty and hungry he was, and almost chugged down the rest of the tea in one gulp. He managed to maintain his control, but even so, he was halfway through both the sandwich and tea by the time Wufei returned a moment later with his laptop tucked under one arm. One black eyebrow went up as he saw how quickly Treize was devouring the food, and he smirked a bit. Treize mock-glared at him, but he only grinned in reply as he settled back into his chair and unfolded his laptop. Treize kept eating while it booted and Wufei typed a hurried message.
FROM: [email protected]
TO: [email protected]
SUBJECT:
Lone Ranger,
Tigger is with me. Don't worry. Reply if you want to join us.
Daemon
The aliases had been established long ago, but as far as they knew no one had discovered who they referred to. Still, Wufei routed the message through a complicated series of twists that would hopefully keep anyone from tracing it. He wasn't the hacker that Heero or even Duo was, but he was still good enough. At least, he hoped so. To distract himself from this worry while Treize finished his sandwich, he scanned his saved copy of the message again, grinning at the familiar monikers as he recalled their origin.
They had wanted to call Treize simply 'Ginger', but he had laughingly demanded a name with more personality. Wufei had suggested 'Tiger', and Zechs, chuckling, had opined that Treize would make a much better 'Tigger'. None of them had gotten the reference at first (Zechs had an annoying habit of pulling odd things out of the old cartoons and comics he had a secret liking for), but Wufei had maneuvered Duo (who shared Zechs's fetish) into revealing it for him and had laughed until his gut hurt in private. As far as he knew, Treize still had no idea what it meant.
The 'Lone Ranger' for Zechs had come from Treize's suggestion of 'Silver'. Zechs had protested that he didn't want to be a color any more than Treize had, Wufei had sniggered and said that 'Silver' wasn't a color, it was a horse, and suggested that 'Lone Ranger' might suit him better. Especially with the mask. This had jogged Treize's memory, and they had both nearly fallen off the bed laughing with cries of "Hi ho Silver, away!" and "Who was that masked man, anyway?"; Zechs's completely clueless expression had only fuelled them further. The 'silver_kitsune' e-mail address had a complex origin that could be summed up in one simple word; Duo. The braided pilot, after declaring that their lives were entirely too much like a television show, had proceeded to write an extremely silly story in which he sent them all to China and had them fall into various cursed springs (except Heero, probably because Duo knew the 'Perfect Soldier' would *not* be amused at his lover turning him into any kind of furry animal). This apparently had something to do with another old comic, 'Ranma ½', which Wufei still didn't understand despite all the times Zechs had tried to explain it to him. Zechs had been written as a silver kitsune, a form which he thought suited him rather well. The most hilarious transformations had been those of Une into a panda, Relena into a sex-crazed, perverted teenage boy, and Dorothy into a sex-kitten. All three of them had been furious when they read the silly thing, which had made the rounds even faster than usual thanks to Duo e-mailing it to Treize and Zechs of his own accord, rather than Wufei having to sneak them a copy.
Wufei's alias came simply from his old nickname of 'Dragon'. Zechs and Treize had declaimed 'Dragon' as too obvious, however, and they had substituted another mythological creature, thus coming up with 'Daemon'. [email protected] was both a play off of Zechs's 'Lone Ranger' alias, since both were old western heroes, and a result of watching too many old movies with Duo. 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' had been too good for him to resist making a play on it.
Realizing that Treize had finished eating and was watching him with a soft smile, Wufei shook himself, deleted his copy of the message, and smiled back. Then his smile slowly crumpled, his eyes brimmed with held-back tears, and he almost flung himself at Treize, hugging him as tightly as he could while being mindful of the other man's injuries.
"God, I missed you," he whispered, nuzzling the base of Treize's neck, reassuring both of them with the firmness of contact. Treize wrapped his good arm around Wufei and squeezed, closing his eyes before his own tears could escape.
"I've missed you too. You and Miri are the only things that keep me going, you know? More now than ever. . ." They simply held each other for several minutes, comforting and being comforted. After awhile, Treize, sniffling a bit but trying not to show it, pushed Wufei off playfully.
"You know, you could get diseases from doing that. Or at least body odor. Do you have any idea how long it's been since I've had a bath?" The aristocrat wrinkled his nose disdainfully, trying not to think about it himself. He liked being clean, as well as reveling hedonistically in the pleasures of hot water and expensive soap.
"We can fix that," Wufei replied, coming up with a grin of his own and wiping his eyes surreptitiously. "That is, if you don't mind a sponge bath. You can't shower with bandages, you know."
"I'm not as thick as I look," Treize retorted, mock-frowning at Wufei for the affront to his intelligence. Then his expression became much more lecherous, almost a leer, and he continued. "Are you volunteering to give one to me?"
Wufei pretended to look thoughtful. "Hmm. I suppose, as no one else is awake, I am the obvious choice. . ." He smirked at Treize, who was looking like the cat who had swallowed the proverbial canary. "All right then. You do realize that this is going to be painfully arousing?"
Treize's Cheshire cat grin became even wider. "Oh, I think I can cope with that."