Title: Under the Mighty Hand of Death

Author: Ryoko no Shinigami

Rating: PG-13

Pairings: 1+2, 3+4

Warnings: Shounen-ai implied, angst, deathfic

I never really knew how it all started, afterwards. Looking back, it was a battle like any other. Not dull, exactly. It was war, and the fighting for your life bit never gets truly old. But after a while, all the battles just sort of run together, like a watercolor painting when you put too much water on it.

It was routine. Just another mobile suit manufacturing plant that had to be eliminated. Nothing more. It was Quatre who made the battle so vividly memorable.

I remember it was a bright spring day, starting out from the safehouse. I remember looking at the sunrise, wondering how it was all possible. How the sun was there, rising, and we, five teenaged terrorists, were going to end the lives of people we had never even met. It seemed surreal.

It became real soon enough.

The battle had been going on for hours, and showed little sign of slowing. We hadn't known there were going to be so many enemy suits. We were running low on fuel, the Heavyarms on ammunition, and all of us were tired.

It was the beam cannon that did it.

We hadn't known, couldn't have known that they had one. We only realized it when an enemy suit lifted it, aimed, and fired. And then it was too late. With horrible fascination, I watched as the beam shot forward, watched it speed through the air…and watched as it sheared the side off of the Sandrock Gundam. It took less than two seconds.

And then Quatre was falling, like a leaf, out of the tattered metal of his suit, to the hard ground. I saw him stagger up, getting painfully to feet that didn't want to support him. He only got about a hundred yards.

Whatever possessed me to get out of my suit to help him? I don't know, but before I knew what I was doing the hatch was open, and I was hanging to a zip cord on my way to the ground. Quatre was lying nearby, fallen on his back. As I ran up I could hear the breath wheezing in his chest.

I knelt beside him, and he turned that angelic face to me. Almost too pretty to be a boy.

"H-Heero. Get back. Get back in your Gundam. You shouldn't be here…it's not safe."

I felt like laughing then, saying that I was never safe wherever I was. Instead, all I did was brush his hair back from his face, those too-blue eyes staring at me.

A shadow fell across us then. An enemy suit stood above, camera staring down. I threw myself over Quatre. It sounds more brave than it was. It wouldn't have mattered anyway. I was wondering how fast we would be squished under its metal foot. Surely they wouldn't waste bullets on such tiny, helpless targets.

Another shadow fell on us from the other side. Great. Not that we'd have any hope of escape with only one to deal with. Now it just remained to be seen which of them would step on us first.

Quatre looked up, his pained face lightening for an instant.

"Duo."

I glanced at what was causing the second shadow. The sun was behind it, causing an aura that blinded me, but I could still make out the distinct shape of the Deathscythe. What had been a horror to thousand men now looked to be our savior.

"Oh, thank God," I muttered. It was a meaningless phrase, made even more so by the fact that if there is such a thing as a Godless land, than we were in it.

I couldn't talk to Duo, couldn't tell him how injured Quatre was. I just silently begged him to help us, to do anything to get us out of here alive. He must have heard me anyway.

The great Gundam knelt down beside us, the ground quaking as it moved. I saw one giant hand reaching for us, and I suffered momentary fear that he would clap his hand over us and squish us, just like we were mosquitoes. It was a foolish fear, as I realized when the big black hand cupped gently over us, enclosing us in its giant fingers.

In the half-twilight under the Deathscythe's hand, only a few beams of sunlight filtered in through the fingers. Quatre was lying in the light, the sun making a halo out of his pale hair, so much more fine than Duo's long heavy strands. Quatre seemed to fall into unconciousness in the dim light, and I sat by him, lightly stroking my fingers through his hair.

Around us, the battle raged on, and I could hear it, dimly, as though over a great distance. But inside our little hidden safeness, it was remarkably quiet and peaceful. The soft rasping of Quatre's breath was the only sound other than the echoes of the war that was fought around us.

I didn't know how hard a time the others had, defending Deathscythe who protected us. I heard it later, when memories of what happened after woke me screaming in the night. When I woke shuddering with Duo's arms around me, he told me how brave and strong Trowa and Wufei were, defending their comrades.

Eventually, the sounds of war got softer. The explosions were heard less often, and they weren't so near. The battle was drawing to a close, as the enemy suits retreated. We had made it through, and had Duo to thank.

When the hand that had been our shield was removed, I squinted in the brightness. All around me was carnage, metal that had been shredded and crumpled like paper. There was surprisingly little actual blood. Inexplicably, a bird was singing nearby.

The nearby manufacturing plant had been deserted, the workers and troops evacuated. It was easy to find an abandoned truck. It was harder to figure out where we were going.

"A hospital?"

"No, too risky. If they knew they had a Gundam pilot on their hands…it'd be too easy for them to kill him."

"What about a homeless shelter? They're sure to at least have first aid available, and maybe more advanced medicine too."

"I don't think they'd have any medicine advanced enough. Besides, they'd ask questions."

We thought as quickly as we could. Quatre was visibly getting worse.

"How about…Sally Po?"

That was something we hadn't thought of. It had been so recently that we discovered that she was on 'the same side of the knife' as Wufei put it. But she was a doctor, and a good one. She was the obvious choice.

And so we loaded Quatre into the back of a Jeep, the Gundams on the back of a mobile suit transport truck. Wufei drove the Gundams, while Trowa drove the other machine. Duo and I stayed with Quatre, sitting beside him in the flat bed. Duo wrapped him in his jacket, and talked to him, running his fingers through that fine blond hair. We didn't get very far.

"Stop! Please…stop. Stop the truck…"

Quatre's voice had become so quiet we almost didn't hear him.

"But Kat, we're almost there. Just a little farther…"

"No. Please, it hurts too much."

And so we tapped on the glass and signaled Trowa to stop. And he pulled over in a ditch beside a wooded area. Behind us, Wufei did the same, hopping out of his vehicle, his face confused.

"What's going on? We have to get going, or else…"

"Quatre's too weak. We can't take him any farther."

We all fell silent. Quatre leaned over the side of the truck and spit on the ground. It was bright pink with blood. Something was wrong with his lungs.

And there was nothing we could do. We watched as his thin chest rose slower and slower, listened to the gasping breaths become fewer. When his eyes finally fluttered closed, Trowa choked back a sob. I had known it would be hardest on him. He loved Quatre so, and tried so hard to take care of him…there was nothing he could do, now.

But it was Duo who took Quatre in his arms, and made his way into the woods with him. Trowa had sunk to his knees on the ground, unable to support himself. I looked at Wufei, who would not cry…but his eyes were too terribly bright, and he turned away.

I pushed my way through the woods, following Duo by the trail of broken undergrowth he left. I found him in a small clearing. Quatre's body was still wrapped in Duo's jacket, lying off to one side. Duo was digging with his fingers through the dirt and leaf mould, digging a resting place for Quatre.

I didn't say anything, just fell in beside him. The ground was soft and loose, rich dark soil. We dug in silence, slowly, letting the earth run between our fingers. We dug until our fingernails chipped and bled. The sun was setting when we finally finished our hole.

It was Duo who took Quatre once again in his arms, and laid him in the deep darkness we had made. It was Duo, self-proclaimed God of Death, who began pushing the dirt back over him. I turned away, unable to watch the disappearance of a friend. Only when the job was half-done did I again join in, pushing the dirt in and mounding it above. When it was done, Duo placed one hand gently on the mound of dirt. I wondered if he was praying, but soon he looked up again. We stood back. The clearing was filled with the soft light of evening, the heavy undergrowth silent but for the whispering of wind in the tops of the trees

"What should we tell Trowa?"

"Don't tell him anything. Just get him home."

"But Duo, won't he want to know?"

Duo turned to me. "He will. One day, when he's ready, he'll want to know where he is. But until then, it's just too cruel to tell him."

I nodded, silent. In silence we walked back through the woods, back to a heartbroken Trowa and a stoic Wufei.

Finis