Blissful Ignorance

Disclaimer: I don?t own Gundam Wing, ?Sleepy Hollow,? or ?The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,? by Washington Irving.




He was a restless but familial merchant, with a monopoly over the spice trade between his Arabian homeland and the Western, supposedly more ?civilized? world. A corrupt land of Christians and shrewd businessmen who preferred silver to tradition and paper over prayer; "cultured? society that wrapped its daughters in whalebone and ribbons and powdered their supple, protuberant breasts in dust to make their paleness even more ghoulish and imperiously porcelain. Their superficiality could be no more transparent, he mused. Europe comprised itself of a nobility that forced its sons into contracts and politics and covered their idle, reprobate thoughts with wigs as soft, as daintily white as their sisters' bodices, only to find themselves bankrupt soon after - more aptly in the moral sense. Seduction instead of honor, they befriended. Secular rather than scrupulous. People of a resigned philosophy who abandoned religion to materialism and heretical gluttony. They attended Masses out of traditional obligation, walking out of the gothic edifice's doors with curses, yawns, pissing on the cornerstone. Eyes and imaginations wandered to the depictions of bloodied saints spattered with light and hooved, antlered renditions of Satan welded throughout the stained-glass windows that punctured the stone, rather than the deadpan sermons of the priests. During the Consecration, the sight of bread and wine made their stomachs growl and gurgle, inspiring famine in the spiritual essence. Made them wonder how to keep their families clothed and fed. Not how to save the souls of their children from swimming in the pool of fiery, dogmatic condemnation that awaited them in the afterlife. If any so existed, these people began to wonder.

God was dead to this world... edited out of the final drafts of mechanical laws and theories, erased from the right side of mathematical equations, showing how nature was as efficient as a clock, with its own set of infallible gears and cogs. There was no need for God and mysticism and intuition and faith, all swirling at the bottoms of beakers and eliminated empirically.

But he was among them, nonetheless, and much to his contempt, spent more time amidst Westerners than his own tribe, involuntarily adopting some temporal habits that he later repulsed - devoting himself to hours of ritual purity and jihad to redeem his holy constitution once again. He would lie awake and rigid in his bed after a day of forgetting his prayers, perhaps because he had been distracted when dining with a Scandinavian courtier, sipping imported tea and wrapped in furs and boots and haunting, foreign melodies.

Throwing the covers from his body, Quatre would fall to his knees with shaky heaving, laced with sighs of repentance, and press his forehead against the fortress's stone floor, grinding in into the tiles, relishing the feel of his skin tearing from the jagged texture. So cold. So base. So degrading

What he deserved.

It left a heathen etching for him to find at dawn. A brand of his infidelity that usually resmembled a character which signified "rebelliousness," "unfaithfulness," or even so far as "evil." He saw it, traced the ugly scar that Gabriel carved deep into his brow, scorching the bone beneath, most likely. The charred, deep slashes that spelled out his insubordination, clear as the mirror with which he spied it.

He pleaded that Allah could forgive him for his rashness and recited surah after surah of the Qur'an, voice taut with remorse and wavering from the weight of his incessant blasphemous conduct. But it wasn't enough. His breathing still trembled, still came in repetitive gasps. He'd drag himself to the desk and write the Book's poetic phrases in calligraphic, intricate pattens of praise and penance, reflecting the perfection of The One God in those labored strokes and colors... until he fell asleep, snores emitted in wheezes. Servants would try to pull the pen from his grip when daybreak came, but they found his hand cramped, clutching the pen with a fervent desperation that they could not unwind.

And... yet... he?d been negotiating with such dealers since he inherited the caravan almost three years before, shortly after his father?s death. Even still their bargaining techniques and ?ethics,? as they referred to their professional etiquette, seemed strange to him. As if he traveled to some hellion bowel when his transactions brought him to London, Paris, and even as far as Spain. His heart ached, his throat turning dry when he recalled his latest visit to Madrid, littered with embellished, idolatrous churches and gaudy cathedrals where infidels, like bovine camels at an oasis, gathered for monotonous homilies and the recitation of stale hymns...

Where once had reigned an empire of mosques; his grandfather so told him.

A sudden memory of the tales of his ancestors that had been massacred by papal knights during the crusades assaulted him; the legends of the Westerners? brutality and assailing waves of steel and covetous blood forced a shudder from his body as he sat reflective upon his horse - nearing the outskirts of the lonesome but quiet kingdom that offered him hospitality for the autumn. He?d been searching for a place to assimilate gradually with this indignant culture - necessary if he wanted to compete with his fellow Arabian, more secularized tradesmen - and after consulting with his lifelong guardian, Rashid, decided that Cinq, somewhat isolated from the rest of its ?sophisticated? neighbors with its antiquated policies of total pacifism, would be the ideal sanctuary.

Even more congruent, he knew the reagent of the kingdom, Milliardo Peacecraft, personally - one of the only infidels he ever encouraged fellowship with, admirable of the prince?s battle skills and inherent sense of honor and charity. For the sovereign had saved him once, when his caravan was being pillaged by gypsies on the way to a French purchaser. One of the itinerant thieves had him by the throat and brought down a blade to slit the exposed flesh, when a masked stranger intervened. Quatre could only prop himself on his elbows in wonder, ignoring the distinct red handprints that choked his neck, as the man fended off the small band with a bullet and a few swings of his sword. After recovering what valuables he could, the nameless savior mounted his horse and slid off the metal helmet, tossing his platinum blonde hair over his shoulders as he flashed the trader a glimpse of savage ice blue.

Then departed in the opposite direction.

One of his men, with latent astonishment in his voice, informed the Winner heir that their rescuer was Milliardo Peacecraft, the wayward son of the late king of Cinq - not yet three months buried. The servant was sure of this, even fidgeting in his saddle as he told his master, face blotched with sweat. Never could one be burned with the possession of that wild stare, he claimed, and resist its imprint on his memory.

In a gesture of thanks, despite the inner bitterness he felt at having to grovel before yet another Western prince, the Winner heir ventured to Cinq and offered the sovereign some of his finest spices in recompense. Milliardo refused his gift, however, which soon led to a heated dialogue with the defiant reagent and, ironically, a very unconventional friendship.

?Good evening, Lord Winner,? the green-eyed soldier murmured as the Arabian arrived at the country?s northern border. ?His majesty is waiting.?

?Yes, thank you, " Quatre replied, pulling his riding glove further down his wrist. "I?m awfully tired and wish to make it to the palace before nightfall." There was an arrogant shortness to his words, and, although involuntarily, he upturned his nose slightly when he adjusted himself on the saddle. He winced, his shoulders suddenly twitching, as the derision in his tone reached his ears - for this warrior was the servant of a friend. He should not be so hostile.

But the sentry with light brown hair seemed unfazed by the foreigner?s contempt. Actually, he seemed callous towards the Winner heir in general, his gaze focused on the dirt road and eyes dull and vacant to his guest?s presence and insinuations. He never even glanced his way, just patted the horse's neck to settle its stride.

Only after a period of silence, once Quatre thought his comment forgotten, did the soldier stop his beast amidst the moonlight, blanketing the fields and leaking through the windows of candlelit houses in a haunting glow, casting spectral shadows across the sentry?s glittering emerald stare. He whispered, ?In Cinq, one can never guarantee a nightly passage without incidence? at least from the occult.?

Disclaimer: I don?t own Gundam Wing, ?Sleepy Hollow,? or ?The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,? by Washington Irving.



The remote chant of mystics in the adjacent chapel, muffled by the drafts that whispered through the expansive halls of gold, marble, and decadent alabaster stone, consumed any transcendence and captured intimate revelation in the fading, smoky rings of sacramental incense. As though hesitant, dissipating then clouding again in the reflection of lantern light, those hazy fingers reached towards divinity, yearned to find Sophia floating near the bell's sluggish chime or frosting the stain-glass windows of the tower with Her breath; rousing the stagnant night with sanctity through empyreal, subjugating respiration.

Stillness, disturbed only by footsteps, echoed as boot heels scraped across the tiles. But that resonance halted before the Madonna, with curls of brown spraying out along the fringes of her deep blue veil, setting off those Europeanized cheekbones and milk-white skin with cobalt eyes. Her eyebrows were fine and delicately arched, head bowed, as though to portray a sense of deference to that in the portrait which the artist had her gazing at with such intensity. Such... awe. Perhaps even dread. Indeed - the Virgin held an infant Messiah in her arms, clothed in soiled, yellowed scraps and tattered shreds of fabric that concealed a few dark ringlets of his own. She pressed his halloed head to her breast.

Gently - only one ruffle in her cloak where the baby's head burrowed.

Her full red lips parted in prayer.

Hoping...

?You look troubled, Muslim,? the raspy voice of Milliardo Peacecraft startled his guest from the rendition's trance, causing the merchant?s shoulders to tense from the drawling syllables that echoed off the hall's pillars - those that disappeared deep into the narrowing innards of the spire. His head jerked to meet his inquirer's eyes. ?Could it be because you?re immersed in orthodoxy?? The prince lightly snorted under his breath and quirked his lips at the Arabian?s flinch. ?Or face to face with your own heresy??

?No? No, I?? Quatre responded with the downward turn of his face and partial stutter. Although there remained in his voice a rehearsed civility, his right hand fidgeted near his belt. ?It?s just that I? Well I?ve never??

?You?re much too kind, Quatre. I just blatantly called your religion a heresy, and you didn?t even make a move for your sword. No wonder we Christians took Jerusalem for a time.?

?At the cost of my ancestors? blood, of women and children, no less.? The trader?s fist began to shake with wavering control, twitching near his sword's hilt. His chain of bronze and silver bracelets clanked around his wrist with his trembling, shrieking stifled curses up into the hollow of the bell swaying above them in reverential slowness to the Holy Ghost that smoldered within its curved belly - sending softer wails of damnation into the night. ?I don?t see how you can stand there so casually and mock the past, without any remorse for the murders of your infidel fathers.?

?Because, heretic,? the blonde-haired reagent answered while he straightened to his full height, forcing the Muslim?s attention with the ferocity of his glare, ?it was your damned caliph that desecrated the Sepulcher (1). He forfeited your privilege to the Holy Land when he destroyed Christ?s tomb and spat on the blood of martyrs. He challenged to the entire Christian tradition that day, so you have only him to thank for your misfortunes. Without him, perhaps the crusades could have been avoided.?

?As a fellow man of the Book, I wouldn?t think to hear such lies come out of your mouth, Millardo,? the young heir murmured, a novel sadness to his voice as the sacrilegious banter in his friend?s tone poked holes in his normally amiable disposition. It made the younger's words breathy and prolonged. ?Those wars were mounting for a while, and you know that. Your pope wanted Byzantine and the knights sought fortune.? He swallowed, choking on the tingle that crawled up the confines of his throat and skittered around his gag reflex-- Forced to swallow again. ?You Christians even stole from your own people? You wouldn?t even return Constantinople to your Orthodox (2) when you reclaimed it.

?You opened your own wound, and now it?s left a festering sore that?ll never heal. The Eastern Patriarch will never reconcile with your pope again. ?

The prince?s pale gaze then traveled, almost languorous, to the Thanatokos (3) hanging above them in that chamber full of nesting, anomalous shadows that stalked from crevices and cracks and corners, even manacled the flames that tried to disentangle themselves from the sticky, tallow webs of candle wax. His stare lured the attention of the Arabian?s own eyes, which instinctively turned away from the painted reproduction in disgust. Quatre narrowed his brow as his head fell against his chest, shutting his eyes against the memory of the image so fiercely that his grimace began to quiver. Her gentle, distorted features were a mockery to him - her rendered flesh enticing scorn.

?Is there something else, Quatre??

?I find your ignorance about idolatry appalling, especially when it comes to constructing icons of Maryam (4). Do you Westerners really believe she was so fair and richly clothed? That she wasn?t dark like the women in my homelands? Such delusions can only be the product of arrogance - that all people must be as you are.?

?Perhaps, Muslim. But we create pictures of God, the Virgin, and the saints based on our perceptions of humanity, as an act of devotion and worship. It makes our God much more personal and easier to approach in prayer.?

The mystics sang on, hypnotizing themselves in God's energies and visions of sought ecstasy - illusions they could never name - nearly rolling around on the floor and moaning from, what they would deem, transcendental pleasure. Their rosemary incense invaded the Arabian's nostrils, causing his chest to burn and eyes enflame, watering nearing the edges of his lower lashes.

?Shirk worship,? the foreigner condemned amidst the tears, pulling a cloth from his robes and blotting his eyes, soon covering his nose and mouth from the pungent assualt. Though his eyes immediately softened, effects of the stench forgotten, when Milliardo?s brow raised in question of the Islamic term.

Nonetheless, it was a small but definitive victory in the Muslim?s mind, with the sovereign?s reaction a subliminal reward for submission and attempted jihad. But to be on the receptive end of Allah?s wrath wasn?t a desirable position, he knew, and so Quatre found himself pitying his poor, culturally illiterate friend - had enough compassion to relieve the Westerner of his ignorance and elaborate. ?Trying to associate Allah with man - or anything else, for that matter.?

?No? Trying to associate God with man, for He became one once.?

The heir shook his head resignedly and chuckled, darkness entwining in his fair strands. ?Allah and your God are the same deity. We just view it differently.?

?Then why are we arguing??

?I?? and with mouth awkwardly agape, Quatre smiled, defeated. Biting his lower lips, eliciting a sigh to staunch his rambling thoughts, he let his inner self align with the incantations of the mystics, shivering as their notes hovered over his senses. Somnolent. Yet... almost ticklish - like the faint, holy whispers that shimmied through his blood and massaged his muscles during his meditations, those that offered him solace from his irreligious practices of late, that inspired his soul to stillness and quiet hesychia (5).

Wetting his lips with his tongue as the sacred pitches surrounded him, he found himself swallowing a painful hardness that had suddenly lodged itself in his throat. ?I suppose I don?t really know.? And in that admission his face grew suddenly sober, with his hands smoothing out the creases of his garments. ?But as you know, I didn?t come here to discuss my culture with you, but to learn yours.?

?Then you?ve just had your first lesson: how to confront an apologist (6).?

?And you consider yourself one??

?When the need arises.?

?I see??

The young Arabian trailed off and averted his eyes to the far wall, waiting for the reagent to continue their conversation - the silence somehow eerie as the silhouettes of the candles? flames flickered upon the limestone, casting his comrade in a lazy radiance that left Quatre heady from the gleam's slouching and drowsy waltz. Mesmerized by the dancing fire that slid between the ridges of the stones in rhythmic crackles, as the gypsy whores stripped for a few pieces of copper and kept their beats with the jingles of tethered tambourines. Their sheer scarves flailed like smoke around their exposed, nimble bodies, wrapping them in hues of obsidian and voluptuous streams of burgundy and crimson...

?Highness,? a cold voice interrupted the heir's musings. ?Midnight approaches. If my services are no longer needed, I?ll take my leave for the night.?

?No, thank you, Trowa. You may go. But before you do,? the soldier halted in the doorway at his master?s request, though still facing the hall, ?please look in on my stepmother and the princess? She?s been anxious to see you well.?

The sentinel bowed low before the doorway, his voice muffled by his obstructive position. ?Of course, my lord.? Then he left with the reverberant shutting of the sanctum?s door.

With the departed safely out of earshot, Quatre looked over to his friend with wide eyes and unfurled a timid smile, a hint of amusement lacing his remark. ?He?s a character, isn?t he? Trowa, you called him??

?Yes, Trowa Barton? but why do you say so??

?Well, because as he escorted me to the palace, he mentioned something about ghosts, and heads, and a horseman and all such nonsense,? the tradesman remarked with a flippant wave of his hand. ?He claimed that the ?mercenary,? as he referred to this horseman, was about lately, scouring the highways for suitable heads to replace the one he originally lost. What childish fairytales.?

A hand reached out and clutched the young man?s shoulder, Quatre locking eyes with the prince that regarded him with a countenance as stern as his grip - the light from the wicks, one by one, withered, died on the older?s face. ?Don?t.?

?What??

?Don?t speak profanely of the Hessian demon. Or next he my decide to come for you.?

?A head-thirsty Hessian, Milliardo, really? Tell me you don?t believe in such superstitions as ghouls and goblins and??

?He?s not a Hessian,? a whisper echoed through the deadened, guttural halls, its tone nearly husky as those syllables mated - stroking the rustling drafts - with the credence of the mystics? panting. The carnal breath resurrected the candlelight in a sequence of bursts and illuminated the face of Relena Peacecraft - the princess of Cinq. Burnishing the intensity in her dove-blue eyes and grazing the edges of her lips like the flicking, consuming tongue of a lover, the flames hissed. ?He?s a good Christian man.?




Footnotes:

1) One of the religious causes of the crusades was the desecration/destruction of the Holy Sepulcher (Jesus? tomb) by Caliph Al-Hakim.

2) When Western Christians reclaimed Constantinople, they refused to return it to the hands of the Eastern Orthodox?a transgression that is still remembered today.

3) Greek word meaning ?Mother of God.?

4) The form of ?Mary? found in the Qur?an.

5) Christian form of meditation (trying to achieve inner stillness) usually associated with the Eastern Church. However, I?m using it as a general reference, of simply Christian meditation.

6) One who defends Christianity (explaining beliefs and the validity of those beliefs in terms others can understand).

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing, Sleepy Hollow, or "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."



"I-- I'm sorry, my lady. I hope my words haven't? up-p-set you." Quatre's eyes were seared open, blinking in an erratic cadence and with his jaw hanging slack as he gaped at the woman standing before him. Her form trembled in the glow of the revived candlelight, arousing the flames to waft like threads of sallow, ephemeral tinsel upon her skin. It curled around her eccentric pants, making her shoulders glitter as she exhaled and silhouetting the hips beneath the folds of her under-gowns.

But her eyes. They were glassy, dense with the frothing of romantic memories and gurgling with mortification and disease. Crystalline was glazed over with the same bleak mists that haunted the Scottish marshes he once traveled in his dealings, sealing their numinous, murky crypt over the water to entomb the sentimental wraiths of reminiscence and love-- Eclipsing all but shadow, primitive fear, and a vague moan of nostalgia. Her white skin was startling against those orbs, as the reflection of the moon spreading across that slough to reveal soft, ivory glimpses of its beauty. Her beauty.

And her two full breasts spilling from her corset were doing little to rid his mind of such idyllic fantasies. As he could feel the cool tingle of sweat start to lick his flesh and the pit of his stomach simmer and spew from the heat of his kindled sinew. The boiling made his cheeks burn.

"That's enough, Relena," her brother reprimanded while stepping between the ragged woman and his comrade, with his hand coiling into a fist at his side. "You need--"

"I know what I need, Milliardo? more than you ever could. " She grabbed the lower laces of her corset and pulled them taut, gasping as they cinched her already petite waist and forced a strangled, haggard grunt from her throat. "I won't lie up in my room while you talk of him like he's the devil incarnate. You know it?s not true, and you know that--"

"Relena, remember your place here."

A groan strained from between her thinned lips. "I don?t believe-- I'm not a child that you can order around anymore, dear Brother, and so I demand that you stop treating me like one." With a sudden jerk, the prince raised the back of his hand and pulled it across his chest-- Before his eyes shifted to the trader. He met Milliardo's glance with a shudder and streak of remonstrance smeared across his irises, body struck rigid as he watched the girl straighten but involuntarily squeak at her sibling's aggressive stance.

Sliding his eyes shut, the reagent forced a broken sigh through his nose and lowered his arm, allowing a few moments of tense silence to pass before opening his eyes once again to face his sister. His now regulated heartbeat was taken by the draft and reverberated within the spire of the chapel, kissing with the fervent, hallowed whispers of the mystics in an unorthodox courtship. "We have a guest. Do not embarrass me or yourself more than you already have."

She snorted. "Is that meant for me, or are you really just saying that for yourself? You--"

"Princess," Quatre interrupted their quarrel while taking a step forward, "you spoke as though you knew this horseman. Can you, perhaps, explain why everyone's so nervous about it?"

Her lips quirked into a precocious smile, she released the ribbons and reached a hand around her brother, knocking his arm with a deliberate but graceful jab of her elbow to the right. She brought her hand level with the Arabian's, her head tilted and with a coquettish few ruffles of her lashes. "Forgive my rudeness. My name is Relena Peacecraft. And yours might be?"

"A-ah? Quatre, Lady Relena." He wrapped his palm around her swan-like fingers and brought them to his lips for the traditional, chivalrous greeting. "Quatre Rebaba Winner."

"Well, Lord Winner, I can only hope that you'll be a little more friendly with the truth than my obstinate elder brother." His eyes darted to the prince, who arched an eyebrow at her petulant reply, which enticed the merchant's mouth to crease slightly upward. "And as to your earlier comment: I know of him, Lord Winner. I know of him. Perhaps a little more than most, but not overly so."

"Why do I have the feeling, my lady, that you?re not being completely honest with me?" Relena's gaze snapped up to meet his with the insinuation, lips parted and eyes wide at the sagacious knell that echoed in his voice and pealed over the sheets of her skin, causing it to pimple. Her hand clutched at her skirt, shaking.

"What do you mean by that? Are you questioning my honesty?" Despite her stunned expression, her tone was challenging, laced with confidence of shrewd, articulate equivocation. "Since you've only known me for a matter of moments, I find such audacity offensive."

Shaking his head, he chuckled at her lingering obduracy and took her wrist in his hand. "I didn?t mean to imply anything by it, Lady Relena. Forgive me. Please, go on--tell me what you know of this 'good Christian man.'" If any one so exists.

Scrutinizing him for a few moments with a leer that wandered over the lines of his face, she allowed a submissive smile to dispel across her lips and turned away. The patter of her soles across the stone floor harmonized with his steady, sonorous pulse in a somatic orchestra of voluntary and unmindful beats, uniting them in the staves of corporeal strings that pulled muscles; the percussion of their dissonant heartbeats, and the clandestine resonance of pivoting, wood-wind bones. Suffocating. Chilling. They became musicians of an unconscious interlude that filled the silence, that drowned out any suspicious thoughts or glances. It kept them on the edge, waiting in suspense for the other. Desperate for the final note.

She sat beneath the altar, smothering its linen in her fist as she rested her head against the cool marble front, flattening her bangs over her eyes and curling them in the bend of her elbow. "Have you ever heard of Innocent III?"

"The Medieval pope?" She didn?t respond, merely cocked her head so that her tresses feathered out and revealed an optical glint of verification. "If I'm not mistaken, he was known for his? political advancements."

"And reigned during the crusades?" Her gentian eyes darkened. "Muslim."

He couldn?t conceal the way his cheeks sunk in as he bit the flesh of his inner mouth at her almost smug deliverance of the label and the exaggerated, mawkish dexterity of her tongue when she rolled it against her teeth as she formed her l; he was wise to take a deep breath before he answered. "I do recall reading something to that end." His hand flexed. Clenched.

"Did you know that he was raised in Cinq, that he actually said prayers in this very room many times throughout his life?"

"No. I really don?t know anything about him, save for his pontificate--an infamous version, at that."

The princess snickered at his gibe, adjusting herself so that her back was flush with the table's hardness. "I can?t really argue with that, but I can say that he's where this whole legend began. If you?d care to listen."

Stepping back, the Winner heir slowly sank down into one of the nearby pews while affixing his gaze to the subtle movements of her mouth. He tried to blink, but found himself captivated by the intangible, heavy bridles of sorrow that wrench the edges of her lips into a delicate frown--even in laughter--and the lucidity that yoked the depths of her eyes, making them shimmer amidst the smolder of melting candles, sparkle with the harshness of emotional bondage and the tyranny of suppressed, indentured tragedy.

"He was a good man, once. A young boy that loved God and wanted others, who claimed to love the Father as much as he, to prove that love by living holy lives. He wanted them to take their vows seriously, to love virtue and loathe vices." She gulped. "He wanted reform."

"Reform?"

"The Church was rampant with abuses and inconsistencies then, Lord Winner, not like the mighty hierarchy you know today. "

"I don?t understand."

"Well, for one, although its was encouraged, clergymen didn?t necessarily have to be celibate like they do now. In most cases, priests actually had their own concubines." Their eyes met. "But he wanted to change all that. He decided that simony, nepotism, all such problems needed to be done away with. We needed to remember the example of Christ and our humility, not the power we can get from them." Her hands kneaded the fabric of her gown; her nails grazed her ankles. "He thought the best way to do that was to become the pope himself, so that he could give the orders. But he knew no one, wasn't really the son of an influential family, and so contented himself with becoming a priest and doing missionary work. And he'd make sure his converts knew how to be Christians? real Christians."

Quatre shook his head and chortled at her shoddy tact. "Because the other real Christians were out beheading heretics like me, right?"

"Well maybe if your people knew how to take better care of the Christ we both love, we wouldn't have had to decapitate you."

"Your brother said something silly like that, too."

Relena turned to her sibling and scrunched her nose in a cynical sneer, running her hand along her exposed upper-arm. "He actually spoke the truth for a change. " She huffed. "Amazing, considering he's always so stubborn about things that he wouldn?t know what the truth was if God came down from the Throne and proclaimed it."

"About the things that matter, yes. You know why--"

"This isn?t getting us anywhere, majesties," The Arabian interjected with a weak sigh as he rose from his seat. "I don?t know what's going on between the two of you, and I'm not sure if I really ever want to know. But please, stop this childish bickering and just tell the story, Lady Relena." He felt a pang ricochet from his heart and lodge itself between the bars of his ribcage when he saw the princess's eyes fall to the ground and her body slump. Felt sweat start to pucker at his hairline as she wrapped her arms around her chest. His eye winked with teasing pain when the heat of Millirdo's glare pinched his left cheek, inducing more sweat to congregate and disband from beneath his blonde bangs, drops sidling down his temple.

Her voice was a parched whisper when it finally cut through the distant, reverberant invocations that restrained the church. "He eventually worked his way up to being a bishop, at a time when the Church had enough foresight to realize how important spreading the Gospel to distant lands really was." Her teeth skimmed over her bottom lip. "For money's sake, of course. And political influence."

She faced the merchant. "You've heard of Columbus and Magellan and Vasco de Gama? explorers?" He nodded. "Well they were a bit late. The Papacy had missionaries out searching for barbarians long before they were even born. It?s just that no one ever knew it."

"She doesn't know what she's saying, Quatre." The prince scraped a hand through his platinum strands. "She's been ill, delusional." Glacial blue eyes bored into her, and she shivered when they narrowed and heaved the sharp, jagged barbs of icicles into her blood. "She can't separate reality from her girlish fantasies, anymore."

"Milliardo, my friend." The younger walked towards him and placed a calming hand on his shoulder. "Regardless of how she has wronged you in the past, she is still your sister. She is a prayer that you must utter with loving lips and good intentions. So please," The nondescript, wooden face of Jesus from the crucifix rippled in his eyes, "be gentle with her? gentle?"

With the softness of his plea, a tear clutched Relena's cheek, leaving a glistening impression on her skin. "It's all right, Lord Winner. I deserve his anger. I made the choice. I betrayed. I've done what I've done." She raked the bead from her face and sniffled. "But he doesn?t deserve it, Milliardo. He couldn?t have known; I kept it from him."

"Innocent?"

"Of course, my lord. Innocent. Back to Innocent." Biting her lip, she stifled a groan as her hands gripped the edge of a pew, blanching her knuckles and tightening the skin over them so that the contours of her bones were distinct. "He was known as Odin Lowe, back then, and he was an excellent preacher. A very learned man, considering the times. And he was able to convert many people in his day-- Rumor of his successes even circulated back to Rome. Of course, none of his converts were of a race the bishops hadn't seen before? but it gave them an idea." She leaned forward over the railing, quivering, firmly shutting her eyes. "The curia promised him, plotted with him. The bishops said that if he brought with him a convert whose features were of those they'd never seen before and showed them the way to her homeland? they would make his dream come true." The contortions of her face smoothed out into valleys of creamy flesh and stiff mountains of rouge, rendering her countenance impassive. "They would make him pope."

"And let him have his reform."

"Mhmm. Reformation for the Church? and an unexpected one for himself."




"These things. you say. are. strange to me, 'Man from God.' These things. I do not understand." His Asian accent was thick and halted with the timbre of arrogance, each word echoing as an afterthought and incarnate, guttural rumble of divinity. Even the emperor's posture was godly, with rigid shoulders, a high chin lathered with hair, and a straight back angling towards the heavens. Coal black eyes fed a spark that crackled and faded to an omniscient glow in their depths, staring through his guest, burning off the immortality of the soul until all that remained was the purpose of the spirit itself. Penetrating deeper. He looked into all that approached him? not at them. "For a man to. dis-tance himself. from his ancestors for a woman, as your. Jesus say. is un-wise. We a-ppreciate. much. ho-nor and family, specifically those no. longer with us."

"I understand this tradition, your majesty, but Jesus' message is above the opinions of men. Although man and woman become one flesh, one should always honor both mother and father. Only his priorities have changed," Odin Lowe explained as he tugged at the neck of his kimono, letting his fingers graze over the chaffed skin where the material had been rubbing relentlessly for the past few hours. His throat was dry from his dialogue with the adamant, inquisitive ruler. They'd been discussing the same doctrine for days: the Incarnation, the Trinity, the Gospel, revelation, and still the emperor insisted on showing him "the true way," twisting the missionary's apologetic, Christian dogma into those of his royal favor. According to the god-king, Odin wasn't accounting for the whole truth. He "?could not see passed the beam in his own eyes," as the sovereign perverted the Scripture quote.

The bishop was forced to hide his more frequent coughing behind a hand, while his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and scrubbed the backs of his teeth. "And since you believe yourself to be an incarnation, can?t you also understand how Jesus could be one?"

"How. can he be the. Incarnation. if I am? I know. not. this. Jesus."

"No, you're not understanding, lordship. We're not even talking about the same kind of enfleshment her--"

Dark red yards of silk rustled beside him; white and gold, glossy cranes that nested amidst the boughs of cherry blossoms were painted on the billows and enlaced with ebony tresses. Strands that pooled like the shiny black quartz of a cavern around the pale woman's ankles and made bracelets around her wrists brushed against his arm, when she turned to him: head bowed, eyelids lowered, and expression demure. Sooty lashes fluttered upon her cheeks and contrasted with the luster of her blushing face, accentuating the curves of her supple, crimson lips. Her breastbone was sleek; her neck slender as the wild heron's, skin the same downy white.

"This. you see. is my youngest daughter, Tenshi," the emperor informed as he eyed the porcelain cups stained with tawny lotus flowers, and rolled his shoulders back. "She will serve tea, now."

"Yes? yes, thank you, majesty. Um? I? we were discussing?"

"Man leaving family. for woman. Make no such sacrifice for woman."

"But highness," the clergyman hesitated, flinching at the sable eyes of the princess that fondled his cheek, watched her moonlight breasts rise and fall with her labored breaths and saw her nostrils flare. The teapot shook in her hand. "Although women cannot? understand as much as men," he felt something lodge in his throat, "we need them. They provide us with children and nurture them. They are necessary and must be taken care of."

Clang!

The girl shrieked and prostrated before them, trembling, reaching for the lid of the teapot and cup that she knocked from the table. But her breathing was still erratic, her black eyes pulsating as her fingers brushed against the foreigner's knuckles--the knuckles of the hand that held the delicate, now chipped arm of the fallen cup. His face was reflected in the sheen of the china, his blonde hair grazing his cheekbones and his eyes distorted and large and? wet with understanding.

"Tenshi! You foolish girl! Leave us to the business of men?"



"He loved her."

"Yes, Lord Winner. He loved her. Beyond his better judgment he loved her, wanted her?" Relena gulped, pursing her lips before forcing the potent bitterness of bile back down her throat "? desired her. But he couldn?t have her. If anyone in the Church had to be celibate, it was the pope? in theory, at least. He couldn?t possibly take her as his mistress. Not before God."

The eyes of the Winner heir sparkled with tears, fostering a surrogate, pitiful gleam for the dead candles. Empathetic tears that made his jaw clamp in a tight vice, made his exhalation quiver. That poor man? for aren?t we all but mere men? Subject to man's temptations? To the look and feel of a woman? He cocked his head at her. "But he did it anyway, didn't he?"

The chanting ceased. The canopy of moonbeams was sheared by the steely, knifed edges of the clouds, spattering the floor and windows in silver blotches of runny, bloody light.

Halloed locks bobbed at his query, as her chin rubbed against the ball of her hand. "He did. Took her back with him as his convert, however he managed to get the emperor's consent. And?" her voice hitched momentarily "?became Pope Innocent III? with her by his side. And it was fine."

"But not forever."

"Until she found she was with child."

He massaged the skin beneath his bangs, braced his elbow with the opposing arm. "The bastard child of a pope?" His eyes fell closed. "It had no future, did it?"

"She'd always been hidden, and her pregnancy was no different." The princess rested her forehead on her knees, sighing. "No one knew, except for an old clergyman that he visited for confession: Abbot Jay. And I suppose that was a good thing, since she died during childbirth--"

"I don?t know where you came up with this story of yours, little sister, but you must be pretty damn sick to dream it up." The reagent grabbed her wrist and pulled her to his body. Their eyes locked. "Which is why you need to go back to bed and heal fully."

She refused an answer. Just continued with her narrative, an even tone braided through her words and a distant, vacant stare woven over her face as she and her brother remained entwined, neither budging. Neither even blinking. "He hated that child. It was the Incarnation? of his own sin. Why Tenshi died. Lowe couldn't even look at the baby."

"One sin," Quatre whispered absently, his eyes lost on a broken corner of a tile, "leads only to so many more." From his lashes a fluid, palpable intercession dripped between the crack, splashing onto the deaf ridges of stone. "Did he kill it?"

"No. Jay convinced him not to. He told Lowe that he would raise the child at a monastery, deep within the isolation of the English woodlands. The boy would be educated and a warrior?" her gaze sought the Muslim's, an ironic smile tugging at her mouth, her expression lurid "? and fight in the crusades?"



"Ma-ry and Jo-seph, pray for us?" the little boy sniffled and wiped at his nose with the back of a tiny, bronze hand, crossing his Prussian blue eyes to see if he'd smeared anymore ink over his skin. His face was already covered in greasy black smudges, little fingerprints and palm lines cracking through the dark oil in a sloppy, worn painting of transcription--even a few lowercase letter impressions spattered his cheek. He looked down at his parchment, eyes darting between his handwriting and the intricate loops and twists of his master's. A curl on the second leg of the upper-case A. The wide bow of the C. The sharp point of the F so that it wouldn?t be confused for a T. He made a quick dab with his quill. Forgot to dot the i.

Half-way through the alphabet, and their letters appeared nearly identical to the five-year-old's eye, prompting a small smile to transpose itself on his lips. His eyes twinkled through the tangles of his messy brown bangs.

Master Jay will be proud of me. Maybe he'll even think I'm ready for Scripture copying.

He continued singing. "Mi-chael and all an-gels, pray for us? An-na, Jo-a-chim, E-liz-a-beth, pray for us..." The O came out slightly tilted, and after wrinkling his pudgy little nose, he made another one beside it. Much better. "E-li-jah, Mo-ses, John the--"

"Heero!" The child jumped with the bite in the old man's censure, flailing his arms and knocking the ebony fluid of the ink jar all over the shabby, tattered rags that wrapped his body. "Look at this mess, you clumsy fool!"

"I-- I'm sorry, Master Jay." Heero stumbled to the floor, cheeks a light pink, and began wiping the puddles with his soiled garments. "I'll clean it up."

The abbot groaned at the boy's awkward stretches and the sable, filmy residue that gleamed on the floor in circular patterns from Heero's strokes. But it sounded more like a snarl. "Aren't you forgetting something boy?" He held out his hand, where a ring sparkled from one of his fingers and caught the child's eyes, which had been frantically scouring the floor for ink splotches.

Without touching Jay's vein-swathed hand, the child pressed his lips to holy symbol. His eyes remained averted. "I?"

"Silence!" The abbot used his wooden claw to push Heero away, who flinched and took another voluntary step back. "You smell like rotting meet, lad. Can?t you even bathe yourself?"

"Master Jay, I?"

"Silence, I said, lad. You must be silent-- How many times have I reminded you of that vow, the one your swore before God?" The boy sniffed, chewing on his lip as his hands clutched at the base of his shirt, creasing it. "I walk in here to feed you," he said while motioning towards a bowl with his fleshy hand, "and I find you singing? Singing, of all things. You're supposed to be learning how to write, so that can copy the sacred Word of God, and you're in here committing more sins. More penance for yourself."

Heero remained reticent, although his scrawny body was shivering, rattling his crucifix against his chest. "You may speak now to defend yourself."

"I was writing, and you told me I should always praise God. I didn?t think He would mind." His reply was quiet, a hesitant whimper.

"And what else have I told you?"

"That?" his midnight blue eyes scintillated with rippling crystal, foaming like a waterfall along his lashes, reflecting the stars of his optic sky. "That I was made in sin. So I am sin." A tear plummeted. "God can't love me."

"Remember that, and maybe someday He'll forgive you. Not love you, but forgive you." Jay sighed, his tone somewhat warmer. "Now, let's see what you've done with your writing."

Another droplet fell from his eyes when his head shot up to face the abbot, but Heero's gaze was bright, his breaths elicited in excited gasps with his jutted, bony chest heaving up to his shoulders. His teeth flashed from behind his lips.

The old man stood over the table and picked up one of the completed sheets, his face hard, scrutinizing the curves and strokes and consistencies and thickness of the lines. The loops of the first B were much wider than the subsequent few. The tail of the third J dipped farther down than its counterparts, the hook too crisp. One of the Q's wasn't speared, and those that were had been smudged, donning slimy manes over the R's. The damn O's were crooked.

"You think this is good, lad?" The boy froze. "I think the chickens can scratch better words in the gravel than this."

A blur of black, sunlight, stone, and steel bars assailed the bastard's vision as he felt cold fingers plunge themselves into the skin of his neck, as he was dragged to the archaic bowels of the disciplinary brig. His calves scraped on the rocks and left crimson, swerving smears on the stair edges in a morbid trail to his condemnation; his face was smacked with parchment, slitting his brow, frothing blood; his eye was poked when Jay threw the quill into the cell. It floated into Heero's ink-blotted lap, its feel too gentle, for the boy winced when it grazed his wrist.

"I'll let you out of there when you learn to stay silent and concentrate on your work." And the abbot walked away. The keys to the child's freedom jingled in sync with the clergyman's footsteps; their tinkling dulled with each faint step that moaned its dirge for the abuse it left behind in that dungeon, like the chimes of church bells on Christmas morn. Those that echoed with guilt, as they knew the eventual fate of the Lord. Death. By the hands of men. Eerie. Heart-wrenching. Something I won't ever have.

Heero settled himself on his knees, took the feather in his hand, and connected his shaky script to the paper. "Lord, give new life? Hear my prayer?"

"Much better, Samuel. Your writing's much better than last week." Jay's voice loomed above the crouching bastard, reverberating in the granite crevices and wailing through pillars--echoing in the cracks of rat holes. "At least your O's aren't lopsided."

Tears made the letters run together, sloshing darkness on his knuckles and speckling his knees. Black blood. Damned blood.

"Lord give new life? to? those? cho-sen?"

A scream tore from the throat of a child. Shattered by sobs.

Christ, hear him; Lord, Je-sus, hear his prayer?


* * * *


"Now, Young Frederick, I will expla?" The mouth of the pope stood agape, eyes pried open as sputters tumbled from his lips, hand grabbing for the prince's chair back to keep his knees from plunging beneath him. His embroidered, costly robes flapped from the jerks of his quaking body underneath. He bit the insides of his cheeks. "Why?"

"I'm sorry, Holy Father, but we did not have time to bring him back to England before you called upon us. I--"

"This is unacceptable, Jay!" Heavy trains of fabric swiveled across the room, pummeling the limp, rust-colored curls of the child seated behind him. The royal grimaced at the negligent assault. "I told you to never bring him before me unless he's ready for Penance. Ever. No excuses." Snorting, Innocent snatched the miter from his scalp and threw it across the room, knocking a tallow, paint-chipped globe from its perch and grumbling as he scowled at the brown-hair boy. He was stiff, expressionless, with shoulders pulled back, and awaiting command. Just staring at his father's elaborate garments and how the jarring movements forced them to wallow and ruffle in a gaudy rainbow of gold, white, and red. Subservient.

Like his mother.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, his Excellency clenched his eyes shut, flaxen strings twining in his fingers as he ordered, "Leave the boy and come with me." His voice was low, gritty. "All of you. And in the mean time, Frederick," he said facing his ward, "locate Sicily on the map and put a black X over it. When I re-enter, I'll be able to school you without interruption. And you," his throat closed, scratched and shaved at his words as he looked into those eyes, the same, deep shade of blue as his own, "don?t do anything. Don't move, don't say a word, don?t even look at anything. Because if I find out that you somehow upset the prince," his nostrils flared, blonde brow knotted, "You'll wish you'd never been born."

"I all ready do."

Smack! "Keep. Your. Mouth. Shut. Sinner."

In a flurry of wool and satin strips, the elder men departed from the chamber without comment, leaving Frederick and Heero alone in the prince's study.

After a few moments of the clock's ticking, a taunting giggle ruptured the silence, poisoning the air with the deliberate, spoiled stench of mischief. "My benefactor says you can?t even come near me." He rose from his chair and approached the bastard, stretching and rumpling his face and sticking out his tongue and spitting on the coarse wool of the ten-year-old's habit. "Not touching you, can?t get mad." His fingers jabbed the other boy in the ribs and tugged on his hood, slamming it over his head. "Touching you, but you still can?t get mad." Wracking his fingers through the locks, Frederick mussed his hair to look like the feral, dirty spikes of the other, protruding his front teeth while hunching his neck. He even spit into his hands and wiped it down his chin, glimmering like a fresh patch of drool. "I'm a bastard. Look at me. God don?t love me 'cause I'm a stupid bastard. My dad loves his ward better than me--"

"Perhaps, Master Frederick, it would be better for you to do as his Excellency commanded," Abbot Jay's tone was flat, "rather than instigate something with a boy that could throttle you in an instant, if he wanted."

"Yeah, yeah," he muttered in German, following those flippant disregards with a few curses when the clergyman exited again. "I?ll find Sicily."

But his eyes searched the map, tongue clicking against the roof of his mouth. Once. Twice. Three times. A fourth. He rested a finger on England and sniffed, shaking his head as he moved it further east, closer to the maroon colored landmasses--the boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire. The quill levitated above Greece, his eyes squinting as he tried to make the calligraphic, lavish letters comprehensible, with a russet ringlet tickling his nose. He blew it away and bent over to mark Athens when--

"Here." Heero placed his hand over the royal's fist, guiding it closer to the boot of Italy, which had a dingy cross stamped over the label, "Sicily is over here?"



Quatre blinked. A few times. Was still when his cape slid off his shoulders and onto the floor, hissing as it slithered over the stone and snaked around his feet in a coil of alabaster cloth. "Are you trying to tell me that poor little boy?" He swallowed. Gagged. "Is the Mercenary?"

The tears gnawing on her cheeks with their glistening fangs, the red, swollen eyes were the only responses needed.

"Lady Relena--"

"No more of this tonight? no more." He was hoarse, eyes glinting when the reagent enveloped his sister in his arms, cradling her head and kissing the crown with soothing lips. Laced his fingers through her tresses. "That's enough for one night."




AN: The Frederick being referred to is Frederick II. Innocent III was pope in the late 12th century and early 13th, just to give you a time period on that.

Oh wow...poor Heero. I hope he and Relena meet up soon that she can give him her love.

What sickness does Relena have?