Kinship Beset (R/NC-17) 3/8
Posted: Wed May 26, 2004 2:25 pm
AN: I'm dedicating this post to Lilac310 ::waves:: By some weird coincidence, it also happens to be longer than the last chapter... MUCH longer (think chapter 1 size). Also, thanks everyone else who's read and/or replied. 
Finally... Heero meets Relena (it's taken long enough, hasn't it?), with a pretty explicit lime coming up in the next chapter. Enjoy!!!
Disclaimer: I don't own GW or "Brother and Sister."
The summer in which my sister turned eighteen, a very young and relentless prince inherited the throne of the kingdom just outside our woods. It was rumored that he and his father were attacked one afternoon on a hunting venture, and while the former king was later found wallowing in his own blood, the prince survived. The corpse of the monarch was mutilated, cut, sliced, and butchered, with the eyes pried out of the skull, leaving empty sockets that dripped with fat and rotting meat.
Fate took him by the hand and led him home that stormy night, I would overhear the woodsmen say as I stood unbeknownst to them in the tall grass of the fields, feeding on the weeds made fresh by the morning?s rain. Some claimed that one of the soldiers who found him actually saw the decrepit figure of the Demon as She laid the almost lifeless boy upon the bridge. Through the mist Her shiney, bony fingers clinched and then released as She disappeared into the dimness of the fog, a hunchback shadow vanishing from human eyes. But that was merely legend, a tale fabricated to add some excitement to the droll lives of the villagers, such drudgery they toiled from dusk to following dawn. There was no validity to such a claim, and I doubt there ever will be. It was a mystery, one that not even the king himself could answer or chose not to?be that as it may. Not even he could recall how he managed his return.
But one thing was sure: he was avid for revenge against the man that slew his father and robbed the cadaver of its sight, defaming the former king's body as well as royalty?s honor. And so he threw himself into the disciplines and brutality of the military and learned the finer points of swordsmanship. He waged war where negotiation would have sufficed, adding dominion after dominion to his already substantial empire. One body after another.
At first his subjects thought this yearn for vengeance would ebb as the seasons came and passed, degenerating in his memory to be nothing more than a child?s immature, embodied nightmare. He would then be able to grant forgiveness where revenge could not be had.
But it didn?t.
He slaughtered more men, conquered more lands as he followed the trail to that long lost murderer, soon brooding in apathy and an ally with retributive holocaust as he intensified his search. "The Perfect Soldier" they called him as he reigned in battle victoriously upon his warhorse wild. He called the beast Wing Zero, for upon the creature?s back the prince flew across the fields, leaving no man standing as he held out his blade, ready to polish it in human flesh. A man? One callous to his fellow warriors' screams and the tragedy of familial wailing, and all remorse hidden behind a face as stoic as stone. It only crumbled with his glare, one that foretold the death of its onlooker in an expanse of Prussian paralysis. Cold amidst the warmth of blood, extinguishing the heat of widows? tears. His mind was only focused on the battle and its end. Nothing more.
Then finally, six years after the incident, he met face to face with the man he killed so many others for. His ultimate victim. He brought the traitor to his knees and plunged the sword into the man?s back, bracing himself with a foot upon the crumpled pile of meat. The Perfect Soldier slowly, torturously slid the blade from the man?s flesh, letting the blood spray the wife and child that stood watching in the corner of the hovel. Quaking, squealing, terrified as they were with Heero's cruelty--not knowing of the slain man?s crime. He then brought the drooling saber to the murderer?s throat and made an exploited, jagged slit. Not clean. Not precise. Just painful. No more than a merciless act.
And then this prince turned to the woman and shrieking babe that was squirming in her arms. There was a plea. The sheen of metal. Wailing. Groaning. Stiffling. With a silence robed in blood.
It was a robe he was doomed to wear, perhaps not on his skin but deep within himself... in a place where at that moment, when his chest heaved raggedly over what he?d done, his heart stood still. He was drenched in their blood, reeked of saltwater and spoilage. This boy was smeared in innocence?s beseech for forgiveness. In the dark red color of love?s cry against hatred and reprisal.
It's ironic, though, for he had, in slaying oblivious mother and child, killed that little boy who years ago watched that same malice claim his father. The prince, so blinded by resentment, murdered himself that day.
He would never forget, never be pardoned. He wouldn't allow it. It's so pitiful, that he had his vengeance, and the murderer still held victory in his stiffened fingers. Heero couldn't obtain it, since the clutch of a corpse is futile to pry open, heartless to sorrow once the heart within stops beating.
This knowledge kept the monarch enslaved to the past with the blood on his own two hands, making gory chains around his wrists that never loosened... always choked him harder when he tried to forget. Each time he glanced down at his hands the blood became redder and deeper and more engulfing. It stained his skin and glowed with the ferocity of his guilt, lapping at his entire being. He was haunted by his carnage, which jarred him from sleep in a cold sweat that chilled his body and soul.
This king mourned alone, repressing his grief like he had done those years before, breathing a word to no one about the slaughter. He felt it was the only sacrifice he could make to atone for his ruthlessness: to suffer more extensively than they had. So he damned himself and filled his heart and mind with grief and insatiable reproach.
It consumed him and overflowed.
People eventually learned of what happened, and the legend spread quickly. It was inevitable. The bodies were left there in his shock-- Someone had to find them. But people didn?t hear it from him. No? Never from him.
* * * *
Supposedly, in honor of the prince's coronation, the court announced a three-day hunt as, I guess, a sort of commemoration to the fact that the former king had died while doing just the same, that which had been his favorite sport. The man who took down the largest beast would dine beside the new king at the banquet immediately following the chase, a feast prepared from the kill?s meat. It would have been a noble honor for any man.
But not for me.
I may have been a man once before and still within, but now the beast came before the man, a slave to my instincts as they sometimes surpassed my better judgment. It was a curse to be so vulnerable to those primitive, animalistc senses, but I learned to use my human guile to my advantage when in the field, to keep from being the prey of "stronger" creatures. Wolves had nothing on me; they were merely ceremonial, moon stalking cravens. And their cousin foxes couldn't tease me without getting my hoof in their mouths as a retort-- That usually subdued them for a while. Whether they had teeth and claws or not, I could never acknowledge myself as being a weaker animal than those sniveling cowards that skulked away as I approached the forest stream. Their ferocity was more reptuation than actual.
And being the roebuck that I was, I couldn't resist the seductive, almost sultry pant of the hounds as they scoured for prey long into the midnight hour. The hunters chased on their heels, as the risen moon brought forth the curs? more feral nature; their eyes and fangs glinted wildly in the darkness. Their howls and warning barks resonated for man and wolf kin alike, with their ode to the moon sending chills down my spine when it echoed over the hillside?delicious shudders that tingled of defiance and beckoned me to challenge the whelps? cunning. The clatter of horses? hooves upon the undergrowth wooed me to cross their tracks, since the beasts' whinnies grew scarce as dusk stilled the forest to a faint lull. I could elude their tired steps easily.
The call of predator to prey rushed through me delectably as I watched the horsemen in the distant brush, my yearn to join them in the chase only becoming more urgent as I saw a hare slip through the canines? clutches before the dogs could give the fatal nip. Every nerve in my body hinted its need to run alongside those beasts, to lure them in and out of vagrant trees, to outwit them. It was my duty as the prey.
I told Relena what I desired, how I had to obey my natural instincts as those animals did theirs? But she would hear none of my excuses. She'd become more willful over the past few years, probably due to the fact that Stepmother was no longer there to intimidate her with the whip.
Then again, she was always one to stand up for her principles and the welfare of others--even if they had only been animals.
"Milliardo," she scolded me while my ears perked up at the patter of the dogs as they sprinted through the dirt and leaves, stirring dust into the rays of the midday sun. Her hands were set firmly at her sides as she tried to get my attention?the light from the window just out of reach of her hair, casting shadows on her troubled face. "Whether or not you look like a man, you are one. So you should think about what you?re asking me a little more rationally and stop giving in to your primitive side.
"You want me to let you step foot out of this house and get yourself killed. How reckless does that sound to you, now that you hear me say it?"
I heard the horses follow those whelps in the distance, not really what she said as well. Or at least it didn?t register in my mind.
"There aren?t just one or two hunters out there. There?s at least over twenty, and that?s just around here? Let alone on the other side of the woods."
What was she saying? It didn?t really matter.
"I gave you my word that I would protect you, Milliardo. That I would do what I can to stop you from being the victim of meaningless sport. But how can I possibly keep that promise if you throw yourself in front of danger? Purposely?"
I could have been out there, being hunted.
"But if you insist on going... I guess I can?t stop you."
What?
"As much as I disagree with your methods, it?s your decision to make. But I?d feel better if we had some sort of signal, so that I?ll know it?s you to open the door for in the evening."
I thought I was going to kick the door down I was so hungry to set my hooves upon the grass and gallop to the hunters? sides. And at that point I would have agreed to nearly anything if she would have just opened the door. So needless to say, her request was granted.
"When you return home after dark, you need to knock on the door three times and say, ?My Little Sister, let me in.? That way, I?ll know it?s you.
"But you're still making a huge mistake."
She walked over to the door, her expression cross and hand clenched in defeated frustration, and opened it, letting the sun pour inside the hovel and grant me freedom into the morning. The grass blades wafted in the mild zephyr that the earth respired... and in due time.
She was impertinent about the entire situation, fighting for what she thought was right for me. That's my Relena, always concerned with others before herslef.
But regardless, the thrill of a hunt well played was more than I anticipated, sending adrenaline through my blood and pumping it into my legs to gallop faster amidst the withered leaves and rustic ivy that tangled about my hooves. In being pursued, I bounded through the trees and rubbed my fur against the sodden hills, leading those boorish beasts down empty slopes of green as they sifted through the disturbed earth and changing breeze to inhale a nostril full of my scent. But they were rewarded with nothing more than a mock trail.
King Heero himself and his bestial companion were the only worthy opponents that I encountered that day, with the stallion?s eyes serving as a torch with lurid green flames that illumined the shade of the dense, teeming trees? A light for the hunter to ride by. The breath of his majesty?s ebony steed sent shivers through my hind legs when the animal?s sinew, clearly etched underneath that glossy sable pelt, carried it across the timberland with greater speed each time its hooves pummled the earth. They vaulted the horse an admirable distance, keeping him on my heels and knocking into my calves. The beast would snort and choke its resistance as Heero tugged on the reins and strangled the animal into compliance, with its mane wallowing against the lord?s face when the horse reared in the evening sun? Casting them as anomalous silhouettes against the dusk that spattered streaks of light behind them. The tendrils of the king fell over his face as the wind tangled in his strands, hiding dark, sapphire eyes in a mess of brown. Cold eyes... dead pools that held nothing but intense absence. But they hinted of a need to see me dead. Only then would his mission be complete.
But I evaded his stallion and escaped the blade, meeting Relena as the moon dawned in the starless sky. When we settled in for the night, she set her head upon my back and reflexively ran her fingers through my fur, with her breath mingling with my sweat. It reminded me of the horse's heavy grunts and so also those empty Prussian eyes.
I had survived the first day.
The second wouldn?t be so gracious, though. The men and hounds that hunted me lacked the monarch?s zeal, not even winding me as I retreated from their howls and pursuant yells into the heart of the thicket. It was too easy. Too distinct with the excitement of the previous day. I grew restless for a formidable foe, and so I let my guard down; got haughty about my evasion tactics; and began to take unnecessary risks while in the openness of the meadows: I jumped over fences in plain sight and stood at the streams while taking long, lazy drinks. I was a perfect stationary target.
I didn?t even hear him as he approached me, that russet-haired yeoman whose gaze of hollow emerald recoiled more readily than the king's blank, vacuous eyes. I could sense, though, his arrow that was aimed for my hind heel and hear the groaning of his bowstring when he stretched it taught. In that instant, I felt the vibration of the string's release as the arrow hissed through afternoon and found the tender flesh just above my hoof. I stumbled from the strike, bashing my antlers on the ground in my imbalance, but soon regained myself as I was forced to run through the pain--if I wanted to survive, that is. I didn't think about the blood that crept further down my fur, marring the auburn. I grunted against the throbbing in my head, dashing through the haze and blurry vision.
He was close behind; I heard his footsteps as they trampled the dead leaves and broken twigs. My ears itched and burned from the warning sounds and his shallow, controlled panting. If he'd been traveling by horse rather than on foot, I'd stake my life that I'd currently be a wall mount. More shafts whisked passed my rump and shoulders as I sprinted haphazardly through the foliaged protection of the thicket. They whispered of death and laughed at my former arrogance when they wizzed passed, but none met with my flesh in order to fulfill that promise, fortunate as I was.
Since I was allowed to reach the haven of our cottage, I knew something was amiss. I was an injured animal, lame and a much easier target. So why didn?t he take me down right then and there at the lake? Why did he only intimidate me with his arrows instead of hit me? I didn?t know? And Relena?s gasp when she saw me enter the dwelling didn?t leave me the opportunity to find out.
Her earlier premonition was realized as I stood before her with a partial lean on my left side and breath that left my lungs in wheezes from the exertion; my legs quivered from exhaustion and perspiration speckled my damp, matted coat. I watched her small hand, wrapped in sunbeams and reflected shadows, extend towards my heel and nearly skim the angry red, sallow wound? But then her fingers cautiously pulled back to hover at her breast.
Those cerulean eyes shimmered in the backdrop of the loft, with their sparkling, unshed tears framing her pity for me in a window of liquid crystal. Relena turned her face away and broke that glass into scintillant, fluid shards that cut her face, and walked over to the fire she had started in the center of the home. She lifted the cauldron from over the blaze, filled with scalding water that gurgled and bubbled and steamed, and dipped a tattered, white cloth into the brew. A few herbs and wilted roots were added for potency, to make an adequate paste for the poultice she concoted from the broth, and then she smeared the freshly made mustard over the dripping rag. I laid down when she left the room to stand outside, blurred by the window?s filthy glass clouded with dust and grime. Her silhouette crouched in the sunlight.
I heard nothing as I waited for her to reemerge from the woods. Nothing but a soft, sad sigh that the wind carried back to me, wafting in through one of the cracks in the mud-filled wall. She was afraid, fearing loneliness. My death.
My sister reentered the cottage and wound the compress around my leg; the fibers reeked of the child?s urine. Regardless of the fact that our bodies excreted the toxin, it was thought to be the most sterile ingredient for healing in our time and a very intimate gesture for her to make.
The caress of her fingertips along the cloth and her quick kiss on my back-- The touches dulled my pain, with the throbs deadening to a mere pulsation as we lay amidst the hay together. The feeble straws mated with her hair in a stubby, silken fountain that cascaded down my shoulders and gathered like liquid gold ribbons through my antlers. We were entwined, rendered inseparable in the twilight that dulled the land to a sheet of silver and blue rain, absent of any other hues in the pentangles? light. Their scorched glow singed the darkness with a twinkling rapier, with a few swings of their fiery points.
We heard the winds howling through the rickety panels, as though composing a nocturne in the offing, blanketing the summer night in an ominous frost that settled on the gale.
The children had returned.
They smelled my blood on the breeze. It made them drunk for damnation?s odor as it smelled of simmering sweat and charred remains, stalking the trees for the one who was rank with the stench of injury. But they couldn?t reach me here within the cottage walls; they couldn't enter without being invited. And so they circled the dwelling in a spectral ring, their lament a prayer for me to admit condemnation at their side and be lulled by their spell. To find an asylum in chaos.
But then my sister?s voice rose above that somber dirge, shattering malevolence with grief as her staves and the gloom of her lyrics resounded drowsily. Her head rested on my back as she mouthed her roundelay, transforming the night's former nocturne into a requiem. A madrigal despondent and sincere.
When the moon on a cloud cast night
Hung above the tree tops height
You sang to me of some distant past
That made my heart beat strong and fast
Now I know I?m home at last
* * * *
One final day of the hunt remained, and I rose before the break of dawn, leaving Relena asleep beside the smoldered cinders of the fire, replacing the absence of my body?s warmth with the dying embers.
The day was spent as the two before it: outrunning the stallions and their fellow curs as I jumped over ridges and picket fences to throw off their trails. But when night approached upon the wooded land, harboring a deceitful serenity in its arrival, I looked back during my trek home to find two of the huntsmen still following me, so deep into the bracken as it was. Usually after I wandered far enough into the trees, the men would get discouraged and turned back towards the kingdom and to their own families-- But these two didn?t. They tracked me down but seemed uninterested in slaying me; for their horses stayed at a steady trot through the dense terrain, only heightening their pace when I quickened mine. As far as I could guess, they were pursuing me, in the truest sense of the word. Not for the outcome of casualty or retrieval, but to just observe my wandering. As if they took a particular interest in me versus all the other bucks that leapt across the green.
I led them to the house, hidden beneath the ancient, ruffled oaks that towered above. But instead of walking to the door and asking shelter of my sister, I made a detour for the rosebushes in full bloom nearby, intent on watching these two as their steeds slowed to a halt when the cottage came into sight.
I couldn?t go into the dwelling. Not yet. Because doing so would risk the strangers overhearing the passphrase and gaining entrance, perhaps with the desire for a maid that they could whisk away, a virgin to molest as she hid herself from the more brutish sex. A beautiful girl who has kept her maidenhood this long-- Maybe they would be the lucky ones to possess it now.
But they wouldn?t take my sister away from me. They wouldn?t defile her while I lived. These men would have to hunt me down... or I would kill them first.
The muscles in the backs of my legs tensed as the men loitered in the moon?s shadow, obscuring their faces from all eyes but each other?s, all but dim, pretentious figures in the twilight. I perked my ears and listened to their conversation when they decided what was to be done.
And I would make neither sound nor stir until I knew their intentions? And needed to stop them.
"I don?t see why we?re here, Majesty." I recognized that voice, the apathy of the yeoman who followed me yesterday and almost chasing me to my death. That same emotionless tone and poise as he who struck me with his arrow-- And the king with him. "It?s one deer," this green-eyed archer questioned his comrade?s motives as he pulled back on the reins to steady his rearing stallion. The man?s hair fell over his right eye as it was tossed in the moonlight.
"It wears a collar around its neck, Trowa, and escaped me," the monarch responded to the other as his monotone commanded silence from the bracken, the statement deafening nightfall. "I want to know where it got the garter and if that has anything to do with its ability to elude me," he explained as he dismounted his horse and set his gaze upon the cottage only a few feet away, winding Wing Zero?s reins around the nearest branch.
"I understand," Trowa replied as he followed the king?s example, descending from his horse and standing beside his master. "But we may be disturbing a family who knows nothing about the deer. They could have little ones," he pointed out, furrowing his brow at the nobleman. "And the last thing you need is for them to say that you tried to kidnap their children."
"Well I?m not planning on abducting anybody?s children," Heero deliberately stated to his companion when he began to approach the home, the moss on the roof glistening in crumpled silver as the water retained by the thatch reflected in the pale light. "So no one should try to claim that I did."
The man with the celadon gaze kept his face stoic at the sovereign?s almost sarcastic reply, watching as the king studied the door that barred his entrance, I would think to contemplate the best way to interrupt those inside without creating any unnecessary commotion.
"Knock on the door three times," the taller interjected his companion?s thoughts to offer a solution, "and say, ?My Little Sister, let me in.? The door will be opened for you."
I began to approach them from behind. Cautiously?back arched with the lunar glow mirrored along my spine and my antlers lowered in a challenging stance as the two attempted to enter the house. But when I heard what the yeoman said? I froze.
"I must confess: I share your interest for that buck, and I followed him here after I wounded him the other day. He did exactly as I told you when he came here, and he was granted entrance."
Giving his attendant a cold glance, I would imagine for keeping such information about the mission from his knowledge, the blue-eyed noble reached his hand out to the door and let it wrap thrice against the wood, parting his lips slightly to mutter the phrase that would give him leave to step within: "My Little Sister, let me in."
The door creaked with a steady flood of light and swelling caress of warmth, like a fire?s rain as it showered the grass and fallen leaves in the soft waving of its flames, drenching them with incinerate splashes of tawny saffron and contoured orange. And there, with sweltering tongues casting shadows across her face and shoulders and breasts as the fire swayed in a coalesced waltz with moonbeams, stood my sister. Her hands were white as they clutched the hem of her dress, startled when her eyes noticed the figures standing motionless in the doorway. Two men? And neither one her brother.
I stopped breathing, wary that I should disturb the interaction taking place with something so dumb and garbled, watching as the king and maiden?s blue eyes met. Silence was their translator. Empathy their common tongue.
Heero gazed at the woman with something akin to wonder in his eyes, orbs that were usually devoid of all but emptiness now filled with the illusion of the blaze as it merged their shadows on the wall, one silhouette inseparable of the other while they kissed together by the ashen hearth. Anamorphous lips touched their faceless cheeks with an ethereal star?s gleam. A union of darker selves amidst the cinders.
But her eyes, I could tell, those eyes as they glimmered with a reflection of compassion contrary to the world?s ignorance, of sufferance and urgency-- They struck him listless while he watched her in the faint light. It was a shared intensity. Her expression of fear was masked by a will to survive, the need to be reprehensible even amidst oppression? Those were his eyes, his countenance that night the assailant twisted the arrow in his father?s back. When blood spewed onto the his legs and the ground beneath him. When the attacker turned the knife on his flesh.
There was only Heero and Relena.
They shared the same vision... the same soul. There, in the smolder of the firelight, one spirit touched another, casting off the body and rendering the mind helpless to what a soul desires. Empathy.
It was too blatant to not see, even if I didn?t want to admit it. And I didn?t at the time. I tried to keep my mind blank of anything, unable to remove her from the memories of the little girl I?d known. Of the child that knew me as the only man in her life and could only see me.
But could Heero ignore her, a girl who shared his same miserable childhood... understood the torture he felt those years ago?
"She?s a farmer?s bitch," Trowa interrupted this intimate trance to point out such an obvious conclusion, his voice unfazed by the tension between his sovereign and the maid as the yeoman noticed the grime on her cheeks and matching grease on her gowns. "But a pretty one nonetheless." Turning away from the door, his words meant to pull Heero from his reverie and a potentially dangerous situation for the monarch?s already slanderous reptuation, the archer added, "She?s not our concern."
But the king didn't move in the way Trowa had originally wanted, I think, for Heero broke his gaze with Relena?s only to make his intentions clear to the servant as he inquired, voice low and husky, "How many of our men are hunting near here?"
"About fifteen, my Lord, but..." and then the archer understood why his superior had asked him such a question. She was alone, vulnerable, beautiful. The perfect prey for a few huntsmen that had too much to drink that day, looking for sport as they rode through the brush so late in the evening. As I thought they had been. "I reiterate that her welfare is not our responsibility, Sire. She won?t be in any danger if she stays in doors."
But Heero ignored this sage advice as he extended his hand towards my sister, limb illumined in the dying flames that licked at his fingers while he waited for her hand. "Come with us. We?ll escort you to a safer place," he explained to her, voice still hoarse but with no inflection of any kind.
But Relena refused to follow, her hand loosening from around her dress to set itself in a fist at her side, stance becoming rigid and defiant even as he tried to be gentle with her.
"I asked you to come." His voice turned gruff, dangerous with her obstinacy.
She stood silently for a moment at his request, her eyes narrowing as she squelched any modicum of fear that was left in her veins. Lips pursed in contempt.
"I won?t go," she whispered over the crackling of the fire, eyes once again set firm with his as she challenged him under the moon?s observance. "Your offer appears kind, but it?s hypocrisy. You?ve been anything but kind to me tonight." Her fist shook. "You killed my roe, and for that I can never forgive you." Angry tears threatened her eyes. "I'd rather be raped by all your men than take one step out there with you."
"If he wears a golden collar, then he?s alive," the king responded as he lowered his hand, straightening his posture as well in the dim light. If she was going to be stubborn, then he could be just as difficult. "He?s hidden in the bushes, watching us."
She opened her mouth to say something in return, but gasped when she noticed me skulk up to the door like he'd said. As much as I would have liked to prove him wrong and pit my sister against him, I couldn?t do it at her expense. I couldn?t let her worry about me with no need to. So I showed myself, alive and well.
She looked into Heero's Prussian blue eyes, the same darkness as the midnight sky that reigned in this surreal night, only broken by the few stars that flickered against its haunting spell--the emotions that flashed across his eyes in the writhing of the flames. Her own turquoise ones searched for answers amidst those spewing craters, brimming in a past of battle's blood and subsequent pain. A sheet of mental steel that locked away those teeming hollows from her stare.
She received nothing from them.
Pulling off the silver medallion from around his neck, never breaking with Relena's eyes, the king handed the ornament to the yeoman. He turned his attention to the elder man in confidence and while fingering the glittering family crest, he instructed, "Place this around the deer?s neck and stand watch outside. No one is to hunt that animal by my command."
Trowa accepted the pendant in his grip, its chain dangling over his wrist and lower arm, but moved his head slowly to the left--then to the right--and then back to the left again. He passed his judgment on the other man?s course of action before he did as he was asked, disappearing outside the doorframe to keep watch over me. His eyes diligently scoured the brush for breathing, fleshy shadows that hid themselves in the foliage, just waiting for the perfect moment to fire. The kingdom's rogues.
Damn the king?s concern? That medallion was heavy.
Heero brought his attention back to my sister as he rested his gaze upon her once more, her countenance still startled but now a look of confusion more finely etched, her mouth agape as a few of her tresses fell against her face?upon her mouth.
"Will you come now?"
Turning her face away, eyes seeming so interested in the silhouette of the flames as they danced in fervor across the floor and watched the few stray embers that were carried by the wind and singed the overgrown grass just outside the doorway-- Relena nodded her head. Heero held out his hand, hers coming to meet it slowly. Apparently, her doubt in his intentions lingered still, menacingly taunting her courage. Causing her body to tremble. She seemed almost ashamed of herself, that she permitted her softness to brush his skin-- That she couldn?t stop herself from following him as he pulled her out of the cottage and into the full depth of the moonlight. Entranced. Hypnotized by him, I'd say.
Now they were the ghostly youth that roamed across the veiled, occult midnight, their breathing a sensual nocturne as the mythril light illumined their skin and warped it with the mists of empyrean. The passionate, seductive dream of two lovers on the pastoral hillside--a numinous oracle.
The Shaking of an Antlered Head
I watched them as they walked over to Heero?s stallion, the archer following the two close behind to make sure their touch remained neutral. His eyes were constantly on their entwined fingers, on the syncopated rise and fall of their chests-- When the raven's cry sounded overhead. Its laughter sent the forest into chaos as the alpha wolf tried to chase the shifter from its territory with remonstration to the canine's lunar mistress. But the aerial shriek only drowned the wail. Owls gargled a screech and voiced their contempt at the winged demon, for by legend, the raven's call means imminent death for the one who hears the cackle first.
The black bird made itself known as it swooped down from the branches and set its hunger on my sister's form, cutting her wrists with the beating of its wings and clawing at her moonlight eyes. Blood and scrapes ran down down her milk-white face. Yes-- The moon bled that night, mirroring Relena?s injury in that crimson sheen that blotched the sky. Even the land was dismal. The bird snagged her hair in its beak, pulling at the strands and nipping at the rooted skin to tie her hair in ribbons and bands of blood? When Heero himself jumped on top of her. He shielded her from the demon and unsheathed his sword to put an end to the animal?s attack.
The creature would not hurt the king, however, and as it saw the monarch holding the blond-haired maid it gave a frustrated wail to the darkness, tearing its talons from his arm. Cornflower eyes streaked with anathema flashed across the entangled two. It retreated from them as quickly as it appeared, leaving the woods once again quiet and victim of the night's silent air. My sister?s wounds were the only witnesses to the bird?s presence ever descending to the earth. A hellish premonition, I now realize.
He let a few moments of reticence pass before Heero lifted himself from Relena?s body, pulling her into a sitting position as his eyes scoured her form for any serious wounds. Slowly. Concentrated. Relena was still dazed and just trying to catch her breath.
But if you ask me, he was gazing at her a little too intently, hands running through her hair a little too intimately as he massaged her scalp. His eyes were blank but focused-- Very focused. And I voiced my opposition to these fondles with a snort and vindictive snot, a noise that quieted the even savage, twitching Wing Zero that was anxious to embark.
"I trust you?re all right, Master Heero," the green-eyed man stated to the other kneeling in the leaves, as the yeoman was already mounted and leading his horse to a stop just beside its fellow stallion. Trowa reached for the beast?s reins and freed them from the branch for Heero to grab. "We have to get going if you want to take her. The court?s already anticipating your return."
"Understood," the king replied as he took the reins and hoisted himself to his feet, stepping up into the saddle and looking back over to Trowa. "The roebuck can follow behind us. She?ll ride with you."
"I don?t think so, Majesty," the archer challenged him as he leaned back in his saddle at the command. Posture defiant. Eyebrows lifted slightly into an expression as mischievous as he could manage. "I?m against taking her at all, so if you want to bring her to her kin then she will be under your supervision. My allegiance is to you, not her."
"I?m ordering you."
"And when have you ever known me to obey absurd commands?" Trowa questioned his long-time captain and acquaintance with a sort of smugness, sitting patiently and waiting for an answer that would contradict him.
The king said nothing, although I?m sure he picked up on the hidden insult in the statement, since his eyes narrowed somewhat at his comrade. The gesture was barely evident in the darkness that surrounded Heero on his steed, especially when the man was so careful to conceal emotion of any kind. It seemed to be his hallmark, that mysteriousness of character. Obscurity his metaphysical guardian.
"You could always let her walk if you?re so much against her sitting up there with you." That damnably witty yeoman-- He really wasn?t helping the situation with his innuendos.
Heero sat atop his horse quietly, reflectively-- Seriously. An efficacious hardness to his expression. He looked down at Relena standing beside his stallion, watching him decide with her tired, patient eyes that just waitied for his command, one way or the other? When he tugged on Wing Zero?s bridle and turned the horse around. He disappeared into the thickness of the trees, with the smell of his earthen, metallic sweat lingering on the breeze--but giving no indication to his whereabouts. Trowa was still for a moment as he listened for the horse's pants and turned his head to sift through the blackness for an animate shape, trying to infer what the Perfect Soldier was up to. Attempting to read the sovereign's impusle.
But he didn't need to.
In a gaining thunder, the thrash of the stallion?s gallop across the dirt yard emanated from behind Relena, in a brutal, corporeal shadow of a horseman and steed that barraged her from the nullity and advanced with the handler?s arm outstretched. He reached for the woman?s body in that darkness, in one, swift motion snatching her in his left arm and hoisting her into the saddle behind him. He gave a sudden kick to the stallion?s side and the animal sped up in response, snorting in the moonlight while its hooves pounded faster and harder. Relena?s squeal was stifled by her captor?s back as she pressed her face into his cloak against the beating wind, frantically throwing her arms around his mid-section to keep herself from tumbling off the animal and chancing a broken neck. Her hair was lavished by the blustery gusts their ride spurred, a tumultuous waterfall that drenched their backs in silky, stranded breakers as the moonbeams turned gold into mythrill and dull blue against the dimness.
"We?re leaving!" the king stated in a raised voice as he and my sister sped in front of us and made a sudden left when just clear of the circle of oak trees surrounding the cottage, then disappearing beyond the curtain of the shrubbery.
I immediately ran to follow them, as I wouldn?t let him get too far ahead of me with my sister at his back-- But the archer simply nudged his horse into a gentle gallop, not in a hurry to catch up with his master and the woman clinging to Heero's abdomen. Apparently, he knew that Heero would eventually slow down to let Relena regain herself from the sponteneity of her arraignment, for she still clutched violently at his torso and buried her head even deeper into his shoulder blades the farther down the path they cantered.
* * * *
We hadn?t been riding long, only about twenty minutes or so, but already our pace was set. I stayed trotting behind Heero's stallion, keeping a close eye on my sister and noticing how her hold on the man had begun to slacken the longer we rode on. It was strange-- Her eyes stared out into the dark but appeared to actually see and register nothing. They were glazed over, as though the rhythmic hoof-beats of the horse were lulling her into an empyrean of illusory peace. Lost in the hidden comfort of mental emptiness and the warmth of human flesh beneath her hands. Taken to a place where she could just forget and be a normal, bonny maid. No bewitched brother or fatal memories. Just Relena.
Heero sat erect in the saddle, in an uncomfortable rigidity that kept as much distance between her touch and his skin as possible, with his sight leveled firmly on the road-- Not even turning back to glance at the yeoman or be sure I was following. His eyes were intense but completely without visual focus. Distracted, I think. Because his mind was set on one thing.
Protecting my sister.
And Trowa? Trowa was an interesting man, to say the least. His horse sauntered lazily beside me, and the man controlling the beast appeared utterly bored with the entire situation, as if he thought the whole thing was not only foolish but a complete waste of his time. For although the archer seemed to admire Heero?s skills on the battlefield and ceded him credit where credit was due, he wasn?t particularly impressed with the monarch?s social reactions. Which was understandable, since they were, to a certain extent, impulsive-- Yet well-thought out. Impromptu-- But always necessary. And they were never consistent. The young king acted on his emotions, a concept that, although the yeoman seemed to realize, didn?t understand himself. The sovereign was more soldier than ruler, more rational than emotional-- Yet he followed whatever feelings he did have.
The Perfect Soldier Heero Yuy was, in all its definition, a paradox.
"Do you know where your nearest relatives live?" Trowa asked as he looked down to me from his stallion and then turned his head back to his master and my sister only a few feet in front of us. "I don?t think Heero?s about to disturb the woman for that information, and I'd like to know if we?re even headed in the right direction." His tone was very factual, without the slightest hint of annoyance or any other feeling, for that matter.
I tried to explain to him that we were orphans, and that the only kin we had we ran away from for fear of death... whether it be hers or ours. But all that came out was a grunt-- A pathetic one, too. The corners of his lips quirked up in an amused smirk, as if trying not to laugh at the ridiculous sound I produced.
He had no idea what I said.
It was then I realized that Relena was the only one who could understand me, perhaps because she was there when I was transformed. Maybe she just knew me well enough to be able to read my emotions. Maybe she really couldn't and just bluffed it really well. Whatever the case, it didn?t help me answer the yeoman?s question.
"I didn?t think you?d be able to tell me."
But then Heero proved his comrade wrong, for just as Trowa was about to take up the aforementioned issue with the king, mouth already opened to relay his concern, Heero?s voice rose up against the stillness to inquire, "Where is your father?s cabin?"
Relena didn?t seem to hear him, though; she just continued saying nothing. She still looked entranced by the steadiness of the horse?s hooves beneath her. Mesmerized by the roughness of the sovereign's skin.
"Woman," he said a little more gruffly this time, causing my sister?s eyes to widen at being pulled from her musings and breath catch as she brought her gaze to rest upon the back of his neck and lower ear. "Are we going the right direction to your father?s home?"
"We..." she began, but hesitated as she decided to change what she was going to say. "My father was murdered when I was only a little girl." I saw the king?s shoulders stiffen at the mention of "father" and "murder" together in the same sentence. I suppose it reminded him of his own misfortune long ago. "And my mother died giving birth to me." An extended, gruesome silence. "We have nowhere to go."
"Then we?ll have to bring..."
"I give you my empathy," Heero replied to my sister dispassionately, forcedly, cutting off the rest of the yeoman?s statement. "The loss of a father can be difficult."
"Did you lose your father... your Majesty?" my sister questioned him with blue eyes that sparkled from her sadness, taking her hand from around his waist and laying it on his shoulder. Her thumb absently massaged the skin beneath his tunic, inticing a sharp intake of breath from the king.
But before he could answer one way or another, Trowa kicked his horse into a gallop until it trotted beside his master's steed, almost with a sense of urgency to interfere with the reply. He warned her: "The king?s past is not your affair, and you shouldn't speak to him unless spoken to." And then grabbing her wrist so harshly, to break her contact and make her look him in his eyes, he lowered his voice and whispered, "Some things are better left untouched." He released her wrist from his grip, allowing his horse to fall back once more.
Gliding her other hand over Heero's arm and resting it on his shoulder, she nestled her head into the crook of his neck, gently squeezing his upper arms and pressing her lips softly against his back, and whispered, "I?m sorry that your father?s gone." It caused Heero to turn his head a little, enough so that he could see her golden hair that rubbed against his neck and see her eyes closed for him in sympathy. Just simply watching her lips as her breathing stirred them and noticing the twitching of her lashes.
He brought Wing Zero to an abrupt halt only a few moments later, shrugging off Relena?s hold on him and dismounting the animal before turning back to Trowa, saying, "It?s too late for us to turn back tonight." His monotone was solid as he led his stallion to a bed of dry leaves under the shelter of a few dead pines. "We?ll stop here for now." He entangled the horse's reins in one of the lower branches of a tree. "In the morning we?ll return her to the grove. The hunt ends at midnight; men won't be a threat to her then."
"The court is waiting for you. They?ll send a search party," the yeoman reminded him as the green-eyed man mimicked Heero?s actions. "If they discover you with this woman," his eyes settled on my sister for a moment, "they?ll label you a whore chaser, Sire." Heero seemed unfazed by the title and grunted carelessly, when Trowa?s voice grew low, almost dangerous. "And she?ll be your harlot."
Heero?s eyes traveled to Relena as the archer mentioned the word "harlot" to describe her. His brow knotted at the thought, as she crossed her arms over her chest--his scrutiny much colder and more prodding than before.
She shivered. Silence reigned for a few moments.
"If I bring her to the palace with me," he began in contemplation of his options, closing his eyes as if the choice were clear, "they'll consider her my whore without question." The king held out his arms and caught my sister when she slid out of the saddle, bringing his left arm beneath the crook of her knees and carrying her over to the bed of leaves. "My father once told me that the only way to live life is to act on your emotions. If we stay this deep in the woods there?s a good chance they won?t find us. Her honor may be spared."
Heero then grabbed the servant's arm, bringing Trowa's face close so that only they two could hear his words, Relena watching them indignantly from her bedding. She never liked when people (namely me) kept secrets from her, especially when they directly concerned her.
But they forgot that a deer has much better hearing than any human.
"She?s innocence, Trowa, and you know that. You know that I have to protect her." Heero's grip shook. "I won?t make the same mistake twice." His sentence faded while he released his hold on the archer, turning away from Trowa to walk back towards Relena. But as he passed by the motionless yeoman, he stopped to add, with determination in his eyes, "I will protect her."
He stopped next to Relena, taking off his cloak and setting it on the grass to serve as a crude mattress.
"Against your better judgement," Trowa muttered to himself in finishing Heero?s thought. He too pulled his cloak off his shoulders and spread it across the dirt, then untied the front of his tunic. He did it unembarrassed and right in front of my sister, who refelxively turned away blushing-- And I thought I saw Heero?s eyes flicker at his attendant.
With jealousy?
"I?m sure I can find my own way back home," Relena interjected diplomatically. "Midnight?s not far off, so you won?t have to worry about the hunters. Besides, my roe will protect me." Heero?s hand on her shoulder instantly stopped her protests, by which he gently nudged her onto the leaves and into a reclining position.
"You should sleep while you can."
Realizing he wasn?t giving her room to argue, she turned on her side away from him, frustrated, I think, and closed her eyes, reaching out her hand to call me to her. I obeyed without complaint and lay down beside her, using my fur to keep her warm and licking her back to relax her straining muscles. She was disconcerted. Had lost control of the situation. And that made her nervous.
If only I'd known how disoriented she was. Then maybe I could have prevented all this.
But why question the past?
I didn?t let myself close my eyes, though. Not until I saw both Heero and the yeoman lay down and their breathing become slow and even, an indication that they?d fallen asleep. Then I let sleep overtake me too, but not before giving one final glance over to the nobleman that slept so close to us. He that didn't even want to leave Relena unattended in his dreams.
Finally... Heero meets Relena (it's taken long enough, hasn't it?), with a pretty explicit lime coming up in the next chapter. Enjoy!!!
Disclaimer: I don't own GW or "Brother and Sister."
The summer in which my sister turned eighteen, a very young and relentless prince inherited the throne of the kingdom just outside our woods. It was rumored that he and his father were attacked one afternoon on a hunting venture, and while the former king was later found wallowing in his own blood, the prince survived. The corpse of the monarch was mutilated, cut, sliced, and butchered, with the eyes pried out of the skull, leaving empty sockets that dripped with fat and rotting meat.
Fate took him by the hand and led him home that stormy night, I would overhear the woodsmen say as I stood unbeknownst to them in the tall grass of the fields, feeding on the weeds made fresh by the morning?s rain. Some claimed that one of the soldiers who found him actually saw the decrepit figure of the Demon as She laid the almost lifeless boy upon the bridge. Through the mist Her shiney, bony fingers clinched and then released as She disappeared into the dimness of the fog, a hunchback shadow vanishing from human eyes. But that was merely legend, a tale fabricated to add some excitement to the droll lives of the villagers, such drudgery they toiled from dusk to following dawn. There was no validity to such a claim, and I doubt there ever will be. It was a mystery, one that not even the king himself could answer or chose not to?be that as it may. Not even he could recall how he managed his return.
But one thing was sure: he was avid for revenge against the man that slew his father and robbed the cadaver of its sight, defaming the former king's body as well as royalty?s honor. And so he threw himself into the disciplines and brutality of the military and learned the finer points of swordsmanship. He waged war where negotiation would have sufficed, adding dominion after dominion to his already substantial empire. One body after another.
At first his subjects thought this yearn for vengeance would ebb as the seasons came and passed, degenerating in his memory to be nothing more than a child?s immature, embodied nightmare. He would then be able to grant forgiveness where revenge could not be had.
But it didn?t.
He slaughtered more men, conquered more lands as he followed the trail to that long lost murderer, soon brooding in apathy and an ally with retributive holocaust as he intensified his search. "The Perfect Soldier" they called him as he reigned in battle victoriously upon his warhorse wild. He called the beast Wing Zero, for upon the creature?s back the prince flew across the fields, leaving no man standing as he held out his blade, ready to polish it in human flesh. A man? One callous to his fellow warriors' screams and the tragedy of familial wailing, and all remorse hidden behind a face as stoic as stone. It only crumbled with his glare, one that foretold the death of its onlooker in an expanse of Prussian paralysis. Cold amidst the warmth of blood, extinguishing the heat of widows? tears. His mind was only focused on the battle and its end. Nothing more.
Then finally, six years after the incident, he met face to face with the man he killed so many others for. His ultimate victim. He brought the traitor to his knees and plunged the sword into the man?s back, bracing himself with a foot upon the crumpled pile of meat. The Perfect Soldier slowly, torturously slid the blade from the man?s flesh, letting the blood spray the wife and child that stood watching in the corner of the hovel. Quaking, squealing, terrified as they were with Heero's cruelty--not knowing of the slain man?s crime. He then brought the drooling saber to the murderer?s throat and made an exploited, jagged slit. Not clean. Not precise. Just painful. No more than a merciless act.
And then this prince turned to the woman and shrieking babe that was squirming in her arms. There was a plea. The sheen of metal. Wailing. Groaning. Stiffling. With a silence robed in blood.
It was a robe he was doomed to wear, perhaps not on his skin but deep within himself... in a place where at that moment, when his chest heaved raggedly over what he?d done, his heart stood still. He was drenched in their blood, reeked of saltwater and spoilage. This boy was smeared in innocence?s beseech for forgiveness. In the dark red color of love?s cry against hatred and reprisal.
It's ironic, though, for he had, in slaying oblivious mother and child, killed that little boy who years ago watched that same malice claim his father. The prince, so blinded by resentment, murdered himself that day.
He would never forget, never be pardoned. He wouldn't allow it. It's so pitiful, that he had his vengeance, and the murderer still held victory in his stiffened fingers. Heero couldn't obtain it, since the clutch of a corpse is futile to pry open, heartless to sorrow once the heart within stops beating.
This knowledge kept the monarch enslaved to the past with the blood on his own two hands, making gory chains around his wrists that never loosened... always choked him harder when he tried to forget. Each time he glanced down at his hands the blood became redder and deeper and more engulfing. It stained his skin and glowed with the ferocity of his guilt, lapping at his entire being. He was haunted by his carnage, which jarred him from sleep in a cold sweat that chilled his body and soul.
This king mourned alone, repressing his grief like he had done those years before, breathing a word to no one about the slaughter. He felt it was the only sacrifice he could make to atone for his ruthlessness: to suffer more extensively than they had. So he damned himself and filled his heart and mind with grief and insatiable reproach.
It consumed him and overflowed.
People eventually learned of what happened, and the legend spread quickly. It was inevitable. The bodies were left there in his shock-- Someone had to find them. But people didn?t hear it from him. No? Never from him.
* * * *
Supposedly, in honor of the prince's coronation, the court announced a three-day hunt as, I guess, a sort of commemoration to the fact that the former king had died while doing just the same, that which had been his favorite sport. The man who took down the largest beast would dine beside the new king at the banquet immediately following the chase, a feast prepared from the kill?s meat. It would have been a noble honor for any man.
But not for me.
I may have been a man once before and still within, but now the beast came before the man, a slave to my instincts as they sometimes surpassed my better judgment. It was a curse to be so vulnerable to those primitive, animalistc senses, but I learned to use my human guile to my advantage when in the field, to keep from being the prey of "stronger" creatures. Wolves had nothing on me; they were merely ceremonial, moon stalking cravens. And their cousin foxes couldn't tease me without getting my hoof in their mouths as a retort-- That usually subdued them for a while. Whether they had teeth and claws or not, I could never acknowledge myself as being a weaker animal than those sniveling cowards that skulked away as I approached the forest stream. Their ferocity was more reptuation than actual.
And being the roebuck that I was, I couldn't resist the seductive, almost sultry pant of the hounds as they scoured for prey long into the midnight hour. The hunters chased on their heels, as the risen moon brought forth the curs? more feral nature; their eyes and fangs glinted wildly in the darkness. Their howls and warning barks resonated for man and wolf kin alike, with their ode to the moon sending chills down my spine when it echoed over the hillside?delicious shudders that tingled of defiance and beckoned me to challenge the whelps? cunning. The clatter of horses? hooves upon the undergrowth wooed me to cross their tracks, since the beasts' whinnies grew scarce as dusk stilled the forest to a faint lull. I could elude their tired steps easily.
The call of predator to prey rushed through me delectably as I watched the horsemen in the distant brush, my yearn to join them in the chase only becoming more urgent as I saw a hare slip through the canines? clutches before the dogs could give the fatal nip. Every nerve in my body hinted its need to run alongside those beasts, to lure them in and out of vagrant trees, to outwit them. It was my duty as the prey.
I told Relena what I desired, how I had to obey my natural instincts as those animals did theirs? But she would hear none of my excuses. She'd become more willful over the past few years, probably due to the fact that Stepmother was no longer there to intimidate her with the whip.
Then again, she was always one to stand up for her principles and the welfare of others--even if they had only been animals.
"Milliardo," she scolded me while my ears perked up at the patter of the dogs as they sprinted through the dirt and leaves, stirring dust into the rays of the midday sun. Her hands were set firmly at her sides as she tried to get my attention?the light from the window just out of reach of her hair, casting shadows on her troubled face. "Whether or not you look like a man, you are one. So you should think about what you?re asking me a little more rationally and stop giving in to your primitive side.
"You want me to let you step foot out of this house and get yourself killed. How reckless does that sound to you, now that you hear me say it?"
I heard the horses follow those whelps in the distance, not really what she said as well. Or at least it didn?t register in my mind.
"There aren?t just one or two hunters out there. There?s at least over twenty, and that?s just around here? Let alone on the other side of the woods."
What was she saying? It didn?t really matter.
"I gave you my word that I would protect you, Milliardo. That I would do what I can to stop you from being the victim of meaningless sport. But how can I possibly keep that promise if you throw yourself in front of danger? Purposely?"
I could have been out there, being hunted.
"But if you insist on going... I guess I can?t stop you."
What?
"As much as I disagree with your methods, it?s your decision to make. But I?d feel better if we had some sort of signal, so that I?ll know it?s you to open the door for in the evening."
I thought I was going to kick the door down I was so hungry to set my hooves upon the grass and gallop to the hunters? sides. And at that point I would have agreed to nearly anything if she would have just opened the door. So needless to say, her request was granted.
"When you return home after dark, you need to knock on the door three times and say, ?My Little Sister, let me in.? That way, I?ll know it?s you.
"But you're still making a huge mistake."
She walked over to the door, her expression cross and hand clenched in defeated frustration, and opened it, letting the sun pour inside the hovel and grant me freedom into the morning. The grass blades wafted in the mild zephyr that the earth respired... and in due time.
She was impertinent about the entire situation, fighting for what she thought was right for me. That's my Relena, always concerned with others before herslef.
But regardless, the thrill of a hunt well played was more than I anticipated, sending adrenaline through my blood and pumping it into my legs to gallop faster amidst the withered leaves and rustic ivy that tangled about my hooves. In being pursued, I bounded through the trees and rubbed my fur against the sodden hills, leading those boorish beasts down empty slopes of green as they sifted through the disturbed earth and changing breeze to inhale a nostril full of my scent. But they were rewarded with nothing more than a mock trail.
King Heero himself and his bestial companion were the only worthy opponents that I encountered that day, with the stallion?s eyes serving as a torch with lurid green flames that illumined the shade of the dense, teeming trees? A light for the hunter to ride by. The breath of his majesty?s ebony steed sent shivers through my hind legs when the animal?s sinew, clearly etched underneath that glossy sable pelt, carried it across the timberland with greater speed each time its hooves pummled the earth. They vaulted the horse an admirable distance, keeping him on my heels and knocking into my calves. The beast would snort and choke its resistance as Heero tugged on the reins and strangled the animal into compliance, with its mane wallowing against the lord?s face when the horse reared in the evening sun? Casting them as anomalous silhouettes against the dusk that spattered streaks of light behind them. The tendrils of the king fell over his face as the wind tangled in his strands, hiding dark, sapphire eyes in a mess of brown. Cold eyes... dead pools that held nothing but intense absence. But they hinted of a need to see me dead. Only then would his mission be complete.
But I evaded his stallion and escaped the blade, meeting Relena as the moon dawned in the starless sky. When we settled in for the night, she set her head upon my back and reflexively ran her fingers through my fur, with her breath mingling with my sweat. It reminded me of the horse's heavy grunts and so also those empty Prussian eyes.
I had survived the first day.
The second wouldn?t be so gracious, though. The men and hounds that hunted me lacked the monarch?s zeal, not even winding me as I retreated from their howls and pursuant yells into the heart of the thicket. It was too easy. Too distinct with the excitement of the previous day. I grew restless for a formidable foe, and so I let my guard down; got haughty about my evasion tactics; and began to take unnecessary risks while in the openness of the meadows: I jumped over fences in plain sight and stood at the streams while taking long, lazy drinks. I was a perfect stationary target.
I didn?t even hear him as he approached me, that russet-haired yeoman whose gaze of hollow emerald recoiled more readily than the king's blank, vacuous eyes. I could sense, though, his arrow that was aimed for my hind heel and hear the groaning of his bowstring when he stretched it taught. In that instant, I felt the vibration of the string's release as the arrow hissed through afternoon and found the tender flesh just above my hoof. I stumbled from the strike, bashing my antlers on the ground in my imbalance, but soon regained myself as I was forced to run through the pain--if I wanted to survive, that is. I didn't think about the blood that crept further down my fur, marring the auburn. I grunted against the throbbing in my head, dashing through the haze and blurry vision.
He was close behind; I heard his footsteps as they trampled the dead leaves and broken twigs. My ears itched and burned from the warning sounds and his shallow, controlled panting. If he'd been traveling by horse rather than on foot, I'd stake my life that I'd currently be a wall mount. More shafts whisked passed my rump and shoulders as I sprinted haphazardly through the foliaged protection of the thicket. They whispered of death and laughed at my former arrogance when they wizzed passed, but none met with my flesh in order to fulfill that promise, fortunate as I was.
Since I was allowed to reach the haven of our cottage, I knew something was amiss. I was an injured animal, lame and a much easier target. So why didn?t he take me down right then and there at the lake? Why did he only intimidate me with his arrows instead of hit me? I didn?t know? And Relena?s gasp when she saw me enter the dwelling didn?t leave me the opportunity to find out.
Her earlier premonition was realized as I stood before her with a partial lean on my left side and breath that left my lungs in wheezes from the exertion; my legs quivered from exhaustion and perspiration speckled my damp, matted coat. I watched her small hand, wrapped in sunbeams and reflected shadows, extend towards my heel and nearly skim the angry red, sallow wound? But then her fingers cautiously pulled back to hover at her breast.
Those cerulean eyes shimmered in the backdrop of the loft, with their sparkling, unshed tears framing her pity for me in a window of liquid crystal. Relena turned her face away and broke that glass into scintillant, fluid shards that cut her face, and walked over to the fire she had started in the center of the home. She lifted the cauldron from over the blaze, filled with scalding water that gurgled and bubbled and steamed, and dipped a tattered, white cloth into the brew. A few herbs and wilted roots were added for potency, to make an adequate paste for the poultice she concoted from the broth, and then she smeared the freshly made mustard over the dripping rag. I laid down when she left the room to stand outside, blurred by the window?s filthy glass clouded with dust and grime. Her silhouette crouched in the sunlight.
I heard nothing as I waited for her to reemerge from the woods. Nothing but a soft, sad sigh that the wind carried back to me, wafting in through one of the cracks in the mud-filled wall. She was afraid, fearing loneliness. My death.
My sister reentered the cottage and wound the compress around my leg; the fibers reeked of the child?s urine. Regardless of the fact that our bodies excreted the toxin, it was thought to be the most sterile ingredient for healing in our time and a very intimate gesture for her to make.
The caress of her fingertips along the cloth and her quick kiss on my back-- The touches dulled my pain, with the throbs deadening to a mere pulsation as we lay amidst the hay together. The feeble straws mated with her hair in a stubby, silken fountain that cascaded down my shoulders and gathered like liquid gold ribbons through my antlers. We were entwined, rendered inseparable in the twilight that dulled the land to a sheet of silver and blue rain, absent of any other hues in the pentangles? light. Their scorched glow singed the darkness with a twinkling rapier, with a few swings of their fiery points.
We heard the winds howling through the rickety panels, as though composing a nocturne in the offing, blanketing the summer night in an ominous frost that settled on the gale.
The children had returned.
They smelled my blood on the breeze. It made them drunk for damnation?s odor as it smelled of simmering sweat and charred remains, stalking the trees for the one who was rank with the stench of injury. But they couldn?t reach me here within the cottage walls; they couldn't enter without being invited. And so they circled the dwelling in a spectral ring, their lament a prayer for me to admit condemnation at their side and be lulled by their spell. To find an asylum in chaos.
But then my sister?s voice rose above that somber dirge, shattering malevolence with grief as her staves and the gloom of her lyrics resounded drowsily. Her head rested on my back as she mouthed her roundelay, transforming the night's former nocturne into a requiem. A madrigal despondent and sincere.
When the moon on a cloud cast night
Hung above the tree tops height
You sang to me of some distant past
That made my heart beat strong and fast
Now I know I?m home at last
* * * *
One final day of the hunt remained, and I rose before the break of dawn, leaving Relena asleep beside the smoldered cinders of the fire, replacing the absence of my body?s warmth with the dying embers.
The day was spent as the two before it: outrunning the stallions and their fellow curs as I jumped over ridges and picket fences to throw off their trails. But when night approached upon the wooded land, harboring a deceitful serenity in its arrival, I looked back during my trek home to find two of the huntsmen still following me, so deep into the bracken as it was. Usually after I wandered far enough into the trees, the men would get discouraged and turned back towards the kingdom and to their own families-- But these two didn?t. They tracked me down but seemed uninterested in slaying me; for their horses stayed at a steady trot through the dense terrain, only heightening their pace when I quickened mine. As far as I could guess, they were pursuing me, in the truest sense of the word. Not for the outcome of casualty or retrieval, but to just observe my wandering. As if they took a particular interest in me versus all the other bucks that leapt across the green.
I led them to the house, hidden beneath the ancient, ruffled oaks that towered above. But instead of walking to the door and asking shelter of my sister, I made a detour for the rosebushes in full bloom nearby, intent on watching these two as their steeds slowed to a halt when the cottage came into sight.
I couldn?t go into the dwelling. Not yet. Because doing so would risk the strangers overhearing the passphrase and gaining entrance, perhaps with the desire for a maid that they could whisk away, a virgin to molest as she hid herself from the more brutish sex. A beautiful girl who has kept her maidenhood this long-- Maybe they would be the lucky ones to possess it now.
But they wouldn?t take my sister away from me. They wouldn?t defile her while I lived. These men would have to hunt me down... or I would kill them first.
The muscles in the backs of my legs tensed as the men loitered in the moon?s shadow, obscuring their faces from all eyes but each other?s, all but dim, pretentious figures in the twilight. I perked my ears and listened to their conversation when they decided what was to be done.
And I would make neither sound nor stir until I knew their intentions? And needed to stop them.
"I don?t see why we?re here, Majesty." I recognized that voice, the apathy of the yeoman who followed me yesterday and almost chasing me to my death. That same emotionless tone and poise as he who struck me with his arrow-- And the king with him. "It?s one deer," this green-eyed archer questioned his comrade?s motives as he pulled back on the reins to steady his rearing stallion. The man?s hair fell over his right eye as it was tossed in the moonlight.
"It wears a collar around its neck, Trowa, and escaped me," the monarch responded to the other as his monotone commanded silence from the bracken, the statement deafening nightfall. "I want to know where it got the garter and if that has anything to do with its ability to elude me," he explained as he dismounted his horse and set his gaze upon the cottage only a few feet away, winding Wing Zero?s reins around the nearest branch.
"I understand," Trowa replied as he followed the king?s example, descending from his horse and standing beside his master. "But we may be disturbing a family who knows nothing about the deer. They could have little ones," he pointed out, furrowing his brow at the nobleman. "And the last thing you need is for them to say that you tried to kidnap their children."
"Well I?m not planning on abducting anybody?s children," Heero deliberately stated to his companion when he began to approach the home, the moss on the roof glistening in crumpled silver as the water retained by the thatch reflected in the pale light. "So no one should try to claim that I did."
The man with the celadon gaze kept his face stoic at the sovereign?s almost sarcastic reply, watching as the king studied the door that barred his entrance, I would think to contemplate the best way to interrupt those inside without creating any unnecessary commotion.
"Knock on the door three times," the taller interjected his companion?s thoughts to offer a solution, "and say, ?My Little Sister, let me in.? The door will be opened for you."
I began to approach them from behind. Cautiously?back arched with the lunar glow mirrored along my spine and my antlers lowered in a challenging stance as the two attempted to enter the house. But when I heard what the yeoman said? I froze.
"I must confess: I share your interest for that buck, and I followed him here after I wounded him the other day. He did exactly as I told you when he came here, and he was granted entrance."
Giving his attendant a cold glance, I would imagine for keeping such information about the mission from his knowledge, the blue-eyed noble reached his hand out to the door and let it wrap thrice against the wood, parting his lips slightly to mutter the phrase that would give him leave to step within: "My Little Sister, let me in."
The door creaked with a steady flood of light and swelling caress of warmth, like a fire?s rain as it showered the grass and fallen leaves in the soft waving of its flames, drenching them with incinerate splashes of tawny saffron and contoured orange. And there, with sweltering tongues casting shadows across her face and shoulders and breasts as the fire swayed in a coalesced waltz with moonbeams, stood my sister. Her hands were white as they clutched the hem of her dress, startled when her eyes noticed the figures standing motionless in the doorway. Two men? And neither one her brother.
I stopped breathing, wary that I should disturb the interaction taking place with something so dumb and garbled, watching as the king and maiden?s blue eyes met. Silence was their translator. Empathy their common tongue.
Heero gazed at the woman with something akin to wonder in his eyes, orbs that were usually devoid of all but emptiness now filled with the illusion of the blaze as it merged their shadows on the wall, one silhouette inseparable of the other while they kissed together by the ashen hearth. Anamorphous lips touched their faceless cheeks with an ethereal star?s gleam. A union of darker selves amidst the cinders.
But her eyes, I could tell, those eyes as they glimmered with a reflection of compassion contrary to the world?s ignorance, of sufferance and urgency-- They struck him listless while he watched her in the faint light. It was a shared intensity. Her expression of fear was masked by a will to survive, the need to be reprehensible even amidst oppression? Those were his eyes, his countenance that night the assailant twisted the arrow in his father?s back. When blood spewed onto the his legs and the ground beneath him. When the attacker turned the knife on his flesh.
There was only Heero and Relena.
They shared the same vision... the same soul. There, in the smolder of the firelight, one spirit touched another, casting off the body and rendering the mind helpless to what a soul desires. Empathy.
It was too blatant to not see, even if I didn?t want to admit it. And I didn?t at the time. I tried to keep my mind blank of anything, unable to remove her from the memories of the little girl I?d known. Of the child that knew me as the only man in her life and could only see me.
But could Heero ignore her, a girl who shared his same miserable childhood... understood the torture he felt those years ago?
"She?s a farmer?s bitch," Trowa interrupted this intimate trance to point out such an obvious conclusion, his voice unfazed by the tension between his sovereign and the maid as the yeoman noticed the grime on her cheeks and matching grease on her gowns. "But a pretty one nonetheless." Turning away from the door, his words meant to pull Heero from his reverie and a potentially dangerous situation for the monarch?s already slanderous reptuation, the archer added, "She?s not our concern."
But the king didn't move in the way Trowa had originally wanted, I think, for Heero broke his gaze with Relena?s only to make his intentions clear to the servant as he inquired, voice low and husky, "How many of our men are hunting near here?"
"About fifteen, my Lord, but..." and then the archer understood why his superior had asked him such a question. She was alone, vulnerable, beautiful. The perfect prey for a few huntsmen that had too much to drink that day, looking for sport as they rode through the brush so late in the evening. As I thought they had been. "I reiterate that her welfare is not our responsibility, Sire. She won?t be in any danger if she stays in doors."
But Heero ignored this sage advice as he extended his hand towards my sister, limb illumined in the dying flames that licked at his fingers while he waited for her hand. "Come with us. We?ll escort you to a safer place," he explained to her, voice still hoarse but with no inflection of any kind.
But Relena refused to follow, her hand loosening from around her dress to set itself in a fist at her side, stance becoming rigid and defiant even as he tried to be gentle with her.
"I asked you to come." His voice turned gruff, dangerous with her obstinacy.
She stood silently for a moment at his request, her eyes narrowing as she squelched any modicum of fear that was left in her veins. Lips pursed in contempt.
"I won?t go," she whispered over the crackling of the fire, eyes once again set firm with his as she challenged him under the moon?s observance. "Your offer appears kind, but it?s hypocrisy. You?ve been anything but kind to me tonight." Her fist shook. "You killed my roe, and for that I can never forgive you." Angry tears threatened her eyes. "I'd rather be raped by all your men than take one step out there with you."
"If he wears a golden collar, then he?s alive," the king responded as he lowered his hand, straightening his posture as well in the dim light. If she was going to be stubborn, then he could be just as difficult. "He?s hidden in the bushes, watching us."
She opened her mouth to say something in return, but gasped when she noticed me skulk up to the door like he'd said. As much as I would have liked to prove him wrong and pit my sister against him, I couldn?t do it at her expense. I couldn?t let her worry about me with no need to. So I showed myself, alive and well.
She looked into Heero's Prussian blue eyes, the same darkness as the midnight sky that reigned in this surreal night, only broken by the few stars that flickered against its haunting spell--the emotions that flashed across his eyes in the writhing of the flames. Her own turquoise ones searched for answers amidst those spewing craters, brimming in a past of battle's blood and subsequent pain. A sheet of mental steel that locked away those teeming hollows from her stare.
She received nothing from them.
Pulling off the silver medallion from around his neck, never breaking with Relena's eyes, the king handed the ornament to the yeoman. He turned his attention to the elder man in confidence and while fingering the glittering family crest, he instructed, "Place this around the deer?s neck and stand watch outside. No one is to hunt that animal by my command."
Trowa accepted the pendant in his grip, its chain dangling over his wrist and lower arm, but moved his head slowly to the left--then to the right--and then back to the left again. He passed his judgment on the other man?s course of action before he did as he was asked, disappearing outside the doorframe to keep watch over me. His eyes diligently scoured the brush for breathing, fleshy shadows that hid themselves in the foliage, just waiting for the perfect moment to fire. The kingdom's rogues.
Damn the king?s concern? That medallion was heavy.
Heero brought his attention back to my sister as he rested his gaze upon her once more, her countenance still startled but now a look of confusion more finely etched, her mouth agape as a few of her tresses fell against her face?upon her mouth.
"Will you come now?"
Turning her face away, eyes seeming so interested in the silhouette of the flames as they danced in fervor across the floor and watched the few stray embers that were carried by the wind and singed the overgrown grass just outside the doorway-- Relena nodded her head. Heero held out his hand, hers coming to meet it slowly. Apparently, her doubt in his intentions lingered still, menacingly taunting her courage. Causing her body to tremble. She seemed almost ashamed of herself, that she permitted her softness to brush his skin-- That she couldn?t stop herself from following him as he pulled her out of the cottage and into the full depth of the moonlight. Entranced. Hypnotized by him, I'd say.
Now they were the ghostly youth that roamed across the veiled, occult midnight, their breathing a sensual nocturne as the mythril light illumined their skin and warped it with the mists of empyrean. The passionate, seductive dream of two lovers on the pastoral hillside--a numinous oracle.
The Shaking of an Antlered Head
I watched them as they walked over to Heero?s stallion, the archer following the two close behind to make sure their touch remained neutral. His eyes were constantly on their entwined fingers, on the syncopated rise and fall of their chests-- When the raven's cry sounded overhead. Its laughter sent the forest into chaos as the alpha wolf tried to chase the shifter from its territory with remonstration to the canine's lunar mistress. But the aerial shriek only drowned the wail. Owls gargled a screech and voiced their contempt at the winged demon, for by legend, the raven's call means imminent death for the one who hears the cackle first.
The black bird made itself known as it swooped down from the branches and set its hunger on my sister's form, cutting her wrists with the beating of its wings and clawing at her moonlight eyes. Blood and scrapes ran down down her milk-white face. Yes-- The moon bled that night, mirroring Relena?s injury in that crimson sheen that blotched the sky. Even the land was dismal. The bird snagged her hair in its beak, pulling at the strands and nipping at the rooted skin to tie her hair in ribbons and bands of blood? When Heero himself jumped on top of her. He shielded her from the demon and unsheathed his sword to put an end to the animal?s attack.
The creature would not hurt the king, however, and as it saw the monarch holding the blond-haired maid it gave a frustrated wail to the darkness, tearing its talons from his arm. Cornflower eyes streaked with anathema flashed across the entangled two. It retreated from them as quickly as it appeared, leaving the woods once again quiet and victim of the night's silent air. My sister?s wounds were the only witnesses to the bird?s presence ever descending to the earth. A hellish premonition, I now realize.
He let a few moments of reticence pass before Heero lifted himself from Relena?s body, pulling her into a sitting position as his eyes scoured her form for any serious wounds. Slowly. Concentrated. Relena was still dazed and just trying to catch her breath.
But if you ask me, he was gazing at her a little too intently, hands running through her hair a little too intimately as he massaged her scalp. His eyes were blank but focused-- Very focused. And I voiced my opposition to these fondles with a snort and vindictive snot, a noise that quieted the even savage, twitching Wing Zero that was anxious to embark.
"I trust you?re all right, Master Heero," the green-eyed man stated to the other kneeling in the leaves, as the yeoman was already mounted and leading his horse to a stop just beside its fellow stallion. Trowa reached for the beast?s reins and freed them from the branch for Heero to grab. "We have to get going if you want to take her. The court?s already anticipating your return."
"Understood," the king replied as he took the reins and hoisted himself to his feet, stepping up into the saddle and looking back over to Trowa. "The roebuck can follow behind us. She?ll ride with you."
"I don?t think so, Majesty," the archer challenged him as he leaned back in his saddle at the command. Posture defiant. Eyebrows lifted slightly into an expression as mischievous as he could manage. "I?m against taking her at all, so if you want to bring her to her kin then she will be under your supervision. My allegiance is to you, not her."
"I?m ordering you."
"And when have you ever known me to obey absurd commands?" Trowa questioned his long-time captain and acquaintance with a sort of smugness, sitting patiently and waiting for an answer that would contradict him.
The king said nothing, although I?m sure he picked up on the hidden insult in the statement, since his eyes narrowed somewhat at his comrade. The gesture was barely evident in the darkness that surrounded Heero on his steed, especially when the man was so careful to conceal emotion of any kind. It seemed to be his hallmark, that mysteriousness of character. Obscurity his metaphysical guardian.
"You could always let her walk if you?re so much against her sitting up there with you." That damnably witty yeoman-- He really wasn?t helping the situation with his innuendos.
Heero sat atop his horse quietly, reflectively-- Seriously. An efficacious hardness to his expression. He looked down at Relena standing beside his stallion, watching him decide with her tired, patient eyes that just waitied for his command, one way or the other? When he tugged on Wing Zero?s bridle and turned the horse around. He disappeared into the thickness of the trees, with the smell of his earthen, metallic sweat lingering on the breeze--but giving no indication to his whereabouts. Trowa was still for a moment as he listened for the horse's pants and turned his head to sift through the blackness for an animate shape, trying to infer what the Perfect Soldier was up to. Attempting to read the sovereign's impusle.
But he didn't need to.
In a gaining thunder, the thrash of the stallion?s gallop across the dirt yard emanated from behind Relena, in a brutal, corporeal shadow of a horseman and steed that barraged her from the nullity and advanced with the handler?s arm outstretched. He reached for the woman?s body in that darkness, in one, swift motion snatching her in his left arm and hoisting her into the saddle behind him. He gave a sudden kick to the stallion?s side and the animal sped up in response, snorting in the moonlight while its hooves pounded faster and harder. Relena?s squeal was stifled by her captor?s back as she pressed her face into his cloak against the beating wind, frantically throwing her arms around his mid-section to keep herself from tumbling off the animal and chancing a broken neck. Her hair was lavished by the blustery gusts their ride spurred, a tumultuous waterfall that drenched their backs in silky, stranded breakers as the moonbeams turned gold into mythrill and dull blue against the dimness.
"We?re leaving!" the king stated in a raised voice as he and my sister sped in front of us and made a sudden left when just clear of the circle of oak trees surrounding the cottage, then disappearing beyond the curtain of the shrubbery.
I immediately ran to follow them, as I wouldn?t let him get too far ahead of me with my sister at his back-- But the archer simply nudged his horse into a gentle gallop, not in a hurry to catch up with his master and the woman clinging to Heero's abdomen. Apparently, he knew that Heero would eventually slow down to let Relena regain herself from the sponteneity of her arraignment, for she still clutched violently at his torso and buried her head even deeper into his shoulder blades the farther down the path they cantered.
* * * *
We hadn?t been riding long, only about twenty minutes or so, but already our pace was set. I stayed trotting behind Heero's stallion, keeping a close eye on my sister and noticing how her hold on the man had begun to slacken the longer we rode on. It was strange-- Her eyes stared out into the dark but appeared to actually see and register nothing. They were glazed over, as though the rhythmic hoof-beats of the horse were lulling her into an empyrean of illusory peace. Lost in the hidden comfort of mental emptiness and the warmth of human flesh beneath her hands. Taken to a place where she could just forget and be a normal, bonny maid. No bewitched brother or fatal memories. Just Relena.
Heero sat erect in the saddle, in an uncomfortable rigidity that kept as much distance between her touch and his skin as possible, with his sight leveled firmly on the road-- Not even turning back to glance at the yeoman or be sure I was following. His eyes were intense but completely without visual focus. Distracted, I think. Because his mind was set on one thing.
Protecting my sister.
And Trowa? Trowa was an interesting man, to say the least. His horse sauntered lazily beside me, and the man controlling the beast appeared utterly bored with the entire situation, as if he thought the whole thing was not only foolish but a complete waste of his time. For although the archer seemed to admire Heero?s skills on the battlefield and ceded him credit where credit was due, he wasn?t particularly impressed with the monarch?s social reactions. Which was understandable, since they were, to a certain extent, impulsive-- Yet well-thought out. Impromptu-- But always necessary. And they were never consistent. The young king acted on his emotions, a concept that, although the yeoman seemed to realize, didn?t understand himself. The sovereign was more soldier than ruler, more rational than emotional-- Yet he followed whatever feelings he did have.
The Perfect Soldier Heero Yuy was, in all its definition, a paradox.
"Do you know where your nearest relatives live?" Trowa asked as he looked down to me from his stallion and then turned his head back to his master and my sister only a few feet in front of us. "I don?t think Heero?s about to disturb the woman for that information, and I'd like to know if we?re even headed in the right direction." His tone was very factual, without the slightest hint of annoyance or any other feeling, for that matter.
I tried to explain to him that we were orphans, and that the only kin we had we ran away from for fear of death... whether it be hers or ours. But all that came out was a grunt-- A pathetic one, too. The corners of his lips quirked up in an amused smirk, as if trying not to laugh at the ridiculous sound I produced.
He had no idea what I said.
It was then I realized that Relena was the only one who could understand me, perhaps because she was there when I was transformed. Maybe she just knew me well enough to be able to read my emotions. Maybe she really couldn't and just bluffed it really well. Whatever the case, it didn?t help me answer the yeoman?s question.
"I didn?t think you?d be able to tell me."
But then Heero proved his comrade wrong, for just as Trowa was about to take up the aforementioned issue with the king, mouth already opened to relay his concern, Heero?s voice rose up against the stillness to inquire, "Where is your father?s cabin?"
Relena didn?t seem to hear him, though; she just continued saying nothing. She still looked entranced by the steadiness of the horse?s hooves beneath her. Mesmerized by the roughness of the sovereign's skin.
"Woman," he said a little more gruffly this time, causing my sister?s eyes to widen at being pulled from her musings and breath catch as she brought her gaze to rest upon the back of his neck and lower ear. "Are we going the right direction to your father?s home?"
"We..." she began, but hesitated as she decided to change what she was going to say. "My father was murdered when I was only a little girl." I saw the king?s shoulders stiffen at the mention of "father" and "murder" together in the same sentence. I suppose it reminded him of his own misfortune long ago. "And my mother died giving birth to me." An extended, gruesome silence. "We have nowhere to go."
"Then we?ll have to bring..."
"I give you my empathy," Heero replied to my sister dispassionately, forcedly, cutting off the rest of the yeoman?s statement. "The loss of a father can be difficult."
"Did you lose your father... your Majesty?" my sister questioned him with blue eyes that sparkled from her sadness, taking her hand from around his waist and laying it on his shoulder. Her thumb absently massaged the skin beneath his tunic, inticing a sharp intake of breath from the king.
But before he could answer one way or another, Trowa kicked his horse into a gallop until it trotted beside his master's steed, almost with a sense of urgency to interfere with the reply. He warned her: "The king?s past is not your affair, and you shouldn't speak to him unless spoken to." And then grabbing her wrist so harshly, to break her contact and make her look him in his eyes, he lowered his voice and whispered, "Some things are better left untouched." He released her wrist from his grip, allowing his horse to fall back once more.
Gliding her other hand over Heero's arm and resting it on his shoulder, she nestled her head into the crook of his neck, gently squeezing his upper arms and pressing her lips softly against his back, and whispered, "I?m sorry that your father?s gone." It caused Heero to turn his head a little, enough so that he could see her golden hair that rubbed against his neck and see her eyes closed for him in sympathy. Just simply watching her lips as her breathing stirred them and noticing the twitching of her lashes.
He brought Wing Zero to an abrupt halt only a few moments later, shrugging off Relena?s hold on him and dismounting the animal before turning back to Trowa, saying, "It?s too late for us to turn back tonight." His monotone was solid as he led his stallion to a bed of dry leaves under the shelter of a few dead pines. "We?ll stop here for now." He entangled the horse's reins in one of the lower branches of a tree. "In the morning we?ll return her to the grove. The hunt ends at midnight; men won't be a threat to her then."
"The court is waiting for you. They?ll send a search party," the yeoman reminded him as the green-eyed man mimicked Heero?s actions. "If they discover you with this woman," his eyes settled on my sister for a moment, "they?ll label you a whore chaser, Sire." Heero seemed unfazed by the title and grunted carelessly, when Trowa?s voice grew low, almost dangerous. "And she?ll be your harlot."
Heero?s eyes traveled to Relena as the archer mentioned the word "harlot" to describe her. His brow knotted at the thought, as she crossed her arms over her chest--his scrutiny much colder and more prodding than before.
She shivered. Silence reigned for a few moments.
"If I bring her to the palace with me," he began in contemplation of his options, closing his eyes as if the choice were clear, "they'll consider her my whore without question." The king held out his arms and caught my sister when she slid out of the saddle, bringing his left arm beneath the crook of her knees and carrying her over to the bed of leaves. "My father once told me that the only way to live life is to act on your emotions. If we stay this deep in the woods there?s a good chance they won?t find us. Her honor may be spared."
Heero then grabbed the servant's arm, bringing Trowa's face close so that only they two could hear his words, Relena watching them indignantly from her bedding. She never liked when people (namely me) kept secrets from her, especially when they directly concerned her.
But they forgot that a deer has much better hearing than any human.
"She?s innocence, Trowa, and you know that. You know that I have to protect her." Heero's grip shook. "I won?t make the same mistake twice." His sentence faded while he released his hold on the archer, turning away from Trowa to walk back towards Relena. But as he passed by the motionless yeoman, he stopped to add, with determination in his eyes, "I will protect her."
He stopped next to Relena, taking off his cloak and setting it on the grass to serve as a crude mattress.
"Against your better judgement," Trowa muttered to himself in finishing Heero?s thought. He too pulled his cloak off his shoulders and spread it across the dirt, then untied the front of his tunic. He did it unembarrassed and right in front of my sister, who refelxively turned away blushing-- And I thought I saw Heero?s eyes flicker at his attendant.
With jealousy?
"I?m sure I can find my own way back home," Relena interjected diplomatically. "Midnight?s not far off, so you won?t have to worry about the hunters. Besides, my roe will protect me." Heero?s hand on her shoulder instantly stopped her protests, by which he gently nudged her onto the leaves and into a reclining position.
"You should sleep while you can."
Realizing he wasn?t giving her room to argue, she turned on her side away from him, frustrated, I think, and closed her eyes, reaching out her hand to call me to her. I obeyed without complaint and lay down beside her, using my fur to keep her warm and licking her back to relax her straining muscles. She was disconcerted. Had lost control of the situation. And that made her nervous.
If only I'd known how disoriented she was. Then maybe I could have prevented all this.
But why question the past?
I didn?t let myself close my eyes, though. Not until I saw both Heero and the yeoman lay down and their breathing become slow and even, an indication that they?d fallen asleep. Then I let sleep overtake me too, but not before giving one final glance over to the nobleman that slept so close to us. He that didn't even want to leave Relena unattended in his dreams.
...this is the best story i've read so far....you captured the emotion in the story and maintained Relena's modest behaviour, Heero's stoicness and poor social skills, and Trowa's unyielding apathy...oohhh!!..one more thing, I'm really interested about the "jealousy" part - the kind of stuff that starts with ------> Heero likes Relena : Trowa likes Relena : However, Relena likes Heero.....hehehe..i'm really looking forward to the "explicitly limey" 4th chapter...i'm sure that's gonna be a blast!!.
). In addition, the Trowa-Heero-Relena love triangle is done quite often (I wrote a fic that incorporated one). However, that WILL NOT be implemented in this story (once again, I direct your attention to theme one). Just relax and enjoy the ride.
But this story is so good. This is most deff one of my faves