The Mercenary, Chapter 2/?
Posted: Thu Jun 24, 2004 5:40 pm
AN: Okay, I technically said a week OR SO. Therefore, I hope two weeks is an acceptable amount of time. I had so much trouble writing this chapter, and I hope you guys think the wait was worth it. It made me sad to write 
. You'll be left with a lot of questions, and they shouldn?t be left unanswered for too long, as I plan to update this again as soon as I can.
Thanks everyone who's read and/or replied.
Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing, Sleepy Hollow, or "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."
"I-- I'm sorry, my lady. I hope my words haven't? up-p-set you." Quatre's eyes were seared open, blinking in an erratic cadence and with his jaw hanging slack as he gaped at the woman standing before him. Her form trembled in the glow of the revived candlelight, arousing the flames to waft like threads of sallow, ephemeral tinsel upon her skin. It curled around her eccentric pants, making her shoulders glitter as she exhaled and silhouetting the hips beneath the folds of her under-gowns.
But her eyes. They were glassy, dense with the frothing of romantic memories and gurgling with mortification and disease. Crystalline was glazed over with the same bleak mists that haunted the Scottish marshes he once traveled in his dealings, sealing their numinous, murky crypt over the water to entomb the sentimental wraiths of reminiscence and love-- Eclipsing all but shadow, primitive fear, and a vague moan of nostalgia. Her white skin was startling against those orbs, as the reflection of the moon spreading across that slough to reveal soft, ivory glimpses of its beauty. Her beauty.
And her two full breasts spilling from her corset were doing little to rid his mind of such idyllic fantasies. As he could feel the cool tingle of sweat start to lick his flesh and the pit of his stomach simmer and spew from the heat of his kindled sinew. The boiling made his cheeks burn.
"That's enough, Relena," her brother reprimanded while stepping between the ragged woman and his comrade, with his hand coiling into a fist at his side. "You need--"
"I know what I need, Milliardo? more than you ever could. " She grabbed the lower laces of her corset and pulled them taut, gasping as they cinched her already petite waist and forced a strangled, haggard grunt from her throat. "I won't lie up in my room while you talk of him like he's the devil incarnate. You know it?s not true, and you know that--"
"Relena, remember your place here."
A groan strained from between her thinned lips. "I don?t believe-- I'm not a child that you can order around anymore, dear Brother, and so I demand that you stop treating me like one." With a sudden jerk, the prince raised the back of his hand and pulled it across his chest-- Before his eyes shifted to the trader. He met Milliardo's glance with a shudder and streak of remonstrance smeared across his irises, body struck rigid as he watched the girl straighten but involuntarily squeak at her sibling's aggressive stance.
Sliding his eyes shut, the reagent forced a broken sigh through his nose and lowered his arm, allowing a few moments of tense silence to pass before opening his eyes once again to face his sister. His now regulated heartbeat was taken by the draft and reverberated within the spire of the chapel, kissing with the fervent, hallowed whispers of the mystics in an unorthodox courtship. "We have a guest. Do not embarrass me or yourself more than you already have."
She snorted. "Is that meant for me, or are you really just saying that for yourself? You--"
"Princess," Quatre interrupted their quarrel while taking a step forward, "you spoke as though you knew this horseman. Can you, perhaps, explain why everyone's so nervous about it?"
Her lips quirked into a precocious smile, she released the ribbons and reached a hand around her brother, knocking his arm with a deliberate but graceful jab of her elbow to the right. She brought her hand level with the Arabian's, her head tilted and with a coquettish few ruffles of her lashes. "Forgive my rudeness. My name is Relena Peacecraft. And yours might be?"
"A-ah? Quatre, Lady Relena." He wrapped his palm around her swan-like fingers and brought them to his lips for the traditional, chivalrous greeting. "Quatre Rebaba Winner."
"Well, Lord Winner, I can only hope that you'll be a little more friendly with the truth than my obstinate elder brother." His eyes darted to the prince, who arched an eyebrow at her petulant reply, which enticed the merchant's mouth to crease slightly upward. "And as to your earlier comment: I know of him, Lord Winner. I know of him. Perhaps a little more than most, but not overly so."
"Why do I have the feeling, my lady, that you?re not being completely honest with me?" Relena's gaze snapped up to meet his with the insinuation, lips parted and eyes wide at the sagacious knell that echoed in his voice and pealed over the sheets of her skin, causing it to pimple. Her hand clutched at her skirt, shaking.
"What do you mean by that? Are you questioning my honesty?" Despite her stunned expression, her tone was challenging, laced with confidence of shrewd, articulate equivocation. "Since you've only known me for a matter of moments, I find such audacity offensive."
Shaking his head, he chuckled at her lingering obduracy and took her wrist in his hand. "I didn?t mean to imply anything by it, Lady Relena. Forgive me. Please, go on--tell me what you know of this 'good Christian man.'" If any one so exists.
Scrutinizing him for a few moments with a leer that wandered over the lines of his face, she allowed a submissive smile to dispel across her lips and turned away. The patter of her soles across the stone floor harmonized with his steady, sonorous pulse in a somatic orchestra of voluntary and unmindful beats, uniting them in the staves of corporeal strings that pulled muscles; the percussion of their dissonant heartbeats, and the clandestine resonance of pivoting, wood-wind bones. Suffocating. Chilling. They became musicians of an unconscious interlude that filled the silence, that drowned out any suspicious thoughts or glances. It kept them on the edge, waiting in suspense for the other. Desperate for the final note.
She sat beneath the altar, smothering its linen in her fist as she rested her head against the cool marble front, flattening her bangs over her eyes and curling them in the bend of her elbow. "Have you ever heard of Innocent III?"
"The Medieval pope?" She didn?t respond, merely cocked her head so that her tresses feathered out and revealed an optical glint of verification. "If I'm not mistaken, he was known for his? political advancements."
"And reigned during the crusades?" Her gentian eyes darkened. "Muslim."
He couldn?t conceal the way his cheeks sunk in as he bit the flesh of his inner mouth at her almost smug deliverance of the label and the exaggerated, mawkish dexterity of her tongue when she rolled it against her teeth as she formed her l; he was wise to take a deep breath before he answered. "I do recall reading something to that end." His hand flexed. Clenched.
"Did you know that he was raised in Cinq, that he actually said prayers in this very room many times throughout his life?"
"No. I really don?t know anything about him, save for his pontificate--an infamous version, at that."
The princess snickered at his gibe, adjusting herself so that her back was flush with the table's hardness. "I can?t really argue with that, but I can say that he's where this whole legend began. If you?d care to listen."
Stepping back, the Winner heir slowly sank down into one of the nearby pews while affixing his gaze to the subtle movements of her mouth. He tried to blink, but found himself captivated by the intangible, heavy bridles of sorrow that wrench the edges of her lips into a delicate frown--even in laughter--and the lucidity that yoked the depths of her eyes, making them shimmer amidst the smolder of melting candles, sparkle with the harshness of emotional bondage and the tyranny of suppressed, indentured tragedy.
"He was a good man, once. A young boy that loved God and wanted others, who claimed to love the Father as much as he, to prove that love by living holy lives. He wanted them to take their vows seriously, to love virtue and loathe vices." She gulped. "He wanted reform."
"Reform?"
"The Church was rampant with abuses and inconsistencies then, Lord Winner, not like the mighty hierarchy you know today. "
"I don?t understand."
"Well, for one, although its was encouraged, clergymen didn?t necessarily have to be celibate like they do now. In most cases, priests actually had their own concubines." Their eyes met. "But he wanted to change all that. He decided that simony, nepotism, all such problems needed to be done away with. We needed to remember the example of Christ and our humility, not the power we can get from them." Her hands kneaded the fabric of her gown; her nails grazed her ankles. "He thought the best way to do that was to become the pope himself, so that he could give the orders. But he knew no one, wasn't really the son of an influential family, and so contented himself with becoming a priest and doing missionary work. And he'd make sure his converts knew how to be Christians? real Christians."
Quatre shook his head and chortled at her shoddy tact. "Because the other real Christians were out beheading heretics like me, right?"
"Well maybe if your people knew how to take better care of the Christ we both love, we wouldn't have had to decapitate you."
"Your brother said something silly like that, too."
Relena turned to her sibling and scrunched her nose in a cynical sneer, running her hand along her exposed upper-arm. "He actually spoke the truth for a change. " She huffed. "Amazing, considering he's always so stubborn about things that he wouldn?t know what the truth was if God came down from the Throne and proclaimed it."
"About the things that matter, yes. You know why--"
"This isn?t getting us anywhere, majesties," The Arabian interjected with a weak sigh as he rose from his seat. "I don?t know what's going on between the two of you, and I'm not sure if I really ever want to know. But please, stop this childish bickering and just tell the story, Lady Relena." He felt a pang ricochet from his heart and lodge itself between the bars of his ribcage when he saw the princess's eyes fall to the ground and her body slump. Felt sweat start to pucker at his hairline as she wrapped her arms around her chest. His eye winked with teasing pain when the heat of Millirdo's glare pinched his left cheek, inducing more sweat to congregate and disband from beneath his blonde bangs, drops sidling down his temple.
Her voice was a parched whisper when it finally cut through the distant, reverberant invocations that restrained the church. "He eventually worked his way up to being a bishop, at a time when the Church had enough foresight to realize how important spreading the Gospel to distant lands really was." Her teeth skimmed over her bottom lip. "For money's sake, of course. And political influence."
She faced the merchant. "You've heard of Columbus and Magellan and Vasco de Gama? explorers?" He nodded. "Well they were a bit late. The Papacy had missionaries out searching for barbarians long before they were even born. It?s just that no one ever knew it."
"She doesn't know what she's saying, Quatre." The prince scraped a hand through his platinum strands. "She's been ill, delusional." Glacial blue eyes bored into her, and she shivered when they narrowed and heaved the sharp, jagged barbs of icicles into her blood. "She can't separate reality from her girlish fantasies, anymore."
"Milliardo, my friend." The younger walked towards him and placed a calming hand on his shoulder. "Regardless of how she has wronged you in the past, she is still your sister. She is a prayer that you must utter with loving lips and good intentions. So please," The nondescript, wooden face of Jesus from the crucifix rippled in his eyes, "be gentle with her? gentle?"
With the softness of his plea, a tear clutched Relena's cheek, leaving a glistening impression on her skin. "It's all right, Lord Winner. I deserve his anger. I made the choice. I betrayed. I've done what I've done." She raked the bead from her face and sniffled. "But he doesn?t deserve it, Milliardo. He couldn?t have known; I kept it from him."
"Innocent?"
"Of course, my lord. Innocent. Back to Innocent." Biting her lip, she stifled a groan as her hands gripped the edge of a pew, blanching her knuckles and tightening the skin over them so that the contours of her bones were distinct. "He was known as Odin Lowe, back then, and he was an excellent preacher. A very learned man, considering the times. And he was able to convert many people in his day-- Rumor of his successes even circulated back to Rome. Of course, none of his converts were of a race the bishops hadn't seen before? but it gave them an idea." She leaned forward over the railing, quivering, firmly shutting her eyes. "The curia promised him, plotted with him. The bishops said that if he brought with him a convert whose features were of those they'd never seen before and showed them the way to her homeland? they would make his dream come true." The contortions of her face smoothed out into valleys of creamy flesh and stiff mountains of rouge, rendering her countenance impassive. "They would make him pope."
"And let him have his reform."
"Mhmm. Reformation for the Church? and an unexpected one for himself."
"These things. you say. are. strange to me, 'Man from God.' These things. I do not understand." His Asian accent was thick and halted with the timbre of arrogance, each word echoing as an afterthought and incarnate, guttural rumble of divinity. Even the emperor's posture was godly, with rigid shoulders, a high chin lathered with hair, and a straight back angling towards the heavens. Coal black eyes fed a spark that crackled and faded to an omniscient glow in their depths, staring through his guest, burning off the immortality of the soul until all that remained was the purpose of the spirit itself. Penetrating deeper. He looked into all that approached him? not at them. "For a man to. dis-tance himself. from his ancestors for a woman, as your. Jesus say. is un-wise. We a-ppreciate. much. ho-nor and family, specifically those no. longer with us."
"I understand this tradition, your majesty, but Jesus' message is above the opinions of men. Although man and woman become one flesh, one should always honor both mother and father. Only his priorities have changed," Odin Lowe explained as he tugged at the neck of his kimono, letting his fingers graze over the chaffed skin where the material had been rubbing relentlessly for the past few hours. His throat was dry from his dialogue with the adamant, inquisitive ruler. They'd been discussing the same doctrine for days: the Incarnation, the Trinity, the Gospel, revelation, and still the emperor insisted on showing him "the true way," twisting the missionary's apologetic, Christian dogma into those of his royal favor. According to the god-king, Odin wasn't accounting for the whole truth. He "?could not see passed the beam in his own eyes," as the sovereign perverted the Scripture quote.
The bishop was forced to hide his more frequent coughing behind a hand, while his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and scrubbed the backs of his teeth. "And since you believe yourself to be an incarnation, can?t you also understand how Jesus could be one?"
"How. can he be the. Incarnation. if I am? I know. not. this. Jesus."
"No, you're not understanding, lordship. We're not even talking about the same kind of enfleshment her--"
Dark red yards of silk rustled beside him; white and gold, glossy cranes that nested amidst the boughs of cherry blossoms were painted on the billows and enlaced with ebony tresses. Strands that pooled like the shiny black quartz of a cavern around the pale woman's ankles and made bracelets around her wrists brushed against his arm, when she turned to him: head bowed, eyelids lowered, and expression demure. Sooty lashes fluttered upon her cheeks and contrasted with the luster of her blushing face, accentuating the curves of her supple, crimson lips. Her breastbone was sleek; her neck slender as the wild heron's, skin the same downy white.
"This. you see. is my youngest daughter, Tenshi," the emperor informed as he eyed the porcelain cups stained with tawny lotus flowers, and rolled his shoulders back. "She will serve tea, now."
"Yes? yes, thank you, majesty. Um? I? we were discussing?"
"Man leaving family. for woman. Make no such sacrifice for woman."
"But highness," the clergyman hesitated, flinching at the sable eyes of the princess that fondled his cheek, watched her moonlight breasts rise and fall with her labored breaths and saw her nostrils flare. The teapot shook in her hand. "Although women cannot? understand as much as men," he felt something lodge in his throat, "we need them. They provide us with children and nurture them. They are necessary and must be taken care of."
Clang!
The girl shrieked and prostrated before them, trembling, reaching for the lid of the teapot and cup that she knocked from the table. But her breathing was still erratic, her black eyes pulsating as her fingers brushed against the foreigner's knuckles--the knuckles of the hand that held the delicate, now chipped arm of the fallen cup. His face was reflected in the sheen of the china, his blonde hair grazing his cheekbones and his eyes distorted and large and? wet with understanding.
"Tenshi! You foolish girl! Leave us to the business of men?"
"He loved her."
"Yes, Lord Winner. He loved her. Beyond his better judgment he loved her, wanted her?" Relena gulped, pursing her lips before forcing the potent bitterness of bile back down her throat "? desired her. But he couldn?t have her. If anyone in the Church had to be celibate, it was the pope? in theory, at least. He couldn?t possibly take her as his mistress. Not before God."
The eyes of the Winner heir sparkled with tears, fostering a surrogate, pitiful gleam for the dead candles. Empathetic tears that made his jaw clamp in a tight vice, made his exhalation quiver. That poor man? for aren?t we all but mere men? Subject to man's temptations? To the look and feel of a woman? He cocked his head at her. "But he did it anyway, didn't he?"
The chanting ceased. The canopy of moonbeams was sheared by the steely, knifed edges of the clouds, spattering the floor and windows in silver blotches of runny, bloody light.
Halloed locks bobbed at his query, as her chin rubbed against the ball of her hand. "He did. Took her back with him as his convert, however he managed to get the emperor's consent. And?" her voice hitched momentarily "?became Pope Innocent III? with her by his side. And it was fine."
"But not forever."
"Until she found she was with child."
He massaged the skin beneath his bangs, braced his elbow with the opposing arm. "The bastard child of a pope?" His eyes fell closed. "It had no future, did it?"
"She'd always been hidden, and her pregnancy was no different." The princess rested her forehead on her knees, sighing. "No one knew, except for an old clergyman that he visited for confession: Abbot Jay. And I suppose that was a good thing, since she died during childbirth--"
"I don?t know where you came up with this story of yours, little sister, but you must be pretty damn sick to dream it up." The reagent grabbed her wrist and pulled her to his body. Their eyes locked. "Which is why you need to go back to bed and heal fully."
She refused an answer. Just continued with her narrative, an even tone braided through her words and a distant, vacant stare woven over her face as she and her brother remained entwined, neither budging. Neither even blinking. "He hated that child. It was the Incarnation? of his own sin. Why Tenshi died. Lowe couldn't even look at the baby."
"One sin," Quatre whispered absently, his eyes lost on a broken corner of a tile, "leads only to so many more." From his lashes a fluid, palpable intercession dripped between the crack, splashing onto the deaf ridges of stone. "Did he kill it?"
"No. Jay convinced him not to. He told Lowe that he would raise the child at a monastery, deep within the isolation of the English woodlands. The boy would be educated and a warrior?" her gaze sought the Muslim's, an ironic smile tugging at her mouth, her expression lurid "? and fight in the crusades?"
"Ma-ry and Jo-seph, pray for us?" the little boy sniffled and wiped at his nose with the back of a tiny, bronze hand, crossing his Prussian blue eyes to see if he'd smeared anymore ink over his skin. His face was already covered in greasy black smudges, little fingerprints and palm lines cracking through the dark oil in a sloppy, worn painting of transcription--even a few lowercase letter impressions spattered his cheek. He looked down at his parchment, eyes darting between his handwriting and the intricate loops and twists of his master's. A curl on the second leg of the upper-case A. The wide bow of the C. The sharp point of the F so that it wouldn?t be confused for a T. He made a quick dab with his quill. Forgot to dot the i.
Half-way through the alphabet, and their letters appeared nearly identical to the five-year-old's eye, prompting a small smile to transpose itself on his lips. His eyes twinkled through the tangles of his messy brown bangs.
Master Jay will be proud of me. Maybe he'll even think I'm ready for Scripture copying.
He continued singing. "Mi-chael and all an-gels, pray for us? An-na, Jo-a-chim, E-liz-a-beth, pray for us..." The O came out slightly tilted, and after wrinkling his pudgy little nose, he made another one beside it. Much better. "E-li-jah, Mo-ses, John the--"
"Heero!" The child jumped with the bite in the old man's censure, flailing his arms and knocking the ebony fluid of the ink jar all over the shabby, tattered rags that wrapped his body. "Look at this mess, you clumsy fool!"
"I-- I'm sorry, Master Jay." Heero stumbled to the floor, cheeks a light pink, and began wiping the puddles with his soiled garments. "I'll clean it up."
The abbot groaned at the boy's awkward stretches and the sable, filmy residue that gleamed on the floor in circular patterns from Heero's strokes. But it sounded more like a snarl. "Aren't you forgetting something boy?" He held out his hand, where a ring sparkled from one of his fingers and caught the child's eyes, which had been frantically scouring the floor for ink splotches.
Without touching Jay's vein-swathed hand, the child pressed his lips to holy symbol. His eyes remained averted. "I?"
"Silence!" The abbot used his wooden claw to push Heero away, who flinched and took another voluntary step back. "You smell like rotting meet, lad. Can?t you even bathe yourself?"
"Master Jay, I?"
"Silence, I said, lad. You must be silent-- How many times have I reminded you of that vow, the one your swore before God?" The boy sniffed, chewing on his lip as his hands clutched at the base of his shirt, creasing it. "I walk in here to feed you," he said while motioning towards a bowl with his fleshy hand, "and I find you singing? Singing, of all things. You're supposed to be learning how to write, so that can copy the sacred Word of God, and you're in here committing more sins. More penance for yourself."
Heero remained reticent, although his scrawny body was shivering, rattling his crucifix against his chest. "You may speak now to defend yourself."
"I was writing, and you told me I should always praise God. I didn?t think He would mind." His reply was quiet, a hesitant whimper.
"And what else have I told you?"
"That?" his midnight blue eyes scintillated with rippling crystal, foaming like a waterfall along his lashes, reflecting the stars of his optic sky. "That I was made in sin. So I am sin." A tear plummeted. "God can't love me."
"Remember that, and maybe someday He'll forgive you. Not love you, but forgive you." Jay sighed, his tone somewhat warmer. "Now, let's see what you've done with your writing."
Another droplet fell from his eyes when his head shot up to face the abbot, but Heero's gaze was bright, his breaths elicited in excited gasps with his jutted, bony chest heaving up to his shoulders. His teeth flashed from behind his lips.
The old man stood over the table and picked up one of the completed sheets, his face hard, scrutinizing the curves and strokes and consistencies and thickness of the lines. The loops of the first B were much wider than the subsequent few. The tail of the third J dipped father down than its counterparts, the hook too crisp. One of the Q's wasn't speared, and those that were had been smudged, donning slimy manes over the R's. The damn O's were crooked.
"You think this is good, lad?" The boy froze. "I think the chickens can scratch better words in the gravel than this."
A blur of black, sunlight, stone, and steel bars assailed the bastard's vision as he felt cold fingers plunge themselves into the skin of his neck, as he was dragged to the archaic bowels of the disciplinary brig. His calves scraped on the rocks and left crimson, swerving smears on the stair edges in a morbid trail to his condemnation; his face was smacked with parchment, slitting his brow, frothing blood; his eye was poked when Jay threw the quill into the cell. It floated into Heero's ink-blotted lap, its feel too gentle, for the boy winced when it grazed his wrist.
"I'll let you out of there when you learn to stay silent and concentrate on your work." And the abbot walked away. The keys to the child's freedom jingled in sync with the clergyman's footsteps; their tinkling dulled with each faint step that moaned its dirge for the abuse it left behind in that dungeon, like the chimes of church bells on Christmas morn. Those that echoed with guilt, as they knew the eventual fate of the Lord. Death. By the hands of men. Eerie. Heart-wrenching. Something I won't ever have.
Heero settled himself on his knees, took the feather in his hand, and connected his shaky script to the paper. "Lord, give new life? Hear my prayer?"
"Much better, Samuel. Your writing's much better than last week." Jay's voice loomed above the crouching bastard, reverberating in the granite crevices and wailing through pillars--echoing in the cracks of rat holes. "At least your O's aren't lopsided."
Tears made the letters run together, sloshing darkness on his knuckles and speckling his knees. Black blood. Damned blood.
"Lord give new life? to? those? cho-sen?"
A scream tore from the throat of a child. Shattered by sobs.
Christ, hear him; Lord, Je-sus, hear his prayer?
* * * *
"Now, Young Frederick, I will expla?" The mouth of the pope stood agape, eyes pried open as sputters tumbled from his lips, hand grabbing for the prince's chair back to keep his knees from plunging beneath him. His embroidered, costly robes flapped from the jerks of his quaking body underneath. He bit the insides of his cheeks. "Why?"
"I'm sorry, Holy Father, but we did not have time to bring him back to England before you called upon us. I--"
"This is unacceptable, Jay!" Heavy trains of fabric swiveled across the room, pummeling the limp, rust-colored curls of the child seated behind him. The royal grimaced at the negligent assault. "I told you to never bring him before me unless he's ready for Penance. Ever. No excuses." Snorting, Innocent snatched the miter from his scalp and threw it across the room, knocking a tallow, paint-chipped globe from its perch and grumbling as he scowled at the brown-hair boy. He was stiff, expressionless, with shoulders pulled back, and awaiting command. Just staring at his father's elaborate garments and how the jarring movements forced them to wallow and ruffle in a gaudy rainbow of gold, white, and red. Subservient.
Like his mother.
Pinching the bridge of his nose, his Excellency clenched his eyes shut, flaxen strings twining in his fingers as he ordered, "Leave the boy and come with me." His voice was low, gritty. "All of you. And in the mean time, Frederick," he said facing his ward, "locate Sicily on the map and put a black X over it. When I re-enter, I'll be able to school you without interruption. And you," his throat closed, scratched and shaved at his words as he looked into those eyes, the same, deep shade of blue as his own, "don?t do anything. Don't move, don't say a word, don?t even look at anything. Because if I find out that you somehow upset the prince," his nostrils flared, blonde brow knotted, "You'll wish you'd never been born."
"I all ready do."
Smack! "Keep. Your. Mouth. Shut. Sinner."
In a flurry of wool and satin strips, the elder men departed from the chamber without comment, leaving Frederick and Heero alone in the prince's study.
After a few moments of the clock's ticking, a taunting giggle ruptured the silence, poisoning the air with the deliberate, spoiled stench of mischief. "My benefactor says you can?t even come near me." He rose from his chair and approached the bastard, stretching and rumpling his face and sticking out his tongue and spitting on the coarse wool of the ten-year-old's habit. "Not touching you, can?t get mad." His fingers jabbed the other boy in the ribs and tugged on his hood, slamming it over his head. "Touching you, but you still can?t get mad." Wracking his fingers through the locks, Frederick mussed his hair to look like the feral, dirty spikes of the other, protruding his front teeth while hunching his neck. He even spit into his hands and wiped it down his chin, glimmering like a fresh patch of drool. "I'm a bastard. Look at me. God don?t love me 'cause I'm a stupid bastard. My dad loves his ward better than me--"
"Perhaps, Master Frederick, it would be better for you to do as his Excellency commanded," Abbot Jay's tone was flat, "rather than instigate something with a boy that could throttle you in an instant, if he wanted."
"Yeah, yeah," he muttered in German, following those flippant disregards with a few curses when the clergyman exited again. "I?ll find Sicily."
But his eyes searched the map, tongue clicking against the roof of his mouth. Once. Twice. Three times. A fourth. He rested a finger on England and sniffed, shaking his head as he moved it further east, closer to the maroon colored landmasses--the boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire. The quill levitated above Greece, his eyes squinting as he tried to make the calligraphic, lavish letters comprehensible, with a russet ringlet tickling his nose. He blew it away and bent over to mark Athens when--
"Here." Heero placed his hand over the royal's fist, guiding it closer to the boot of Italy, which had a dingy cross stamped over the label, "Sicily is over here?"
Quatre blinked. A few times. Was still when his cape slid off his shoulders and onto the floor, hissing as it slithered over the stone and snaked around his feet in a coil of alabaster cloth. "Are you trying to tell me that poor little boy?" He swallowed. Gagged. "Is the Mercenary?"
The tears gnawing on her cheeks with their glistening fangs, the red, swollen eyes were the only responses needed.
"Lady Relena--"
"No more of this tonight? no more." He was hoarse, eyes glinting when the reagent enveloped his sister in his arms, cradling her head and kissing the crown with soothing lips. Laced his fingers through her tresses. "That's enough for one night."
AN: The Frederick being referred to is Frederick II. Innocent III was pope in the late 12th century and early 13th, just to give you a time period on that. Some of this is historically accurate? some isn't (as I'm sure you all ready knew). I took liberties, but I tried not to run amuck with them. ::Sigh::
How does Relena know all this? How did Heero actually BECOME the Mercenary? Why is he haunting Cinq? What the heck is going on between Milliardo and Relena? You'll find out soon enough. Thanks again, and until next time.
. You'll be left with a lot of questions, and they shouldn?t be left unanswered for too long, as I plan to update this again as soon as I can.Thanks everyone who's read and/or replied.
Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing, Sleepy Hollow, or "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."
"I-- I'm sorry, my lady. I hope my words haven't? up-p-set you." Quatre's eyes were seared open, blinking in an erratic cadence and with his jaw hanging slack as he gaped at the woman standing before him. Her form trembled in the glow of the revived candlelight, arousing the flames to waft like threads of sallow, ephemeral tinsel upon her skin. It curled around her eccentric pants, making her shoulders glitter as she exhaled and silhouetting the hips beneath the folds of her under-gowns.
But her eyes. They were glassy, dense with the frothing of romantic memories and gurgling with mortification and disease. Crystalline was glazed over with the same bleak mists that haunted the Scottish marshes he once traveled in his dealings, sealing their numinous, murky crypt over the water to entomb the sentimental wraiths of reminiscence and love-- Eclipsing all but shadow, primitive fear, and a vague moan of nostalgia. Her white skin was startling against those orbs, as the reflection of the moon spreading across that slough to reveal soft, ivory glimpses of its beauty. Her beauty.
And her two full breasts spilling from her corset were doing little to rid his mind of such idyllic fantasies. As he could feel the cool tingle of sweat start to lick his flesh and the pit of his stomach simmer and spew from the heat of his kindled sinew. The boiling made his cheeks burn.
"That's enough, Relena," her brother reprimanded while stepping between the ragged woman and his comrade, with his hand coiling into a fist at his side. "You need--"
"I know what I need, Milliardo? more than you ever could. " She grabbed the lower laces of her corset and pulled them taut, gasping as they cinched her already petite waist and forced a strangled, haggard grunt from her throat. "I won't lie up in my room while you talk of him like he's the devil incarnate. You know it?s not true, and you know that--"
"Relena, remember your place here."
A groan strained from between her thinned lips. "I don?t believe-- I'm not a child that you can order around anymore, dear Brother, and so I demand that you stop treating me like one." With a sudden jerk, the prince raised the back of his hand and pulled it across his chest-- Before his eyes shifted to the trader. He met Milliardo's glance with a shudder and streak of remonstrance smeared across his irises, body struck rigid as he watched the girl straighten but involuntarily squeak at her sibling's aggressive stance.
Sliding his eyes shut, the reagent forced a broken sigh through his nose and lowered his arm, allowing a few moments of tense silence to pass before opening his eyes once again to face his sister. His now regulated heartbeat was taken by the draft and reverberated within the spire of the chapel, kissing with the fervent, hallowed whispers of the mystics in an unorthodox courtship. "We have a guest. Do not embarrass me or yourself more than you already have."
She snorted. "Is that meant for me, or are you really just saying that for yourself? You--"
"Princess," Quatre interrupted their quarrel while taking a step forward, "you spoke as though you knew this horseman. Can you, perhaps, explain why everyone's so nervous about it?"
Her lips quirked into a precocious smile, she released the ribbons and reached a hand around her brother, knocking his arm with a deliberate but graceful jab of her elbow to the right. She brought her hand level with the Arabian's, her head tilted and with a coquettish few ruffles of her lashes. "Forgive my rudeness. My name is Relena Peacecraft. And yours might be?"
"A-ah? Quatre, Lady Relena." He wrapped his palm around her swan-like fingers and brought them to his lips for the traditional, chivalrous greeting. "Quatre Rebaba Winner."
"Well, Lord Winner, I can only hope that you'll be a little more friendly with the truth than my obstinate elder brother." His eyes darted to the prince, who arched an eyebrow at her petulant reply, which enticed the merchant's mouth to crease slightly upward. "And as to your earlier comment: I know of him, Lord Winner. I know of him. Perhaps a little more than most, but not overly so."
"Why do I have the feeling, my lady, that you?re not being completely honest with me?" Relena's gaze snapped up to meet his with the insinuation, lips parted and eyes wide at the sagacious knell that echoed in his voice and pealed over the sheets of her skin, causing it to pimple. Her hand clutched at her skirt, shaking.
"What do you mean by that? Are you questioning my honesty?" Despite her stunned expression, her tone was challenging, laced with confidence of shrewd, articulate equivocation. "Since you've only known me for a matter of moments, I find such audacity offensive."
Shaking his head, he chuckled at her lingering obduracy and took her wrist in his hand. "I didn?t mean to imply anything by it, Lady Relena. Forgive me. Please, go on--tell me what you know of this 'good Christian man.'" If any one so exists.
Scrutinizing him for a few moments with a leer that wandered over the lines of his face, she allowed a submissive smile to dispel across her lips and turned away. The patter of her soles across the stone floor harmonized with his steady, sonorous pulse in a somatic orchestra of voluntary and unmindful beats, uniting them in the staves of corporeal strings that pulled muscles; the percussion of their dissonant heartbeats, and the clandestine resonance of pivoting, wood-wind bones. Suffocating. Chilling. They became musicians of an unconscious interlude that filled the silence, that drowned out any suspicious thoughts or glances. It kept them on the edge, waiting in suspense for the other. Desperate for the final note.
She sat beneath the altar, smothering its linen in her fist as she rested her head against the cool marble front, flattening her bangs over her eyes and curling them in the bend of her elbow. "Have you ever heard of Innocent III?"
"The Medieval pope?" She didn?t respond, merely cocked her head so that her tresses feathered out and revealed an optical glint of verification. "If I'm not mistaken, he was known for his? political advancements."
"And reigned during the crusades?" Her gentian eyes darkened. "Muslim."
He couldn?t conceal the way his cheeks sunk in as he bit the flesh of his inner mouth at her almost smug deliverance of the label and the exaggerated, mawkish dexterity of her tongue when she rolled it against her teeth as she formed her l; he was wise to take a deep breath before he answered. "I do recall reading something to that end." His hand flexed. Clenched.
"Did you know that he was raised in Cinq, that he actually said prayers in this very room many times throughout his life?"
"No. I really don?t know anything about him, save for his pontificate--an infamous version, at that."
The princess snickered at his gibe, adjusting herself so that her back was flush with the table's hardness. "I can?t really argue with that, but I can say that he's where this whole legend began. If you?d care to listen."
Stepping back, the Winner heir slowly sank down into one of the nearby pews while affixing his gaze to the subtle movements of her mouth. He tried to blink, but found himself captivated by the intangible, heavy bridles of sorrow that wrench the edges of her lips into a delicate frown--even in laughter--and the lucidity that yoked the depths of her eyes, making them shimmer amidst the smolder of melting candles, sparkle with the harshness of emotional bondage and the tyranny of suppressed, indentured tragedy.
"He was a good man, once. A young boy that loved God and wanted others, who claimed to love the Father as much as he, to prove that love by living holy lives. He wanted them to take their vows seriously, to love virtue and loathe vices." She gulped. "He wanted reform."
"Reform?"
"The Church was rampant with abuses and inconsistencies then, Lord Winner, not like the mighty hierarchy you know today. "
"I don?t understand."
"Well, for one, although its was encouraged, clergymen didn?t necessarily have to be celibate like they do now. In most cases, priests actually had their own concubines." Their eyes met. "But he wanted to change all that. He decided that simony, nepotism, all such problems needed to be done away with. We needed to remember the example of Christ and our humility, not the power we can get from them." Her hands kneaded the fabric of her gown; her nails grazed her ankles. "He thought the best way to do that was to become the pope himself, so that he could give the orders. But he knew no one, wasn't really the son of an influential family, and so contented himself with becoming a priest and doing missionary work. And he'd make sure his converts knew how to be Christians? real Christians."
Quatre shook his head and chortled at her shoddy tact. "Because the other real Christians were out beheading heretics like me, right?"
"Well maybe if your people knew how to take better care of the Christ we both love, we wouldn't have had to decapitate you."
"Your brother said something silly like that, too."
Relena turned to her sibling and scrunched her nose in a cynical sneer, running her hand along her exposed upper-arm. "He actually spoke the truth for a change. " She huffed. "Amazing, considering he's always so stubborn about things that he wouldn?t know what the truth was if God came down from the Throne and proclaimed it."
"About the things that matter, yes. You know why--"
"This isn?t getting us anywhere, majesties," The Arabian interjected with a weak sigh as he rose from his seat. "I don?t know what's going on between the two of you, and I'm not sure if I really ever want to know. But please, stop this childish bickering and just tell the story, Lady Relena." He felt a pang ricochet from his heart and lodge itself between the bars of his ribcage when he saw the princess's eyes fall to the ground and her body slump. Felt sweat start to pucker at his hairline as she wrapped her arms around her chest. His eye winked with teasing pain when the heat of Millirdo's glare pinched his left cheek, inducing more sweat to congregate and disband from beneath his blonde bangs, drops sidling down his temple.
Her voice was a parched whisper when it finally cut through the distant, reverberant invocations that restrained the church. "He eventually worked his way up to being a bishop, at a time when the Church had enough foresight to realize how important spreading the Gospel to distant lands really was." Her teeth skimmed over her bottom lip. "For money's sake, of course. And political influence."
She faced the merchant. "You've heard of Columbus and Magellan and Vasco de Gama? explorers?" He nodded. "Well they were a bit late. The Papacy had missionaries out searching for barbarians long before they were even born. It?s just that no one ever knew it."
"She doesn't know what she's saying, Quatre." The prince scraped a hand through his platinum strands. "She's been ill, delusional." Glacial blue eyes bored into her, and she shivered when they narrowed and heaved the sharp, jagged barbs of icicles into her blood. "She can't separate reality from her girlish fantasies, anymore."
"Milliardo, my friend." The younger walked towards him and placed a calming hand on his shoulder. "Regardless of how she has wronged you in the past, she is still your sister. She is a prayer that you must utter with loving lips and good intentions. So please," The nondescript, wooden face of Jesus from the crucifix rippled in his eyes, "be gentle with her? gentle?"
With the softness of his plea, a tear clutched Relena's cheek, leaving a glistening impression on her skin. "It's all right, Lord Winner. I deserve his anger. I made the choice. I betrayed. I've done what I've done." She raked the bead from her face and sniffled. "But he doesn?t deserve it, Milliardo. He couldn?t have known; I kept it from him."
"Innocent?"
"Of course, my lord. Innocent. Back to Innocent." Biting her lip, she stifled a groan as her hands gripped the edge of a pew, blanching her knuckles and tightening the skin over them so that the contours of her bones were distinct. "He was known as Odin Lowe, back then, and he was an excellent preacher. A very learned man, considering the times. And he was able to convert many people in his day-- Rumor of his successes even circulated back to Rome. Of course, none of his converts were of a race the bishops hadn't seen before? but it gave them an idea." She leaned forward over the railing, quivering, firmly shutting her eyes. "The curia promised him, plotted with him. The bishops said that if he brought with him a convert whose features were of those they'd never seen before and showed them the way to her homeland? they would make his dream come true." The contortions of her face smoothed out into valleys of creamy flesh and stiff mountains of rouge, rendering her countenance impassive. "They would make him pope."
"And let him have his reform."
"Mhmm. Reformation for the Church? and an unexpected one for himself."
"These things. you say. are. strange to me, 'Man from God.' These things. I do not understand." His Asian accent was thick and halted with the timbre of arrogance, each word echoing as an afterthought and incarnate, guttural rumble of divinity. Even the emperor's posture was godly, with rigid shoulders, a high chin lathered with hair, and a straight back angling towards the heavens. Coal black eyes fed a spark that crackled and faded to an omniscient glow in their depths, staring through his guest, burning off the immortality of the soul until all that remained was the purpose of the spirit itself. Penetrating deeper. He looked into all that approached him? not at them. "For a man to. dis-tance himself. from his ancestors for a woman, as your. Jesus say. is un-wise. We a-ppreciate. much. ho-nor and family, specifically those no. longer with us."
"I understand this tradition, your majesty, but Jesus' message is above the opinions of men. Although man and woman become one flesh, one should always honor both mother and father. Only his priorities have changed," Odin Lowe explained as he tugged at the neck of his kimono, letting his fingers graze over the chaffed skin where the material had been rubbing relentlessly for the past few hours. His throat was dry from his dialogue with the adamant, inquisitive ruler. They'd been discussing the same doctrine for days: the Incarnation, the Trinity, the Gospel, revelation, and still the emperor insisted on showing him "the true way," twisting the missionary's apologetic, Christian dogma into those of his royal favor. According to the god-king, Odin wasn't accounting for the whole truth. He "?could not see passed the beam in his own eyes," as the sovereign perverted the Scripture quote.
The bishop was forced to hide his more frequent coughing behind a hand, while his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and scrubbed the backs of his teeth. "And since you believe yourself to be an incarnation, can?t you also understand how Jesus could be one?"
"How. can he be the. Incarnation. if I am? I know. not. this. Jesus."
"No, you're not understanding, lordship. We're not even talking about the same kind of enfleshment her--"
Dark red yards of silk rustled beside him; white and gold, glossy cranes that nested amidst the boughs of cherry blossoms were painted on the billows and enlaced with ebony tresses. Strands that pooled like the shiny black quartz of a cavern around the pale woman's ankles and made bracelets around her wrists brushed against his arm, when she turned to him: head bowed, eyelids lowered, and expression demure. Sooty lashes fluttered upon her cheeks and contrasted with the luster of her blushing face, accentuating the curves of her supple, crimson lips. Her breastbone was sleek; her neck slender as the wild heron's, skin the same downy white.
"This. you see. is my youngest daughter, Tenshi," the emperor informed as he eyed the porcelain cups stained with tawny lotus flowers, and rolled his shoulders back. "She will serve tea, now."
"Yes? yes, thank you, majesty. Um? I? we were discussing?"
"Man leaving family. for woman. Make no such sacrifice for woman."
"But highness," the clergyman hesitated, flinching at the sable eyes of the princess that fondled his cheek, watched her moonlight breasts rise and fall with her labored breaths and saw her nostrils flare. The teapot shook in her hand. "Although women cannot? understand as much as men," he felt something lodge in his throat, "we need them. They provide us with children and nurture them. They are necessary and must be taken care of."
Clang!
The girl shrieked and prostrated before them, trembling, reaching for the lid of the teapot and cup that she knocked from the table. But her breathing was still erratic, her black eyes pulsating as her fingers brushed against the foreigner's knuckles--the knuckles of the hand that held the delicate, now chipped arm of the fallen cup. His face was reflected in the sheen of the china, his blonde hair grazing his cheekbones and his eyes distorted and large and? wet with understanding.
"Tenshi! You foolish girl! Leave us to the business of men?"
"He loved her."
"Yes, Lord Winner. He loved her. Beyond his better judgment he loved her, wanted her?" Relena gulped, pursing her lips before forcing the potent bitterness of bile back down her throat "? desired her. But he couldn?t have her. If anyone in the Church had to be celibate, it was the pope? in theory, at least. He couldn?t possibly take her as his mistress. Not before God."
The eyes of the Winner heir sparkled with tears, fostering a surrogate, pitiful gleam for the dead candles. Empathetic tears that made his jaw clamp in a tight vice, made his exhalation quiver. That poor man? for aren?t we all but mere men? Subject to man's temptations? To the look and feel of a woman? He cocked his head at her. "But he did it anyway, didn't he?"
The chanting ceased. The canopy of moonbeams was sheared by the steely, knifed edges of the clouds, spattering the floor and windows in silver blotches of runny, bloody light.
Halloed locks bobbed at his query, as her chin rubbed against the ball of her hand. "He did. Took her back with him as his convert, however he managed to get the emperor's consent. And?" her voice hitched momentarily "?became Pope Innocent III? with her by his side. And it was fine."
"But not forever."
"Until she found she was with child."
He massaged the skin beneath his bangs, braced his elbow with the opposing arm. "The bastard child of a pope?" His eyes fell closed. "It had no future, did it?"
"She'd always been hidden, and her pregnancy was no different." The princess rested her forehead on her knees, sighing. "No one knew, except for an old clergyman that he visited for confession: Abbot Jay. And I suppose that was a good thing, since she died during childbirth--"
"I don?t know where you came up with this story of yours, little sister, but you must be pretty damn sick to dream it up." The reagent grabbed her wrist and pulled her to his body. Their eyes locked. "Which is why you need to go back to bed and heal fully."
She refused an answer. Just continued with her narrative, an even tone braided through her words and a distant, vacant stare woven over her face as she and her brother remained entwined, neither budging. Neither even blinking. "He hated that child. It was the Incarnation? of his own sin. Why Tenshi died. Lowe couldn't even look at the baby."
"One sin," Quatre whispered absently, his eyes lost on a broken corner of a tile, "leads only to so many more." From his lashes a fluid, palpable intercession dripped between the crack, splashing onto the deaf ridges of stone. "Did he kill it?"
"No. Jay convinced him not to. He told Lowe that he would raise the child at a monastery, deep within the isolation of the English woodlands. The boy would be educated and a warrior?" her gaze sought the Muslim's, an ironic smile tugging at her mouth, her expression lurid "? and fight in the crusades?"
"Ma-ry and Jo-seph, pray for us?" the little boy sniffled and wiped at his nose with the back of a tiny, bronze hand, crossing his Prussian blue eyes to see if he'd smeared anymore ink over his skin. His face was already covered in greasy black smudges, little fingerprints and palm lines cracking through the dark oil in a sloppy, worn painting of transcription--even a few lowercase letter impressions spattered his cheek. He looked down at his parchment, eyes darting between his handwriting and the intricate loops and twists of his master's. A curl on the second leg of the upper-case A. The wide bow of the C. The sharp point of the F so that it wouldn?t be confused for a T. He made a quick dab with his quill. Forgot to dot the i.
Half-way through the alphabet, and their letters appeared nearly identical to the five-year-old's eye, prompting a small smile to transpose itself on his lips. His eyes twinkled through the tangles of his messy brown bangs.
Master Jay will be proud of me. Maybe he'll even think I'm ready for Scripture copying.
He continued singing. "Mi-chael and all an-gels, pray for us? An-na, Jo-a-chim, E-liz-a-beth, pray for us..." The O came out slightly tilted, and after wrinkling his pudgy little nose, he made another one beside it. Much better. "E-li-jah, Mo-ses, John the--"
"Heero!" The child jumped with the bite in the old man's censure, flailing his arms and knocking the ebony fluid of the ink jar all over the shabby, tattered rags that wrapped his body. "Look at this mess, you clumsy fool!"
"I-- I'm sorry, Master Jay." Heero stumbled to the floor, cheeks a light pink, and began wiping the puddles with his soiled garments. "I'll clean it up."
The abbot groaned at the boy's awkward stretches and the sable, filmy residue that gleamed on the floor in circular patterns from Heero's strokes. But it sounded more like a snarl. "Aren't you forgetting something boy?" He held out his hand, where a ring sparkled from one of his fingers and caught the child's eyes, which had been frantically scouring the floor for ink splotches.
Without touching Jay's vein-swathed hand, the child pressed his lips to holy symbol. His eyes remained averted. "I?"
"Silence!" The abbot used his wooden claw to push Heero away, who flinched and took another voluntary step back. "You smell like rotting meet, lad. Can?t you even bathe yourself?"
"Master Jay, I?"
"Silence, I said, lad. You must be silent-- How many times have I reminded you of that vow, the one your swore before God?" The boy sniffed, chewing on his lip as his hands clutched at the base of his shirt, creasing it. "I walk in here to feed you," he said while motioning towards a bowl with his fleshy hand, "and I find you singing? Singing, of all things. You're supposed to be learning how to write, so that can copy the sacred Word of God, and you're in here committing more sins. More penance for yourself."
Heero remained reticent, although his scrawny body was shivering, rattling his crucifix against his chest. "You may speak now to defend yourself."
"I was writing, and you told me I should always praise God. I didn?t think He would mind." His reply was quiet, a hesitant whimper.
"And what else have I told you?"
"That?" his midnight blue eyes scintillated with rippling crystal, foaming like a waterfall along his lashes, reflecting the stars of his optic sky. "That I was made in sin. So I am sin." A tear plummeted. "God can't love me."
"Remember that, and maybe someday He'll forgive you. Not love you, but forgive you." Jay sighed, his tone somewhat warmer. "Now, let's see what you've done with your writing."
Another droplet fell from his eyes when his head shot up to face the abbot, but Heero's gaze was bright, his breaths elicited in excited gasps with his jutted, bony chest heaving up to his shoulders. His teeth flashed from behind his lips.
The old man stood over the table and picked up one of the completed sheets, his face hard, scrutinizing the curves and strokes and consistencies and thickness of the lines. The loops of the first B were much wider than the subsequent few. The tail of the third J dipped father down than its counterparts, the hook too crisp. One of the Q's wasn't speared, and those that were had been smudged, donning slimy manes over the R's. The damn O's were crooked.
"You think this is good, lad?" The boy froze. "I think the chickens can scratch better words in the gravel than this."
A blur of black, sunlight, stone, and steel bars assailed the bastard's vision as he felt cold fingers plunge themselves into the skin of his neck, as he was dragged to the archaic bowels of the disciplinary brig. His calves scraped on the rocks and left crimson, swerving smears on the stair edges in a morbid trail to his condemnation; his face was smacked with parchment, slitting his brow, frothing blood; his eye was poked when Jay threw the quill into the cell. It floated into Heero's ink-blotted lap, its feel too gentle, for the boy winced when it grazed his wrist.
"I'll let you out of there when you learn to stay silent and concentrate on your work." And the abbot walked away. The keys to the child's freedom jingled in sync with the clergyman's footsteps; their tinkling dulled with each faint step that moaned its dirge for the abuse it left behind in that dungeon, like the chimes of church bells on Christmas morn. Those that echoed with guilt, as they knew the eventual fate of the Lord. Death. By the hands of men. Eerie. Heart-wrenching. Something I won't ever have.
Heero settled himself on his knees, took the feather in his hand, and connected his shaky script to the paper. "Lord, give new life? Hear my prayer?"
"Much better, Samuel. Your writing's much better than last week." Jay's voice loomed above the crouching bastard, reverberating in the granite crevices and wailing through pillars--echoing in the cracks of rat holes. "At least your O's aren't lopsided."
Tears made the letters run together, sloshing darkness on his knuckles and speckling his knees. Black blood. Damned blood.
"Lord give new life? to? those? cho-sen?"
A scream tore from the throat of a child. Shattered by sobs.
Christ, hear him; Lord, Je-sus, hear his prayer?
* * * *
"Now, Young Frederick, I will expla?" The mouth of the pope stood agape, eyes pried open as sputters tumbled from his lips, hand grabbing for the prince's chair back to keep his knees from plunging beneath him. His embroidered, costly robes flapped from the jerks of his quaking body underneath. He bit the insides of his cheeks. "Why?"
"I'm sorry, Holy Father, but we did not have time to bring him back to England before you called upon us. I--"
"This is unacceptable, Jay!" Heavy trains of fabric swiveled across the room, pummeling the limp, rust-colored curls of the child seated behind him. The royal grimaced at the negligent assault. "I told you to never bring him before me unless he's ready for Penance. Ever. No excuses." Snorting, Innocent snatched the miter from his scalp and threw it across the room, knocking a tallow, paint-chipped globe from its perch and grumbling as he scowled at the brown-hair boy. He was stiff, expressionless, with shoulders pulled back, and awaiting command. Just staring at his father's elaborate garments and how the jarring movements forced them to wallow and ruffle in a gaudy rainbow of gold, white, and red. Subservient.
Like his mother.
Pinching the bridge of his nose, his Excellency clenched his eyes shut, flaxen strings twining in his fingers as he ordered, "Leave the boy and come with me." His voice was low, gritty. "All of you. And in the mean time, Frederick," he said facing his ward, "locate Sicily on the map and put a black X over it. When I re-enter, I'll be able to school you without interruption. And you," his throat closed, scratched and shaved at his words as he looked into those eyes, the same, deep shade of blue as his own, "don?t do anything. Don't move, don't say a word, don?t even look at anything. Because if I find out that you somehow upset the prince," his nostrils flared, blonde brow knotted, "You'll wish you'd never been born."
"I all ready do."
Smack! "Keep. Your. Mouth. Shut. Sinner."
In a flurry of wool and satin strips, the elder men departed from the chamber without comment, leaving Frederick and Heero alone in the prince's study.
After a few moments of the clock's ticking, a taunting giggle ruptured the silence, poisoning the air with the deliberate, spoiled stench of mischief. "My benefactor says you can?t even come near me." He rose from his chair and approached the bastard, stretching and rumpling his face and sticking out his tongue and spitting on the coarse wool of the ten-year-old's habit. "Not touching you, can?t get mad." His fingers jabbed the other boy in the ribs and tugged on his hood, slamming it over his head. "Touching you, but you still can?t get mad." Wracking his fingers through the locks, Frederick mussed his hair to look like the feral, dirty spikes of the other, protruding his front teeth while hunching his neck. He even spit into his hands and wiped it down his chin, glimmering like a fresh patch of drool. "I'm a bastard. Look at me. God don?t love me 'cause I'm a stupid bastard. My dad loves his ward better than me--"
"Perhaps, Master Frederick, it would be better for you to do as his Excellency commanded," Abbot Jay's tone was flat, "rather than instigate something with a boy that could throttle you in an instant, if he wanted."
"Yeah, yeah," he muttered in German, following those flippant disregards with a few curses when the clergyman exited again. "I?ll find Sicily."
But his eyes searched the map, tongue clicking against the roof of his mouth. Once. Twice. Three times. A fourth. He rested a finger on England and sniffed, shaking his head as he moved it further east, closer to the maroon colored landmasses--the boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire. The quill levitated above Greece, his eyes squinting as he tried to make the calligraphic, lavish letters comprehensible, with a russet ringlet tickling his nose. He blew it away and bent over to mark Athens when--
"Here." Heero placed his hand over the royal's fist, guiding it closer to the boot of Italy, which had a dingy cross stamped over the label, "Sicily is over here?"
Quatre blinked. A few times. Was still when his cape slid off his shoulders and onto the floor, hissing as it slithered over the stone and snaked around his feet in a coil of alabaster cloth. "Are you trying to tell me that poor little boy?" He swallowed. Gagged. "Is the Mercenary?"
The tears gnawing on her cheeks with their glistening fangs, the red, swollen eyes were the only responses needed.
"Lady Relena--"
"No more of this tonight? no more." He was hoarse, eyes glinting when the reagent enveloped his sister in his arms, cradling her head and kissing the crown with soothing lips. Laced his fingers through her tresses. "That's enough for one night."
AN: The Frederick being referred to is Frederick II. Innocent III was pope in the late 12th century and early 13th, just to give you a time period on that. Some of this is historically accurate? some isn't (as I'm sure you all ready knew). I took liberties, but I tried not to run amuck with them. ::Sigh::
How does Relena know all this? How did Heero actually BECOME the Mercenary? Why is he haunting Cinq? What the heck is going on between Milliardo and Relena? You'll find out soon enough. Thanks again, and until next time.
I'm speechless. So much makes sense now. Poor Heero... Relena seems to be hiding something other than her association with 'the Mercenary". Is that why Milliardo is displeased with her?
I guess, I'll just have to wait for the next chapter to find out! 
