Warnings: Yaoi. Angst. Blood.
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: Gundam Wing characters and universe are the property of the copyright owners. Our stuff is ours. No money being made here.
Notes: This was written for RavynFyre. It is dedicated to those of you on the ML who have jobs which are about helping people. Sometimes the cost is high, but you do it anyway. I admire you, I honor you.
Feedback: Any and all comments, feedback, critiques welcome, be they short or long.
"Master Quatre!"
Quatre and Trowa pushed through the small crowd around the tattered tent. Inside they saw Rashid, Abdul, and several of the Maganacs, apparently trying to restore order to a scene that was both horrifying and chaotic.
"What happened?" Trowa asked Rashid, and Quatre fell on his knees beside the body of the woman who lay there, as Auda moved aside. Quatre reached down instinctively, feeling for a pulse, trying to find the deepest of the stab wounds by touch. Frantically he put pressure on them, attempting to keep the woman's life from pouring out onto the ground.
"Her husband." Rashid said grimly, jerking his head to where a man was restrained by several of the others. A knife lay on the floor, stained with red. Trowa looked around, and his eye was caught by the faces of children, being held back by the adults, but not far enough back that they could not see everything that was happening. One small face mouthed, "Mommy!"
Quatre pressed harder, and felt the woman's blood cover his hands, hot, sticky, so bright red. so desperately needed inside her poor body, so useless and horrifying outside of it.
Without thinking, Trowa crossed the space to the restrained man in a leap that the eye could not follow. A hand like steel clamped around the man's throat, crushing his larynx with slow inevitability as the man choked, staring up in terror at green eyes that pieced his soul to the bottom of his being with a promise of death.
"Master Quatre. Master Quatre!" Auda said, taking the young blonde's shoulders. "She's gone. there's nothing we can do." His face mirrored compassion for the young master, who as always could think of nothing but trying to help, trying to save. and the pain in those aqua eyes at his inability to cheat death of this victim.
Blinking water from his eyes, Quatre felt something outside himself, a whirl of rage, and looked up to see Trowa, his hand locked on the murderer's throat, as the man struggled to no avail, turning purple from lack of oxygen. Trowa's cold rage was like an electric field that flickered around him. Stumbling to his feet, Quatre wiped his hands on his clothes as he ran to Trowa. Inserting his body into the tall one's line of sight, he tried to penetrate the rage.
"Trowa! Trowa, no!" he cried softly. "It won't help!"
The green eyes blazed down into Quatre's, searing him with their intensity, but the Arabian stood his ground, nothing in his face but sorrow and compassion. For a moment their eyes locked, and then Trowa's hand released the human garbage and it fell to the ground. unconscious, but not quite dead.
Trowa's chest moved, as he breathed hard, trying to rid himself of the need to murder the perpetrator of this act. Looking down, he saw Quatre's bloodstained hands and clothes, and then allowed himself to see the deep pain, the pure suffering in his friend's heart over the loss of the woman's life. It helped bring him back from the edge.
He wanted to comfort the blonde one, but as his mind began to clear, his eye caught a face close by. a young boy, maybe thirteen or fourteen. not more than a year or two younger than himself. The boy sat, not far from the other children who were still crying and trying to understand what had happened. The boy's clothes were torn and he was covered with bruises, and there were smears of blood on his clothes as well. His mother's? His own? Had the man gone after his son? Had the mother tried to stop him, turning the psychotic's wrath on herself? Trowa could not guess, he only knew that everything was locked in the boy's eyes, and that it would probably never leave them.
Quatre saw the direction of Trowa's look, and his breath caught. Here, something else was dying. something more intangible than blood was leaking out onto the sand.
Wiping the water from his own face with his sleeve, Quatre went to the boy. He felt rather than saw Trowa move with him. Looking into the boy's face, Quatre knew there were no words that could be said. He simply knelt, and placed his arms around the child, who was almost the same size as Quatre himself. There was nothing else Quatre could offer. He held the boy tightly, trying to will healing from his heart into the soul of the one who was hurting so terribly, so incomprehensibly.
He willed it with everything in him, until he felt darkness begin to dance behind his eyes, and his body began to tremble with shock. Another set of arms locked around them both, giving the strength that was needed in that moment. Trowa closed his eyes, seeing scenes behind them of war and death, pain and suffering, each one he had witnessed, many he had participated in, until he had become a shell that could walk through such things without showing. but never without knowing. He knew that his rage at the man was surprising. He'd thought himself too numb to feel such things when faced with the harshness of human evil. But the time he'd spent with Quatre had affected him. The little blonde had opened a crack in his armor, and unfrozen his heart.
Hours later, he held Quatre against him, having bathed and undressed them both and pulled the exhausted Sandrock pilot into bed beside him. In the quiet dark, Quatre wept without restraint. Trowa stroked his hair, feeling his own pain as something new and foreign, and wondered if the process of beginning to feel again was irreversible. Quatre quieted at last.
"Trowa," he said softly, his voice a shred of its normal timbre.
"Yes?"
"I understand why you wanted to kill that man."
Trowa took a breath and let it out, not deep, just regular. "You stopped me."
"I know. maybe I shouldn't have." Quatre's voice caught slightly.
After a moment, Trowa said quietly, "No. You were right. I'm not even sure why - if ever someone deserved death. but you were right. Your feelings were true."
"Trowa," Quatre said, touching the other boy's cheek. "Both our feelings were true. I want to thank you."
"For what?"
"For taking the rage. it's the hardest. but feeling it in you, freed me from my own."
Trowa looked down, his green eyes widening. "You. felt rage? You wanted to.?"
Quatre looked back, hiding nothing. "Yes. I wanted to kill that man. I wanted to take his face and drowned him in blood." Quatre took a breath.. "But when I felt you, I knew I had to come back from there. Or I might loose you."
Trowa stared down, and then gently kissed Quatre's lips, then his cheeks, and last, light kisses on his eyelids. He said nothing more.
Eventually, they slept, as the dawn began to send tendrils of rose into the sky.
with love for Ravyn and all who try to staunch the flow...
bonnejeanne
Comments? Email bonnejeanne@yahoo.com