Title: The Power of Goodbye
Author: bonnejeanne (bonnejeanne@yahoo.com)
Archive: GW Addiction
Category: yaoi, songfic, angst
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: 13x5
()()()()Warnings: Some Lime/Lemon. A lot of emotional pain. Treize fans, I'm sorry...
Spoilers: Series, Endless Waltz

The Power of Goodbye

-by bonnejeanne-

"Treize is dead," Heero had said.

In the sky above the Bunker, more than one battle had been waged. Two, who knew more about each other than they ever showed to the world, strove in armed conflict... and each fought a very personal battle with demons only he could see. In the end, one battle was abandoned... and two were won.

"Treize is dead," Heero said.

"No! I'm still fighting him!" Wufei answered, as if the truth were ripped from him.

"Treize is dead," Heero said.

But he wasn't.

Wufei looked down at the note in his hand. The words were scrawled gracefully... but almost carelessly. Wufei could see the man's hand, writing, in his mind's eye. Placing the paper on the dresser where he could see it, Wufei removed his Preventer's uniform and dressed in his white silks. Then he used the comm to record a message, to be delivered to Sally Po.

"Sally, I'm sorry. I'm resigning. If the time comes when I can return to the Preventers and work at your side, I will consider it an undeserved honor. Please forgive me now."

Setting the message to be delivered after his shuttle left Earth, Wufei picked up the small bag of his things in one hand, and the note in the other. His eyes moved over it one last time.

'Meet me,' it said simply. 'You know where. I'll be waiting.' It didn't need a signature, but he'd left one anyway, an intimate reminder. 'Tianrui'

Looking at the evidence of the existence of a man thought long dead, Wufei felt a dull pain that was all too familiar. Again and again it had returned to him, for longer than a year. With every inner hurt he healed, with each bit of peace he found, this pain had come, to replace the old wounds, to take over the old doubts, to keep him from sleeping, and remove the smile from his eyes as if he had no right to it.

Wufei crushed the note in his hand and dropped it on the floor, leaving the room and his most recent chance at a new life behind, to return and face the past one last time.

The trip on the shuttle was uneventful, leaving Wufei more time to sink into his own thoughts, a place he did not want to be. How have I come to this? Why is it that every time I learn the hard lessons and move on, everything I've done drags at my feet? And why... why is it that my best impulses, my purest acts, always result in the greatest tragic consequences?

And why is it, that each time I love, my heart must be punished and left at my feet?

There were never any answers. But this time, as his mind drifted unwillingly through the litany of his sins and inadequacies, this time he stopped and tried to answer the voice of his pain.

It's not true. I loved Heero... that love has never been betrayed.

He's not yours, Wufei's pain answered, an answer he knew was coming. But this time, he answered back.

That doesn't matter, he told the dark voice in his heart. It's still never been betrayed. The battle over Earth played through his mind, down to the end, when Heero had plunged into the ocean below. "Treize is dead," he'd said. It didn't matter that it wasn't true. What mattered was that Heero had known to say the words. Had known Wufei's apparent betrayal for what it was. Had known him.

It doesn't matter. Love is love. It's giving, not ownership. It's accepting... not taking. It's faith.

Someone kept the small cottage clean, and someone kept it just the way it had been the day he brought Treize here and gave him a new name. It didn't matter how much time passed, it was like stepping into a memory. Wufei knew Treize, the man now called Tianrui, arranged for this. At first it had seemed like a precious gift, an acknowledgement of what they had shared inside these walls. Now he recognized it for what it was... a chain around his heart. A reminder of his debt of responsibility for the man's life. Treize had not been the simple monster he'd once thought... a complex man with capabilities and depths that stunned Wufei. But nowhere among his many intricate sides was anything that prevented him from being cruel.

Setting down his bag, Wufei looked around. The cottage was empty. This too was familiar. Always Tianrui called for him, and always, he kept him waiting. Knowing him so well now, Wufei knew it wasn't that Treize was careless, or late. It was all planned, all a precision dance designed to order Wufei's thoughts and emotions like a carefully composed sonata that Treize would play.

'I could show you things about yourself that you can not yet imagine.'

Treize had said that to him when they'd met in their first "rematch". It had turned out to be so very true.

Unbuttoning his jacket, Wufei took it off and left it over the back of a chair. Sitting on the floor, he crossed his legs lotus-fashion as if to meditate. As if he could meditate in the memory and emotion laden room.

Obedient to the orchestrator, the memories came without asking, and Wufei did not resist them.

The first time...

He'd only guessed at what physical love could be. Part of the attraction that the Oz leader held for him was the knowledge that the man could teach him everything... all the forbidden things he'd only sensed or tried to imagine. Wufei had recognized his own sexual attraction to other males after his marriage. His child-wife, Meiran, had known before he did. Her understanding, and her forgiveness, had humbled him in a way he had never recovered from. Her death had torn his soul from his body, leaving him with nothing but his intellect, his guilt, and his vow. Nothing had prepared him for the way his emotions, his body, and his desire for self-destruction would pull him always in the direction of the flame. Conflict became his habitat.

The first time, with Treize, he had surrendered it all. Perceptive, the man had been all but overwhelmed himself by the recklessness with which Wufei offered his body, and his heart. Carefully, he focused himself on the boy, taking the time to present each nuance in his vast arsenal, using the skill that had become legendary, and had broken any number of older, more experienced partners into emotionally crippled slaves.

Wufei broke... and broke... and broke... but never, ever did he look into the boy's dark eyes and see anything other than the child himself. It was as if Wufei simply did not have it in him to become another human's toy. Tormented with his inner demons though he was, there was a central core of self that was as pure and untouchable as the light of a distant star.

At first, Treize was astounded. Then he was awed.

Then he became dissatisfied. And finally, boredom, not with Wufei, but with the life he had been left with, caused him to turn all of his attention to trying to find the flaw in Wufei's perfection, just to see if he could win the game.

Treize opened the door silently, seeing the familiar figure, sitting in the familiar pose, knowing what he would see before his eyes took it in. Wufei's eyes were closed as he faced his memories, wrestling with them like demons.

Treize hadn't intended to live. He'd had two plans for how his legend would end, either of which would have been sufficient for the arcane thing that Treize Kushranada called a soul to rest peacefully.

His first plan had been Zechs... Milliardo Peacecraft. It would have been perfect. A duel between the two of them, no quarter asked or given, each one representing the ideals of their faction, each one knowing the other with a depth and familiarity beyond compare. Had he beaten his once friend, once lover, he'd have killed him. And mourned. And lived the life of a savior of humanity. How perfect it would have been, had Zechs only cooperated. No outcome would have been unacceptable. Treize's death at the hands of the leader of White Fang would have left him a martyr for all eternity, and his crimes against humanity would have been erased in the destruction of Earth itself.

But Zechs had refused him.

At that moment, everything he'd done had threatened to unravel like so much careless knitting. It was the first thing that had taken him by surprise in years. Somehow, impossible though it was, he had miscalculated. His old friend... had a mind of his own. He'd somehow evolved beyond the ethics Treize had so carefully instilled in him, had so carefully nurtured, had so deliberately manipulated. Who else could have taken a Peacecraft and made of him 'the Lightning Count'? No one, only he, Treize. Yet, now, at the end of the intricate game, it was almost as if the cool-eyed blond had seen through him... and beyond him. And Treize had been cheated of the endgame he'd created to crown his brief and amazing life.

His second chance had been the Gundam pilot... Heero Yuy. But Zechs had arranged to block that gambit as well, playing the homicidal megalomaniac well enough to draw Yuy to him, and away from Treize. As if he had known... impossible.

And Treize had found himself fighting a meaningless battle against mechanized opponents, lost in the huge drama he'd created, while the plot had shifted to other players.

And then Wufei Chang had come for him.

At that moment, Treize had felt something akin to love for the young pilot. He was running out of time as the game played out on other boards, cheating him of his well-planned outcome. But Wufei Chang would not let him be served so disgracefully. The boy would give him a chance to take a part of the prize he worked so carefully for. A chance was sufficient. Never one to brood on lost opportunities, Treize opened another facet of himself to the boy and savored the astonishment, the emotion, so pure and sweet. With more time, he could have created an entire new scenario, but his work was too far in motion to reverse now, it had to be ridden to the end like a dragon. He would be remembered as a martyr.

There was enough humanity in him to regret the pain in the voice of the boy, whose incredible reflexes gave him his last gift. But gratefully, triumphantly, he released regret along with his crimes and surrendered to the end of his legend.

But though his legend had ended, his life had not. And the taste of it, at first sweet, had slowly become stale and bitter in his mouth until the only pleasure he found was in the games he played with the boy who had saved him, failing his purpose and dooming him to the life of a ghost in the shadows.

"Thank you for coming," Tianrui said softly, and Wufei opened his eyes. The man who stood before him was not the Treize of old. His hair had grown long, past his shoulders, and been bound neatly with a dark tie at the back of his neck. His clothing was plain, astonishingly so. He'd adopted a dark brown for all his garments, save the simple white scarf that circled his neck loosely. The simplicity of his dress almost brought to mind some obscure religious order.

His body was a shade thinner, his face a bit more angular, and his skin had darkened a shade, acquiring the even tan of a Colony dweller. He was still a breathtakingly beautiful man, but few people would have recognized him. That had been his accession to the honor of Wufei Chang.

Wufei stood, and they looked at each other across the small distance. This had been the pattern of their last several meetings, brief ones, spread out across months. Wufei no longer came to him with a kiss, though he'd come if beckoned. That too had been Tianrui's doing. 'Dignity', he chided the boy gently, 'Is not something only for the old.' He could still see the emotional welt that had left behind, as attractive in an odd way as patterns on smooth skin.

"I expected to hear from you," Treize said softly, "After the fall of the Bunker. Instead, I found out that my daughter was still alive by watching a news broadcast."

Wufei simply looked at him. Then he said, "I did everything you asked."

Treize smiled. "As I have done everything you asked. I could have stopped it before it began, you know."

"Not without revealing yourself," Wufei answered. They were simply speaking the parts they both knew were in the script.

"Would that be so terrible after all this time?" Treize said. Then he held up his hand. "Never mind. I know it would."

Wufei said something not in the script.

"You won't," he said. "You loose too much if it were known you lived."

Treize's nostrils flared ever so slightly. So the boy still had the impulse to fence, even after all he'd learned. "Loose... what? I have nothing. Therefore I have nothing to loose."

"You don't need to be afraid," Wufei said, stepping off script again. "I won't reveal it."

"That was your requirement, not mine."

"I don't believe that any more," Wufei said.

Treize covered his surprise with the first emotion he could find. "I see," he said coolly. "I'm getting the feeling you are not happy to be here, Wufei."

"I'm not happy."

Treize smiled, a slow, lazy smile. "Shall I make you happy?"

"You can't."

It was flat enough to almost take his breath away. "That's not what you said the last time," he said, drawing close to the boy. He reached out and tilted Wufei's face up to him. "I believe your words were, 'this is the only time I can feel happy'..."

"I was in error."

I can't have lost so much of my power... Treize thought suddenly. He placed his hand around Wufei's throat and bent to kiss him, pressing his lips open to fully possess the boy's sweet mouth.

The response came, as he knew it would... but not instantly. Could that have been... hesitation? Resistance?

It made him ruthless. Treize devoured the boy's mouth, holding him still only with his hand around the boy's throat, feeling his pulse jump and race. This was the headiest thing left in his life... the partners he took and used at will could not stir his emotions or his body as this one still could. Something knocked at his assurance, but he shut it out, and decided he was not inclined to wait, nor to permit the fencing match to continue.

Releasing Wufei's mouth and stepping back a pace, he held the boy's eyes. Deliberately, he pulled the white scarf from his neck and dropped in to the floor. Then he unfastened the vest and undershirt, and dropped it all, coat as well, onto the floor. Naked to the waist, Treize still looked like a god. His body would not begin to soften for another ten years... ten long years. The possibility of time stretched out before him like a terrible sentence of... justice.

"This will be the last time," Wufei said, meeting his eyes.

Unable to comprehend it, Treize simply shook his head. Wufei did not repeat his words. He had no need. He'd said them. He felt something drop from his heart like the weight of ages. As Treize unfastened his pants, Wufei mirrored his actions, until they faced each other naked, everything physically revealed.

Though he usually preferred to court, to draw, to fascinate, Treize felt a raw hunger that battered at his crumbling identity. He crossed the small space and turned the boy, pushing him down to his knees, facing away. Wufei neither resisted nor acceded, he simply completed the movement in a controlled response. Bending, he placed his hands on the floor and waited for what would come.

Abandoning all his techniques of seduction, Treize responded to the view in front of him, the boy's beautiful backside, the submissive position, and leaned over him, taking what he fully believed to be his. He felt the shudders in the body beneath him, knowing his dry entrance was bringing pain, but how quickly it brought Treize his own pleasure. He felt Wufei press against him, giving him something to thrust into, resisting only enough to make the movement work between them. The boy danced around his impalement, hot and tight, and Treize gave himself to pure animal lust. He admitted to himself, he'd always preferred the alpha males... the besting inherent in subjugation or seduction sweetened his pleasure to an addictive degree. It wasn't the boy's surrender he wanted... it was this, this play of muscle against muscle, and the sense of power he felt in the taking.

It built quickly, sweet, hot, and yet somehow bitter. His own growl of completion was answered in gasps by the one beneath, and the boy's shudders betrayed his pleasure as his body released itself.

Hours later, Wufei rose from the bed, looking down at the man he hoped never to see again in his life. His body ached and throbbed, his skin darkened with bruises... but there were a few on the lightly tanned skin of the one who still slept. I've learned all you can teach me, Treize, he thought silently. And more than I can bear. It's time for me to remember who I am... even if I have never known. There has to be a waking from this. I've let it go on far longer than I should have.

In the back of his mind, he heard a soft voice, one that almost never came to him any more. Meiran's whisper was faint but her tone was clear. At last, she seemed to tell him. At last you are ready to be the man I've always known you were.

Dressing quickly, Wufei looked back only once. Another voice echoed in his mind. "Treize is dead," Heero Yuy had said.

Yes, Wufei thought. Breathing or not, he really is. And I can let go.

"Good bye, Treize," he said softly, and closed the door.

Your heart is not open so I must go
The spell has been broken, I loved you so
Freedom comes when you learn to let go
Creation comes when you learn to say no

You were my lesson I had to learn
I was your fortress you had to burn
Pain is a warning that something's wrong
I pray to God that it won't be long
Do you wanna go higher?

There's nothing left to try
There's no place left to hide
There's no greater power
Than the power of good-bye

Your heart is not open so I must go
The spell has been broken, I loved you so
You were my lesson I had to learn
I was your fortress

There's nothing left to lose
There's no more heart to bruise
There's no greater power
Than the power of good-bye

Learn to say good-bye
I yearn to say good-bye

There's nothing left to try
There's no more places to hide
There's no greater power
Than the power of good-bye

There's nothing left to lose
There's no more heart to bruise
There's no greater power
Than the power of good-bye