Kracken
Peonies
Hit and Run
"You're determined to make this difficult, aren't you?" Heero growled as he sat up in bed and saw Duo in a slave's prostration with breakfast on a tray. "I should leave you like that while I eat."
"As you will," Duo replied tightly. "I am your slave."
Heero grunted. "I think that I'm yours." That made Duo shoot him a hot, confused look, but Heero didn't elaborate as he took the tray from him and set it aside. "You've cleaned?" Heero wanted to know.
"Yes. You haven't," Duo pointed out with a wrinkled nose.
"Sore?" Heero persisted.
Duo glared even more.
Heero sighed and said, as he took a dried fruit that had seen better days, "I'm sorry."
Duo's glare turned to a look of surprise.
"I was a starving man and you were the food of the gods," Heero explained.
"Are you still starving?" Duo wanted to know, "Or was one meal enough for you?"
Heero worried a tough piece of lamb and then replied, "I think you've spoiled me for anything else."
"Then you'll starve to death," Duo said angrily."Good."
Heero reached out and took hold of Duo's braid. "I can't order you to my bed again?"
"Why would you want to?" Duo wondered acidly as he took his braid back with a jerk. "You've had what you wanted, my virginity. Surely I'm not interesting now?"
"So, I'm a man who conquers only virgins?" Heero snorted with a raised eyebrow.
"I was conquered?" Duo snarled. "That's not the way I remember it."
Heero took a tight rein on his temper. "You like to hear the worst in my
words."
"Have you said anything good?" Duo retorted.
Heero studied him, his tense shoulders, his angry face, and then replied softly, "You were like fire last night, everything that a man could want, and more. You were strong and handsome. You were... perfect."
"Perfect?" Duo repeated and almost sneered, but Heero was pulling him suddenly close and bringing their faces almost together.
"Don't," Heero told him. "Don't belittle what happened because you worry about your pride."
Duo's mouth opened a little and then he replied, "Who allowed me pride last night?"
"I did, if you could stop being angry long enough to see it," Heero told him. He caressed Duo's cheek and then asked, "When will you see what I feel for you?"
"What does it matter?" Duo replied bitterly. "I'm nobody. I can only be your slave, or your servant. Never a lover. Never an equal. If we survive this fight-"
"Do you imagine I'll be rewarded for my rebellion, however it turns out? I've burned my bridges," Heero replied. "I'm no better than a slave now."
"A slave who owns a slave?" Duo snickered. "The gods must be laughing. Are you sure you're ready to give up so much for our cause?"
"I couldn't see it before, but..." Heero nodded. "Sometimes, a man must give up all for justice."
"You sound like Fei," Duo replied, but there was some respect in his voice now. He looked uncomfortable for a moment and then met Heero's eyes intently. He licked lips and then said, as if choosing his words carefully, "It wasn't... terrible... last night. I think... I think I could want that again."
Heero felt a thrill in the vicinity of his heart. "I will be... more careful," he promised. "Of your body.... and of your pride."
Duo smiled, seized a short kiss, and then came to his feet, his tattoo rippling with a riot of colors. "Not unless you bathe first, my slave master."
"I'll do that now," Heero said as he tossed a fruit pit onto the tray and rose. Duo looked over his naked body with a blush and then was gone. Heero was sporting a half erection and was completely unembarrassed by it. He looked down at it, gave it a stroke with one hand, and smiled. Even if he died that day, he had experienced a night to remember and to take with him into the afterlife.
__________________________________________
Heero didn't die that day, or the next. They were careful to harass the Emperor's troops, but not to engage them fully. That would have been suicide. It was Quatre who made the plans, who seemed a gifted tactician. He was the one who made their small force as effective as an entire army.
"We'll bloody their nose while making our case," Quatre told them. "We don't want sympathy turning away from us through pitched battles. We're defending our rights, our homes, against a tyrant Emperor. We have to maintain that until the people cry out for us and force the Emperor to back off."
"While not getting slaughtered," Duo snorted as he finished brushing down his horse.
They were all in the makeshift barn, tending the animals and the small chores there. Heero was hauling bales of hay to the stalls and Trowa was helping him to open them up and fork them over the railings. Wu Fei was working on harness repairs with deft fingers, unhampered by a small shoulder wound from their last hit and run battle.
Heero wiped sweat from his brow while leaning against the remaining bales. His eyes swept Duo up and down appreciatively as the man's tunic rode up as he reached the higher places on his horse's body with the brush. The tattoo was still a mystery to him. It rippled along firm muscle and pretended to be something it wasn't, a thing of quiet beauty. As that thought struck Heero, he straightened, blinking. Wasn't that exactly what Duo was?
"Something wrong?" Wu Fei wondered with an arrogant lift of his brow.
"The Gods have granted wisdom," Heero snorted. "I've been in dire need of some."
"I'm happy for you, then," Wu Fei replied in a manner that was difficult to decipher. It could have been sarcasm or words honestly spoken.
Duo turned and saw their eyes on him. He scowled and jerked his tunic down. "I wasn't aware that I was required to give a 'performance', master."
Wu Fei rolled his eyes as he returned to his work, "As if you held any interest for me..." he muttered.
"Duo," Trowa sighed. "You really should stop being an idiot. No one is requiring you to do anything, not even be a slave. You're insisting on that title."
"Doesn't Quatre insist as well?" Duo wanted to know acidly. "He has his reasons, and I have mine."
"You saved me," Quatre told him, with his appreciation glowing on his face. "You are deserving of my respect, Duo."
"And Heero is saving our asses," Duo snapped back. "So... I'm paying the debt. Nobody else should have to do it."
"He doesn't want anyone else's ass," Trowa snickered and Quatre blushed at his crudeness.
Duo went red and then stalked out of the barn. Heero looked after him, pained. "Why does he insist on this? I've told him how I feel about it."
"Pig headedness," Quatre replied with some amusement. "He was full of stories about how you were a waste of air, and that the Gods should strike you down for your lack of understanding and propriety. Admitting he was wrong, that you are someone who is worthy, is hard. He'd rather pretend that you only want something out of all of this... him, I suppose." He eyed Heero with his candid blue eyes. "If he sees truly, then his virginity must be worth it's weight in gold, to make a man leave behind wealth and position for it." He looked bitter, "Mine was only worth the price of my father's cooperation."
Heero scowled sympathetically, but he couldn't explain himself without embarrassment."I want nothing that he isn't willing to give freely. I'm not placing a price on my help."
"May he come to understand that," Quatre replied gently, making a motion to his heart and giving Heero a small bow.
Trowa snorted. "We don't have time for love matches," he complained. "Save your wooing for after the war."
"This isn't a war," Quatre shot back in some alarm. "It's an insistence on our autonomy. The moment it becomes a war, we have lost."
"Agreed," Heero replied gruffly, imaging the slaughter if they should ever be confronted by the Emperor's full army.
So far, the Emperor had felt secure in only sending crack forces to quell rebellion. If popular sympathy didn't sway him soon, that might change. Heero could imagine the death toll, if war should ever sweep over the fields that fed the cities and the rural communities.They couldn't allow it to go that far, even if the madman sitting on the throne might. It was possible that they would have to surrender to keep that from happening. The possibility twisted a bitter knot into Heero's stomach. They would all end up dead or in chains. He could imagine Duo being used by perfumed senators and Quatre bowing his gold head, serving wine and his body to whoever he was given to as a spoil of battle. The rest of them would end up on spikes in the sun, he was certain.
"We have to win," Heero said, in a tone of voice that startled them all and it was hard to think of anything else after that.
________________________________________
He was weary. Sporting wounds, bruises, and the inner visions of the dead and dying, Heero wondered if the battles would ever end. When the warm body melded itself to his, he was almost startled enough to reach for the sword that he always kept by his side those days.
"Kill your slave, master?" Duo whispered in his ear.
Heero didn't ask what Duo was doing in his bed.He was simply glad for small miracles. The man had fought, like a creature from hell, at his side, day after, day, and giving him nothing but hard looks and stiff formality. This supple, warm, Duo, that seemed willing to forget anger in the deep darkness of night, almost made Heero question whether it was a dream or reality.
"I want to feel something beside the last breaths of the dying," Duo said, almost too low to be heard.
"So do I," Heero replied and reached out for him.
"Forget who we are, for now," Duo said as he nuzzled along Heero's neck. "We are simply a master and his slave. Use me as you will. Make me do your bidding. I don't want to think..."
"Someone needs to think," Heero grunted and pushed him off. He turned his shoulder to Duo. "If you need to sleep, you may stay. If you want a rape, there are enough of the enemy, who are willing, to satisfy you."
Duo suddenly hung on him, chin resting on his shoulder. "You're going to force me to say it, aren't you?"
"I'm tired," Heero growled. "Play philosopher's games with Castor."
Duo's leg slid over Heero's own and he felt a definite erection. "I want you," Duo said. "Does that satisfy you?"
"Where is your 'pride'?" Heero retorted softly.
"Resting against your backside," Duo grumbled.
"You are as contrary as any woman," Heero snorted and hooked his arm around Duo's leg. "What am I to think? Will I take advantage of this offer of yours, and then hear your anger and regrets at dawn?"
"You know women?" Duo chuckled in his ear and then bit it lightly. "I've seen you fight. I've seen how committed you are. Is it so hard to believe that my opinion has changed... that I might... desire... the man that I've come to know?"
"I remember your tattoo," Heero said, rolling onto his back so that Duo's thigh rested on his own erection."It tells me that you have ulterior motives, that you aren't what you seem."
"That's for enemies," Duo replied as he rubbed himself against Heero's hip."Not for friends... not for men who have earned my respect."
Duo placed a small pot of oil on Heero's chest, warm from the coals of the hearth."Here's my pride," Duo told him huskily. "I give it freely... master."
"And if I don't want to be your master?" Heero wondered as he fingered it.
"Then I'll be yours," Duo replied.
Heero placed his fingers into the oil and felt the warm, slipperiness of it. "I think you already are."
Thrusting into Duo was pure pleasure. The oil and the tight, hot sheath of his body, Heero found irresistible. He pressed Duo's legs back, pinned him against the hard stone of the floor, and rode him, releasing his pent up desires, and forgetting, at least in that wild moment of passion, what he intended in secret; to face the full senate in the morning, and to make their case to the people. Death might be with the cock's crow, but, just then, Heero was alive and in love.
Tangled together afterward, Duo whispered to the night, "I don't know why I should want you, but I do. I am a fool.I'll have any part of you I can, even if you regain your seat among the powerful."
The thought of Duo, chained again, and kneeling submissively at his feet, didn't thrill Heero as it once did. "I doubt that will ever happen, but, if it does, I'll stay a scandal; the man who makes lovers of his servants." He corrected himself as Duo straddled his hips and shoved down onto his renewed erection. "A man who takes lover's from the fire and the night and dares to ride the God of Death."
"Madness," Duo chuckled as he began moving up and down on Heero.
"Happy madness," Heero agreed.
________________________________________
Some called for him to be placed in chains and some called for his immediate death. Heero stood, stoically silent, and let the outrage wash over him as he faced the senate, eyes on his only hope; Trieze, a one time soldier himself, and, perhaps, the levelest head in the room. The man was frowning now, in his seat, fingers steepled and expression calculating.
Heero had found it ridiculously easy to slip in with the servants and the citizens who were eager for their chance to join a full senate, and to have their grievances heard. Heero had earned a cleared space as soon as he had thrown back the hood of his cloak, and revealed his presence there.
"According to the law," Heero said in a loud voice, "I have the right to voice my grievances, along with every other citizen."
"And we have the right to arrest you, and put you to death, after," his uncle growled from a lower table. Trieze frowned at him. All could speak, but some had more right than others. Heero's uncle looked nervous and went quiet. Heero knew that his uncle wanted to secure his right over his property. He wasn't going to find any support with that man.
"You have been in open rebellion against the emperor," Trieze replied at last, his words spoken with the voice of an expert orator. It carried throughout the room, without his seeming to shout."You have been sentenced, already, to die for that crime. While I commend you for handing yourself over to authority, I am also puzzled. Why have you decided to present yourself before us?"
Heero stepped onto the raised diaz, so that he could turn and face the growing crowd of citizens. "I am here to make my case for the provinces right to autonomy."
"They belong to the emperor," another senator pointed out.
"But his rule is not absolute," Heero replied, "and this senate is his conscience."
That wasn't true, and everyone in the room knew it. The madman on the throne was an absolute power. The senate was a shadow puppet, there only to quiet the people and to make them believe that they had a voice. The people, themselves, were a power, however, and one the Emperor had placate, on occasion.Properly motivated, no amount of soldiers could quell a population stirred to outrage and riot against their emperor. It was to them, Heero spoke.
"You are not a man of the provinces," Trieze said. "How can you speak for them? Where is their true representative?"
"Are they cowards?" another senator barked out."They cut down our soldiers and then refuse to face us."
"We are not cowards," Duo spoke up as he stepped out of the crowd with Quatre at his side. He pushed back the hood of his cloak and motioned to Quatre. "Perhaps I am only the son of the street, but this is the son of a man you knew. Let him speak for the provinces."
"A slave?" the senator sneered. "Are we to speak to such as this, Senator Trieze?"
"I am a free man," Quatre replied, frowning as he took the diaz beside a startled Heero, "and the son of a free man. I have the right to speak."
"He does," Trieze agreed.
"They all have a death sentence!" Heero's uncle shouted in outrage. He pointed a finger at Duo. "That creature is a pleasure slave, a tattooed whore. Are we a senate of bed boys, slaves, and rebels?"
"That bed boy took down at least twenty of my trained soldiers," a general growled."I would not treat him so lightly."
Duo grinned, though he was understandably nervous. They were all facing death. "I won't kill today," he assured the man, "but I will make sure that Quatre is heard."
"It is my right to speak," Quatre told them all, and raised his chin and gave them all a level look. "The provinces cry out with the abuses perpetrated on them. They have seen their women raped, their sons slain in their prime, and seen their crops and animals taken to feed a city, without any being left to feed themselves. A mule cannot be driven, forever, without being fed and cared for. So, too, the provinces cannot feed and care for the city without being fed and cared for themselves. A man of the provinces cannot know how to dictate to a man of the city. He doesn't possess the knowledge. So, too, the city cannot dictate to the provinces. Who among you has farmed? Do you know the proper season for planting? Do you know when cattle drop their calves, or how much feed one needs to pass the winter? Do you know which seed will grow the best crops? I say that you don't. I say that it is folly to dictate actions and law without that knowledge. I say that only a man from the provinces, who has that knowledge, should dictate to the provinces."
There were mutters, nods, scowls, and Trieze smiled ever so slightly at Quatre's boldness.
"You are on the verge of starvation," Quatre continued, turning about so that he could give them all a blue, eyed, piercing stare. "The provinces have been laid bare. Unless they are given autonomy, assurances that they will cease to be molested by soldiers and the emperor, they will not rectify this situation. Dust will be your harvest, dust and bones your only meal. You cannot survive without the goodwill of the provinces."
"You threaten us?" Trieze asked with a frown.
Quatre faced him, shaking his head. "Not threaten," he assured him. "Prophecy, most accurately, your future."
"We should take the provinces!" Heero's uncle shouted, and he was supported by other voices."We will set up our own farmers, men loyal to the Emperor."
Duo snorted. "I think you have been failing at that plan already."
The man glared at Duo. "But we have you, now, their leaders. We have already won."
Heero shook off his amazement and replied, "Need doesn't require leaders. They will fight on, because they must, or die. Killing us won't cause them to plant the fields or tend the herds. Quite the opposite, actually."
The citizens were alarmed. Senators might have their family plots, but they had nothing but the four walls they lived in and the vendors in the streets to feed them, the vendors who relied on the provinces.
"I can't allow the provinces to dictate to the Emperor," Trieze replied. "This body also cannot allow them to break the people's laws. What assurances do we have, that, once given this autonomy, that they won't break off from us and try to become their own country?"
"They can only give their word," Quatre replied. "They only wish a governor, not their own emperor."
The citizens were milling now, the talk of impending starvation beginning to spread outward. There was a danger in that. A panic could cause food hoarding, or mass exodus from the city, or a riot at the feet of the Emperor. It was clear that Trieze knew that he had to speak quickly to calm them.
"A vote," Trieze announced.
The motion was agreed on, by senators who were also realizing their danger. The vote was taken and then Heero, Duo, and Quatre were led from the room under guard.
Once in an ante room, Heero turned on his companions. "Are you all fools?" he demanded.
"It seems that you are," Duo shot back. "Castor knew exactly what you were up to when you disappeared last night."
Quatre was frowning. "It was very foolish, Heero. You may fight for the provinces, but you are not their voice."
Heero fisted his hands and went to a window to look out at the city. "I didn't want anyone else to die."
Quatre softened. "You are a good man, but we decide our own fates."
Duo looked at their guards nervously. "Fei and Trowa are outside. If we can get to them..."
"We can't run from this," Heero replied as he turned to face them. "They have voted with us, as they must, but now they have to convince the Emperor that he also must concede to the provinces autonomy."
"The people will riot if he doesn't," Quatre said, "He hasn't any choice."
"Madmen make mad choices," Duo pointed out.
New guards entered their room. One pointed a spear at them. "You will be imprisoned until the word of the Emperor pardons you," he announced.
Duo went pale and Quatre didn't look any better, but he squared his chin and nodded. "I expected as much," he replied.
Heero stepped close to the guard, skewered the man with a dangerous look, and said, "Anyone touches either of them, and the world will not hide you from my vengeance."
The guard looked nervous, but glared back as he replied, "Fine words from a man facing death. In any case, two whores should not find such things uncommon treatment."
"I have witnessed those words," one of the other guards said in disapproval. Another supported him.
They were glared at, but, suddenly, the men became more professional. It didn't guarantee their safety, though, and Heero worried as they were all lead to the prison. He could only hope that a mad Emperor would see reason quickly, and that Duo and Quatre's abilities would keep them safe until then.
TBC