Bound Part 11
Shounen Ai, Suspicion and Doubt

"Hey... hey. Hey! Are you guys awake?"

Silence in the barn. It was like a hot, dry box of deep shadows. Nothing but the suddenly loud sound of their breathing. Mary grabbed Tobias's hand, and was glad to feel it tighten around hers, no matter how angry he might get at her, or her at him.

// I wonder if they tried to run off... They aren't that stupid, are they? Not with all the soldiers sniffing around. And sick to ice it off... //

There was a rustling up in the hayloft, and a flashlight beam shown down at them. It was the wild-eyed one, the one who looked like his hair had been cut ragged by a dull pair of shears. "Hey, kid, is that you?"

"Yeah, it's us." She let go of Tobias's hand and climbed the ladder into the loft.

The dark-haired one was lying with his head and shoulders across the other's lap; in the dim light thrown off by the flashlight, the blood at the boy's shoulder looked black. Duo had ripped the bottom of Heero's tank top to bind it, but the blood had seeped through.

The Wing pilot was still and unconscious, but not dead... not dead, because he was breathing. Mary could see he inhaled and exhaled shallowly, bangs plastered to his forehead with sweat.

The violet-eyed one looked tired and worried and sick, though not as bad off as the other one. "He's not lookin' so good."

Tobias climbed into the loft, looking at both pilots with a wary, distrustful air. "That's why I'm here. My daddy's a vet, and I help him out sometimes. Maybe I can help 'em out a little." He took the flashlight, searched around in the hay, and grabbed the needle-nose pliers he had brought up earlier in the day. He narrowed his eyes at Duo. "Cover his mouth."

"Why?"

"In case he hollers. Someone might hear."

Duo started to protest, then did as he was told. There was something in the soft surety of the boy's voice that said he knew what he was doing. Something in the boy's voice that reminded him of Heero.

Tobias seemed to read Duo's thoughts, and looked up at him. "Don't worry, I've done this before. Someone got my dog with buckshot once."

He took a deep breath, wishing he was anywhere but the loft of the Thompson's barn, then removed the cloth bandage gently from Heero's arm, wincing at the amount of blood. Without hesitating, he drove the pliers into the bullet-wound, probing at it.

Heero's glazed eyes shot open, and he surged forward instinctively, trying to attack the source of his pain. Duo grabbed his good wrist with his free hand, shushing his partner. "It's okay, buddy. It's okay. Shh..."

When he was sure Heero wasn't going to scream -he hadn't thought Heero would scream to begin with- he took his hand away carefully. Heero's face looked as if it was carved from stone. His eyes were closed now, and his jaw was clenched. Duo put his hand there, feeling the clammy skin, muscles like quivering steel, the sheen of sweat.

Heero opened his eyes, looking into Duo's, and when he spoke, it was a harsh, constricted whisper. "Aishiteru." He mumbled more Japanese, eyes sliding shut. He repeated the first word again, jerking as the makeshift forceps moved in his arm. "Aishiteru."

Duo brushed the bangs back from Heero's eyes, looking down into the Japanese boy's face pensively. He shook his head a little. "I don't understand, Heero."

Tobias removed the pliers; between them was a bloody piece of crushed steel. He looked satisfied with himself. "Got it."

He dipped a piece of gauze into the bucket of water, cleaning the wound. Heero had closed his eyes, fallen into a semi-conscious doze, Duo saw. He was worried, but in a way, he was kind of glad for it. He didn't want Heero to suffer any more than he had to.

While Tobias cleaned the wound, Duo took three of the aspirin in the bottle the children had brought and opened Heero's slack jaw, putting the pills in his mouth and cupping a handful of water to Heero's lips. The Wing pilot's eyes fluttered wearily open for a second, and he swallowed weakly.

"Ya can't hide up here forever," Tobias stated flatly, glancing at Heero's pale face, then back up to Duo's eyes in the near-darkness. "His wound's infected, and he has a fever. He'll die if ya stay here."

"And just where the hell are we supposed to go?"

Tobias's gaze was hard. "Surrender."

Duo shook his head. "No way."

"There's no way you can both get out of here alive. He can't walk, can he? Look at 'em! You guys are ducks in the water. You got a snowball's chance in hell of both gettin' out of here alive. So you either run for it and leave him here to die, or you can both surrender and live. You got soldiers to the left and soldiers to the right and the front and the back, and none of 'em got anything better to do than to look for your asses. Hell, Khushrenada and Marquise are sleeping barely a fourth of a mile away right now!" Tobias narrowed his eyes. "I know you're not stupid, so don't play it. You know as well as I do you ain't got a chance."

Duo was silent, bowing his head and looking at the hay in front of him. Heero shivered in his arms, and he closed his eyes. Even in the dim light, Mary could see him swallow, watched the nervous tic in his jaw jump and twitch. They were trapped animals. And they knew it.

Mary scowled at Tobias, then carefully put her hand on the boy's shoulder. "D... Duo?"

He looked up, so she figured she must have gotten it right.

"Please don't give up," she whispered. "Please."

Tobias glared at her, but didn't try to tell her not to say anything. Duo looked at them, looked at the boy, and saw someone who wanted nothing better than to become a soldier. But the girl... the girl reminded him of someone else. Quatre, maybe.

"No. Never give up," he said, his voice a hoarse, cracked whisper.

"Never surrender."

"Never."

~*~

"Are you crazy, or what?" Tobias exploded, turning on Mary as they left the barn. "Don't give up? Never surrender? Are you out of your goddamned skull?!"

Mary scowled at him. "No. I'm just not going to let those soldiers have them again. Look at what they already did to 'em, Tobias. You gonna tell me that you, somebody that ain't even got the heart to hunt, can look at them two and just... give 'em back? 'Cause if it's between us gettin' in trouble and them gettin' hurt again, I'm gonna take the fall. It just ain't right."

Tobias clenched his fists, as if he was looking for something to hit and couldn't find anything in range. "They're criminals, Mary! We don't owe them a god-damned thing! And you don't want your family to have that reward money? You don't think they could use it?!"

"Of course they could," Mary replied softly, looking away because a part of her knew he was right. "Don't you think I know that? I ain't a kid, Tobias. But if it's blood money, I don't want it. And my folks may support the soldiers, but if they knew what was goin' on, they wouldn't want it, either."

"Dammit, Mary, you just ain't seein' things the way they have to be. You think the world is always gonna just have rights and wrongs?" Tobias shook his head. "Sometimes, the answer is gonna be wrong, no matter how you do it. You just gotta pick the thing that's going to hurt less and save more lives. These guys have killed hundreds of grunts just like your brother. Just like him."

He shook her by the shoulders, glaring down into her eyes. "You think if they saw Lonnie on the battlefield, they'd hesitate even one second about blowin' his head off? You can't go around acting like you're always gonna have the option to do the right thing!"

"Fine, Toby," she replied softly, using his childish nickname deliberately, her words soft and furious. "If you're gonna be a coward about it, then just don't do anything. Just stand back. But don't you dare tell anyone they're there. Or I'm never hangin' out with you again."

Still glaring, the boy let go and backed away from her, shaking his head in disgust. "You're never gonna get it, Mare. You're just a girl, and you don't fuckin' get it. You got these rose-colored glasses on you ain't willin' to take off. It's war. But forget it. I wash my hands of the whole thing."

She started to protest, but he threw his hands up in exasperation. "I ain't gonna tell, 'cause I swore I wouldn't. And I won't. But I'm not gonna help you any more. I mean it. They're gonna die up there, you see that they don't. And I'm not gonna have any part in it."

Tobias stomped off into the dark morning, still fuming. Mary stood in the field, watching him make his way through the high grass, trying to decide whether or not to call him back. He had hurt her feelings, swearin' at her and treating her like she wasn't anything more than a little kid...but he also knew a lot more about things like war and soldiers than she did. She was afraid that without him, she'd really be in over her head.

In the end, she didn't call him back. She had too much pride and not enough sense. She just watched angrily until he was gone, another rustling shadow in the chilly pre-dawn stillness. And then she slipped back towards the house.

~*~

The house was still quiet when Mary returned from the barn, that cold, tense dark stillness an hour before the dawn, when she knew the only sounds she'd be able to hear in the house would be clocks ticking.

But when she got to the front porch, she saw the kitchen light was on. She smelled coffee brewing, the lush smell of it drifting on the early morning air.

It wasn't her parents, it was Sunday and they always slept in and caught late church on Sundays. Normally, she would be curled up in her own bed, enjoying the fact that she had a chance to sleep in. Just another way that life had radically changed since she had run into the two wounded soldiers in the woods.

It had to be the general and the lieutenant in the kitchen.

She came into the house as quietly as she could, walking on the balls of her feet and moving as carefully as if she was walking on eggshells, but she forgot there was no way to soften the rusty creak of the screen door.

Treize Khushrenada was sitting at the kitchen table alone, the kitchen lights dimmed, tranquilly drinking a cup of coffee. He looked charmingly surprised when she came in.

The charismatic young general was dressed in nothing but a pair of dress slacks rumpled from suitcase travel and an almost worn dress shirt left open in the front, displaying a toned, muscled chest and stomach. It seemed that under all the fine clothes, Treize Khushrenada still had the build of a soldier. Mary wondered absently how many people had ever gotten to see His Excellency Treize Khushrenada barefoot. The general had one leg curled up on the chair and was swinging the other almost lazily.

She was amazed by how much younger the general looked when he wasn't dressed up. He looked more like a college student than a soldier.

But then he spoke, his voice rich and rolling and full of command, and it drove her innocent images of him away. His voice matched his build.

"Miss Mary... what on Earth or colonies are you doing out so early in the morning?"

She hesitated to answer for a moment. She didn't want to say anything that would give too much away. "Walking with Tobias."

Treize raised an eyebrow. "And where is he now?"

"We had a fight. He's gone on home."

Treize shook his head in a way that could not be described as anything but graceful. "He should not be out wandering while my men are looking for the fugitives. He is a teenage boy and so are they... it would not do for the them to be mistaken for one another."

Mary swallowed as she imagined what would happen if the soldiers came on Tobias thinking he was one of the Gundam pilots.

"What were you fighting about?"

At first, Mary wasn't going to answer, was going to tell him it wasn't any of his business, but then, looking into the eyes of the general of OZ, she decided that nothing was safer than the truth. "We were fighting over the war. He trusts you."

Treize looked at her seriously. "And what do you think?"

She gazed at him steadily, her arms over her chest. "I think you're the bad guy."

He laughed softly. "Is that so? I appreciate your candor. But I'm afraid I must disagree with you."

Mary scowled a little. "Where is the lieutenant?"

"Sleeping." He smiled. "What else is it that you think about me, Mary Thompson?"

"I think that even if I knew where the fugitives were, I'd never tell you." She started to head back to her room, walking past him without meeting his eyes.

"Mary."

She stopped, but didn't look back at him.

"I am General Treize Khushrenada. I hope that you will remember this."

Mary knew the name. It was supposed to strike fear into her heart. She wasn't really surprised to find that it did. Treize Khushrenada was a name used to frighten bad children into behaving. It was also used to coerce those same children into the military to fight under his flag. Join OZ, become a soldier, get a chance to fight under His Excellency, the Invincible General.

"I know who you are."

"Then you will also know that if you have any idea of where those two young boys are, then it is in your best interest-and theirs-to tell us."

She turned back and looked at him. The general's face was carefully neutral. But it was his eyes that gave him away. She saw compassion and wisdom and worry and ruthlessness all mixed up in those sky blue eyes.

"What did they ever do to you? You hurt them. You started it. You always start it," she whispered, shaking her head at him, then turned back towards the hall and her bedroom. She wanted to crawl into bed and run away from the general and his soft words and cunning eyes. But more than that, she just wanted to forget it all.

She crept down the hall and disappeared into her room. There was a soft click as she closed the door behind her. And then there was a louder click as she locked it.

Treize didn't move from the table. He simply looked out the window at the breaking dawn, sipping his coffee thoughtfully. After a few moments of silence, a dark shadow slid down the hall as Zechs joined him at the table. His hair was down in feathery platinum bangs around his face, and he wasn't wearing anything but a long pair of flannel pants. Scars crisscrossed his back and shoulders like raised spiderwebs.

"What was that about, Treize?" he said, his voice soft in the stillness.

"She knows."

~*~

Heero awoke to pain. That wasn't particularly unusual. What was unusual was Duo's hand cupping his face, thumb tracing his cheekbone as if it was as if it was as delicate as glass. Duo's eyes were closed, and he was humming wordlessly under his breath.

// Duo... // Heero realized that even though he had spoken, it hadn't really been aloud. He tried again, and came out with a hoarse sound that was almost his partner's name. "Duo..." His voice sounded weak, and he hated that.

Duo finally realized he was awake and looked down at him, drawing his hand back as if he had been burned. Seeing the hurt expression on Heero's pale face, he settled the wounded Wing pilot closer in his arms. He had taken his shirt off, and his bare chest was warm against Heero's back.

"Help me sit up."

"Hell no," Duo muttered. "You're hurt, bud. Just go back to sleep. We need you in better shape so we can get the hell out of here. Give the nanomachines a chance to do their job, eh?"

Heero's eyes fluttered. He was hurting and sick, but Duo was warm, so warm, driving away his shivering. He was sitting in front of Duo, cradled against his body. He was so tired. It would feel so good to just go to sleep...and not wake up again.

"Duo..."

"Yeah?"

"Don't let me... sleep too long."

"No, I won't. I won't let you die on me, Heero," Duo replied, his voice quiet.

Suddenly, Duo was leaning over him. Kissing him softly. Heero didn't know how to react. He didn't even know if it was real. It was probably just a hallucination from the fever. He didn't know what to say.

The Deathscythe pilot drew back, looking down into his face. Duo's face was a blurry shape in his vision, faded in the dark. "You're passing out again, Heero. Just sleep for now. We'll talk more later. Just sleep."

"Hnn..." Duo's voice sounded full of echoes, far away, as if he was at the end of a tunnel. Duo's hand was on his face again, warm. Comforting. He closed his eyes, an afterimage of Duo's violet gaze the last thing he thought of.

He fell into the solace of unconsciousness lying in Duo's arms, a place where he had never felt so safe.

TBC...

 

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