Kyuuketsuki Duo: Beginnings Part 1
The Beginning

The boy stood on the beach, watching the waves by the evening starlight. His black clothing blended in well with the darkness, joining him with the shadows, for the moon had chosen not to make an appearance this night. The wind wafted gently, bringing to shore the cool sea breeze.

He shivered lightly, but made no move to return to the place he called home, or to wrap his arms around himself to keep himself warm. Tonight, he only watched the sea, stretching as far as his eyes could see. There was nothing in the waves, nothing but the shifting waters and eternally changing patterns. The ephemeral quality of the ocean was what drew him to it, the way it never stayed the same. The crisp, clear liquid touched the sandy shores in brief contact, but withdrew just as quickly to return to its own watery kingdom, to disappear once more into obscurity, each individual drop to be absorbed once more into the greater whole. The waters held both life and death, enjoyment and disaster, and to the boy, as he stood there listening to the waves crash upon themselves, there was no greater beauty than this vast, inconstant eternity.

His fascination with the sea had often landed him in trouble, and this night would probably be no different. His guardians would be worried about him, being out after dark. The boy knew this, and there was some little regret at having to pain his guardians so, for he loved them dearly, but he would not trade in his rare opportunities to be by himself in these moments of timelessness for their peace of mind.

His days were filled with enough solitude, but of a distinctly different quality than the time he stole here for himself. The young man had a silence about him even though he had lived amongst whispers and curses for most of his sixteen years. They spoke of him, pointed their fingers at him, would even bully him if they weren't secretly afraid of him. It was nothing that he did, really, that attracted censure from both his peers and otherwise. It was just that he inspired an air of unease in strangers.

They could never pinpoint just what it was about the boy that troubled them. Perhaps it was his eyes, which seemed to look straight into a man's soul, burning with a inner light that promised secrets that would likely never be revealed. The look in his eyes had often been labeled by his elders as defiance and trouble, while the look in their own eyes could be described as intolerance, ignorance, and fear. Maybe it was his beauty, unearthly and unnatural. With his short, delicate build, his large, luminous eyes and his long, silky chestnut hair, one would think at first glance that he was unreal, an illusion made of glass and ready to shatter at any moment, but a second glance would quickly yield the hardened steel beneath the frail exterior. His smooth baritone that so few ever heard, with its fey ability to entrance the unwary. His poise and self-assurance that implied that this was one that would never be broken. The tilt of the head that hinted at challenge without offering provocation.

It was all of these traits and more that had led to the young man's outcast status since the day he had arrived at the orphanage under ill omens. In the fourteen years he had been there, he had never been adopted, and soon he was approaching the time of his own majority, when he would leave this place he had come to love despite the hostile atmosphere, because of the two kind, loving and patient caretakers of the orphanage. They had never understood him, but they accepted him all the same.

A mist gathered over the sea. The young man shivered once more, and felt the prickling at the back of his neck, but this time, there was no wind. He sensed somehow that something was afoot, yet felt no anxiety or nervousness as he turned his eyes into the portentous fog, waiting patiently for whatever was to happen. He did not have to wait long before the silhouette of a figure appeared over the waters. It was not large, but exuded an impressive aura of unmistakable power that would have left lesser men quivering in their places. The figure came shrouded in a dark cloak and cowl, concealing all details of the stranger, yet the boy knew somehow that it was a man that glided smoothly over the rippling waves towards him.

The boy watched the advent calmly. There was a feeling, a sense that this was inevitable, this coming of the stranger from the sea. The thought of avoidance or flight did not cross the boy's mind while he watched without worry, as the arrival alighted upon the beach and began a slow approach straight towards him.

The cloaked figure stopped an arm's length before him, and still, the boy waited with no trepidation for what was to come. He came up to about the strange figure's chin level, and the gentle blowing of the wind pressed the dark robes against a thin frame. The stranger pulled back his hood with long, pale fingers to reveal that he was indeed a man, with an otherworldly beauty to rival that of the boy, although this one was all planes and angles, harshness and ice.

He glared down with cold blue eyes at the boy who regarded him similarly with a passive curiosity. There was no mistaking it. Despite its deceptively innocent exterior, this was the one he had been sent to find. He had not known quite what to expect from the heir to the line of western Shinma guardians. He had not even known for sure if such an heir existed when he had set out to fulfil his elders' command. But indeed, one did, one stood before him, and... such power! It lay dormant within the young guardian, sleeping just beneath the surface, and still it sang to him. It vibrated down his spine and left a tingle on his skin, all this from a neutral, silent look from the fey lad, a look which pierced his cold, hard shell and invaded his senses. His own power resonated in response to it, demanded to know it, to taste it, to experience it, and sometime in that interminable interval between his making eye contact and his sudden and unfathomable desire to feel the power of this strange boy, his arm reached out of its own volition with slender, graceful fingers, towards the face of the placid boy.

He vaguely watched his hand move with a detached bemusement. Something had come over him, something strange and alien to him. He was the greatest of the warriors of the eastern Shinma clan, not given to flights of fancy or distraction, and yet in this instant, he felt as if there were nothing he could do but watch the events unfold, quite beyond his control. He felt as if he should have been disturbed by this odd turn of events, hunter turned hunted, prey turned predator, helpless as he was bewitched by the young man that wasn't doing a thing.

His hand came up and brushed a wisp of hair away from the young man's face, which had been teased loose from its confining braid by the playful breeze, and the young man did not flinch, nor turn his eyes away from the distant eyes of the warrior.

"My name is Heero." The warrior spoke distractedly with a deep, quiet voice, somehow compelled to communicate with the wide-eyed boy who was his mission, a mission that had seemed clear and simple once, what seemed so very long ago. He felt the need to attempt to explain himself, as if to evoke some sort of reaction would make his task easier. It was as if something were forcing him to make contact with the boy, some geas requiring that he touch this boy in a way he had never been touched before. "I was sent to find you."

The boy made no response, and he let his cold fingers trail down the boy's cheek to come to rest lightly upon his neck. So easy to snuff out the boy's life. A simple squeezing of his fingers to choke the breath from him, and the heir would be eliminated. Some pressure applied to the right point, and the heir would be neutralized.

It was simplicity itself. The boy showed no sign of resistance. But looking into the face of the one who stood before him, he felt hesitation, an emotion he had avoided in order to stay alive. The longer he stood in doubt, the more the siren song of the boy's power called to him, and finally, he gave in to the unreasonable temptation to crash himself upon the sharp rocks of doom, and the tips of his fingers opened up to reveal the passageways whereby he took his first taste of the boy's blood.

There was a simultaneous gasp from both of them as their powers took advantage of the bridge that had opened between them and flooded the two with foreign emotions, thoughts, and images, their essences mingling as one for a single brief, overwhelming moment. The power was more than Heero had imagined it could be, and he could not stand before it in so raw a form and hope to survive its naked might. He jerked away, tore his eyes away from the boy's and trained them on the sandy ground. The contact was broken as he staggered back, away from the source of such untamed energy, but a part of it stayed with him, and he fought to keep it out, for it threatened to whisk his identity away on winds of power.

The boy, too, felt the power singing in his blood. There was something different, now. He had always been different. He had not known how, and he had not known why, but he had accepted it at a very young age. Now, however, he had an inkling of what it might be. It burnt like fire through his veins after that short contact with the warrior named Heero. It simmered in his mind and tickled his senses. The energy sizzled down to his toes and back again, and he felt more alive than he had ever felt before. He looked at the world with new eyes and objects around him seemed to glow with an inner life energy, as if he were seeing the true form of everything for the first time, but the power was slowly fading, and he ached for more. Like the lazy bear waking from its hibernation after a long, slow winter, it hungered.

His eyes fixed on the troubled figure before him, and from there he acted on instinct.

Heero snapped back to attention as he felt gentle arms twine themselves about his neck, the power still washing over him, but no longer in that uncontrolled flood which had rushed through him and left him breathless. He looked up without willing it to happen and once again found himself enraptured by the violet pools of the boy's depthless eyes. There was nothing he could do as the boy stood on his toes and leaned in close, his soft exhalations shallow and quick.

"Duo," the boy breathed into his ear, and his very voice once more sent tremors through Heero's body, a tiny echo of what had been. The boy separated briefly to gaze up at him through half-open eyes whirling with hunger and desire, and the hunter stared back, seeing a vision of his own soul's destruction within those eyes. "My name is Duo," he whispered. They stayed like that for several breaths, frozen in that moment of time, and then he lowered his head, and gently kissed Heero's neck with newly sprung fangs.

TBC...

 

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