Work Text:
they walk unseen and foul in lonely places
“Nor is it to be thought that man is either the oldest or the last of earth's masters,
or that the common bulk of life and substance walks alone.
The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be.
Not in the spaces we know, but between them,
they walk serene and primal,
undimensioned and to us unseen.”
“There’s no way you can fix it right now, ya know?”
Heero can ignore him but cannot leave – Wing is too damaged, in need of repair that only this strange shipping vessel manned by people who skitter here and there, afraid and unwilling to do too much if it means they have to bear the presence of the boy donned in priest’s garb. He’s a pale imitation of mortality, his angles and proportions too perfect be anything but Other, his every utterance leaving those who hear him unraveled like spooling threads.
Heero doesn’t look up to meet the eyes of the other boy. He doesn’t need to – he can see the eyes, hundreds upon thousands of them, peering up at him from every crevice and shadow between him and Duo Maxwell. The other boy’s words are louder than the ones from the multitude of lips that whisper pleas against the inside of Heero’s eardrums, a pitiful wail that serves as a striking comparison to the almost pleasant chord of Duo’s amiable tones that remind Heero of fresh honey slathered against the poisoned side of flypaper.
(“He doesn’t eat-”)
(“-blood of the lamb, blood of the-”)
“Maybe you can’t, but I can,” Heero answers.
There’s a laugh and a sigh, both in a voice that belongs to neither boy in the hangar. Duo’s violet eyes finally turn away from him.
Heero steals the parts the next day and takes off. The whispers die out with every stretch of distance he puts between them.
“You blew yourself up. I treated what I could,” Trowa Barton says. He’s leaned by the window of the small trailer, holding himself like his long arms are the only things keeping his sinewy form together. Heero’s eyes take in the lean torso, the unsettling dexterity, the calm façade painted across mortal flesh like a clown’s make-up made permanent.
Heero doesn’t examine his injuries, doesn’t tear his eyes away from the boy leaned by the window. The blood saturates the bandages and Trowa’s green eyes flick over the gauze in casual consideration. Long fingers grip opposing elbows a little harder, the lean form turns more languid, a single step is taken forward with palpable hunger.
“I’m not dead yet,” Heero states, careful and controlled. A warning without pressure, a reminder and threat all in one.
Trowa stops and exhales softly. He doesn’t smile (and there are no whispers, thank god thank god thank god) but the grace never leaves his form. “You’re not,” he agrees.
A lion goes missing overnight, and the circus folk avoid looking in their direction for most of the day afterwards. Trowa changes his bandages, and Heero ignores the smell of blood that he knows is not his own.
“This is all my fault.”
Heero grits his teeth, forces back the impulse to scream, to react in any way besides how he had been trained. Every word spoken seeps deeper into the fibers of Heero’s being, sliding through the gaps that he cannot guard against and saturating his very core.
Quatre doesn’t mean to hurt him, not in this way, not like this; Quatre can hurt others as easily as he can help them, and when it comes down to it – there’s little difference in those he harms and those he heals. They will adore him regardless.
Heero does not deny Quatre’s claim, and just the same, he does not validate it. There is little point in debating it because Quatre is absolute.
“Quatre,” Heero says instead, because it’s the only thing he can wring out of his dry throat. The guards that had been escorting them hover just within reach, but by the way their eyes glaze and hands shake, Heero knows they won’t last long. They never do.
“I’m so sorry,” Quatre is saying. The words were drip drip dripping through Heero’s thoughts, winding down his spinal cord and seeping in through the backside of his throat.
“Quatre,” Heero says again. He doesn’t beg because that implies acknowledgment of some threat, and he is not being threatened – this is love, this is absolute. (Drip drip-) One of the soldiers falls to his knees, both pleading and exultant, blood draining from his nose and eyes and mouth as fast as the words of adoration fall from his rose-stained lips-
Quatre continues to speak, soft and gentle. Appealing, loving, absolute.
Drip drip.
Chang Wufei doesn’t speak.
“Coward,” Wufei spits out, directed at no one. The cuffs on his wrists and ankles weigh heavily against his flesh, but it is Wufei’s not-voice that weighs heaviest of all; it reverberates off the walls and floor of their cell, echoes down the corridor, sinks into the flesh of those who hear it like serrated blades. A wail of anguish is heard in answer, delivered by another expendable soldier used to keep watch.
Heero doesn’t answer, doesn’t look away from his study of the door. (Trowa is out there so he can’t look away, because Trowa is hungry always hungry-) There is a grating sound from Wufei’s corner of the cell, the clicking of gnarled claws that never manifest for mortal eyes against coarse metal, and then Wufei steps out and Heero moves forward to meet him. To do otherwise would be death.
“I will determine justice,” Wufei says, and Heero swallows down the echo in his throat. Wufei’s hands grip Heero’s own without touching, dig fingers (claws) into his knuckles, and he leans forward to take a not-bite from the warm flesh of Heero’s neck.
The blood doesn’t pour - the bite is not there. Wufei pulls back, eyes gleaming, and Heero takes in a shuddering breath.
The doors are pulled open and Duo’s battered body is thrown inside. Heero catches sight of a lopsided smile before the shadows rise in a monstrous shriek.
There’s nowhere to escape on Peacemillion.
Heero is grateful Relena is nowhere near, because Howard’s men are slowly and quietly disappearing. Trowa’s gait becomes more predatory, his words quiet and calm as he gobbles up the unsuspecting. His approach is silent but there’s a moaning creak reminiscent of a lion’s roar in the areas he passes through, the last thing ever heard before men and women alike disappear down a gaping maw.
Howard says nothing, because whatever Howard is, it is no longer human; he mimics the whispers that follow where Duo treads, dark glasses hiding the sick dilation of his eyes from where the pupils had overtaken the entire diameter.
Sally speaks with Wufei, every word between them nearly incomprehensible because her tongue burns anew with each intonation. She doesn’t seem to notice, much less mind, and Wufei’s not-claws dig ever deeper into her soft-bellied center and settle there.
Noin doesn’t acknowledge them. She speaks around them, her eyes fixated on anyone else, refers to them in passing but never directly. She avoids Duo, is careful to never be left alone with Trowa, and abhors Wufei with a single-minded determination. Heero knows she’d spoken with Quatre only once, over vidcam in the midst of battle; her gaze flattens when she hears his voice, her lips quiver in want before she comes back to herself, vicious and hardened. She’s bitten through her lips more than once to keep her sanity in his presence.
“Relena is on Libra,” Duo says to him. Hilde Schbeiker is cradled gently against his chest, sinking into the black of the priest’s garb, more thread than flesh. Her lips move without sound, eyes open and unseeing. (“-oh god, help me!”) She will be gone before Heero returns, another voice to the choir of Death.
Heero leaves at once. He shakes a slow-blinking eye off his hand and it slips away from him like oil, and Hilde’s left eye is lost to the dark.
“They were human once.”
Relena whispers this to Heero, a message from Doctor J, passed along by mortal mouths until it could finally reach him. It does now as he leaves her among the dead and undying strewn across Peacemillion, as he prepares himself for his final battle with what had become of Milliardo Peacecraft.
“They were human once,” she lies, he lies, they lie.
There was nothing human about them, there never had been and there never will be. With every whispered plea, Duo Maxwell is beheld; with every languid swallow, Trowa Barton is beheld; with every exultant adoration, Quatre Winner is beheld; and with every burning bite, Chang Wufei is beheld.
Heero looks at Relena, past the glass of the helmet and into her summer sky eyes, knows without a doubt that she’s as human as he is.
That is to say, not enough.
“Let’s end this,” Heero replies.
Relena smiles.
And with creaking, snapping tendons - Heero’s wings finally unfurl.
“He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again.
He knows where They had trod earth's fields, and where They still tread them,
and why no one can behold Them as They tread.”
-H.P. Lovecraft, “The Dunwich Horror”