"Yestermark"

Written By: Asymphototropic

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam wing.

Author: Asymphototropic (attracted toward the light, but never quite arrives there)

Email: asymphototropic@aol.com

Rating: NC 17

Warnings: extreme Asyness

Summary: Mingling of possibilities occurs at this vortex source. Don't leave home without your Ticket firmly in your fist. Else you may never return.

Pairings: 1x2 other GW characters may appear upon progression

 

"Yestermark "

Part 7.

Heero leaned forward in the chair. It felt familiar, and therefore comforting. It seemed he had rested in this place before.

An overstuffed armchair. A beaded lampshade tempering the reading light. A small mahogany side table that held a folded newspaper and a full snifter of brandy.

He picked up the newspaper. It had no date on it. It was filled with words, black print, large and small. Headlines and news. But when he attempted to read, the words held no meaning. Like forms in dreams with no context. Replacing the paper upon the table, he picked up the brandy and sniffed at the contents. No aroma. He studied the lovely hints of gold and red in the glittering amber liquid. The swirling shades reminded him of something.

Perhaps of someone.

He set the glass down upon the wooden surface with an emphatic thump.
Stood from the chair suddenly. He felt the heat of his Ticket burn against the flesh of his chest.

"Don't bother. I'm not going anywhere," he growled.

Heero sauntered across the carpet. The surface under his feet was woven wool, buff and somber blue. And then it was black infinity, glistening with myriad points of light. He had been here before. Or would be here sometime later. What difference was there in that?

He saw the bartender across the large lobby of the hotel. The burly man, standing with a meaty fist resting against the polished surface of the bar. There was still a hole there, where the poison dart had struck and embedded earlier.

Yestermark.

The placard was visible from a distance. "NO Ticketeers to be served", it still proclaimed.

Heero's foot nudged the large potted plant. He bent, reached for it, hefted the terra cotta container. It felt heavy.

He turned abruptly and flung it, plant, soil, and pot, hard against the wall.

It shattered with a loud crash, scattering soil upon the woolen carpet, sprawling the unfortunate botanical with its roots exposed.

"I was wondering if that would happen." He nodded his head with a certain satisfaction, dusted his hands upon his trousers.

"It doesn't matter," he shouted now to whomever. "Wherever or whenever you send me. I'll just curl up and sit still and do nothing. I don't give a damn if I'm about to be trampled by a thundering herd of mastodons. Or burned at the stake for witchcraft. Or if I'm standing naked in the Royal Opera House foyer on opening night. I'm just going to plop down, sit still and do nothing. So don't bother trying to send me."

"Will you also hold your breath until you turn blue?"

Heero leaned forward in the chair. It felt familiar. It seemed he had rested in this place before.

An overstuffed armchair. A beaded lampshade tempering the reading light. A small mahogany side table that held a folded newspaper and a full snifter of brandy.

Heero picked up the glass and dumped the contents over the news. He watched as the liquid formed a soggy mess of the paper. Some of the fluid dribbled off and dropped onto the wool carpet beneath.

A black velvet rug full of pinpoint stars.

"Yes. If it will make my point, I'll hold my breath. Kick my damned heels and shriek bloody murder. Whatever it takes," Heero declared adamantly.
He turned his head to search for the source of the other voice.

There was another armchair there. Empty.

Off in the distance, a waterfall poured into a basin of mud, surrounded by rain forest. A small dart flew in, hit and buried its green tip into the stuffing of the upholstery. He looked into the rainbow shrouded mist of the woods. A figure strode forward, gradually increasing in size as it neared, just as it might if this were someplace. Some more tangible locale than here and now or wherever.

He settled into the other chair and smiled wryly.

"Doctor Gee," Yuy nodded.

"I wish you hadn't abused the plant. It is a rather rare specimen."

"What will you do with me now?" Heero demanded.

"What do you want me to do with you now?"

That stopped Heero dead in his mental tracks. He hadn't an answer to that. "Is there any place? Any time? Some Point on a Line where I actually belong?" he asked instead of answering.

Gee merely shrugged. "Jay needs you for this particular purpose."

"Hell, no. You didn't see his face."

"Eh?"

"Trowa's face. Sad and angry and accusing. Totally devastated. When Khushrenada killed Duo."

"Treize never kills Duo."

"So you say."

"I do assure you, it is all for the boy's good."

"Why should I believe you?"

"Because we are friends."

The young man stared at the old man.

"Just tell me why then. If they aren't harming him. Why?"

"They are reassembling him."

"I don't understand what you mean."

"Unfortunately, neither do I."

Heero sighed. His head hung. He studied his clenched fists where they rested upon his thighs.

When his Ticket tingled, then burned, he did not bother to look up at Gee.

The clatter racket of his surroundings was enough to wake the dead.

Well, perhaps not, after all.

The gory body lying next to him appeared dead. And it did not awaken, nor even stir at the roaring clash surrounding them.

"Faster. You'll be abandoned if you don't make haste there!" The urgent voice called and disappeared into the distance ahead of them amidst the clatter of hooves.

"Tell that to ther horses. Do yer want I should pick them up? Carry the beasts upon me back, perhaps? That'll speed us along, like as not, surely n' purely."

"Officers. What do they know? Precious damn little, that's what."

"Bah. Me mother's father's maiden aunt could haul faster than yer driving there."

"Not with the path all jammed like ahead of us, she couldn't. And the wheels bogged main in mud to the very axles."

"What be the troops after up ahead, then? Why be 'nt they clearing of the roads to make way for us?"

"Drunk. That's the news, anyways. Drunk and roaring, devil take them miserable bastards. Broke into the stores, 'n drunk the spirits dry. An' left us poor lost sinners, mired here, stuck. Them all jubilating up ahead, liken to the heathens that they are. Meanwhile poor us, just waiting to polish Boney's brass, any second now."

"Feel his breath upon me neck, I do. Tickles, something like, don't it?"

Harsh laughter, somewhat sobbing as it trailed off to a pause.

"Ha ha. Them froggies is sympathetic. Very. They do feel that sorry for us with the cold and icy wind blowing upon us. So they be sending their fire balls through the very air, to warm our backsides. Kindly, don't you think so too?"

"Watch out now, here 'tis again, drat the nuisance."

There was a terrifying shrieking whistle. Then the feeling of bodies huddling, crouching together, surrounding Heero. A crackle, and a huge explosion that lit everything glaring red. The earth rumbled, the horses screamed and leaped, the wagon trembled.

"Leave off that blasting, can't you, damn yer eyes? We are leaving fast as we might, aw' ready. No call to stir our stumps the more."

The flares and thundering of a vast cannonade continued for several minutes. By the end, Heero's head throbbed, his ears echoed, and the world spun from the confusion. He was not sure at last whether the bombardment actually ceased, or whether he merely was driven deaf by it.

There followed a strange roaring silence, which combined sensory overload and deprivation, so contradictory it made his head spin. He pressed his face in his hands, trying to keep from vomiting.

Then an arm snugged around his shoulders, and he shrunk into its comfort.

"Won't we never be moving now, damn your limbs?" someone called out toward the front.

"Whisht. I think the wagoneer's struck."

"Dead, by gawd, and cold as North Sea mackerel, too. Poor soul."

"Don't fling him back here, for the mother's love. We're all a lying against icy corpses as 'tis, draining the very life's heat from us."

"Rest him next the roadside, do. They'll fetch him later, surely."

"There's gratitude for you."

"Gratitude be damned."

"Anyone got two sound arms, what can drive for us?"

"Sure and arms be not the problem here, nor hands neither. Can't sit upright with the leaden ball in me back, now can I?"

Heero felt he ought to offer. But he had never driven a horse drawn cart, and felt to make the attempt under such circumstances would lead to certain disaster.

The arm around him hugged him tighter. "We'll do her. My friend here and me," a small voice called to the others. Then a pair of lips pressed near his ear. "There now. Help me up to the seat, an' you will. Then I'll help you drive when we get there, see?"

Heero muttered his assent, then struggled to gather his cold-numbed limbs to crawl forward.

"Ah, is it little Mackee, then, that's volunteering? Lord love you, acushla. And brought along a smallish friend for our cheery ride? That's right, that is. Someone lend them a cover, else they freeze where they sit."

"And whose got one to spare, not me?"

"Don't be stingy, lads. We've got the hay here to settle into, and the walls of the cart for shelter. Gi' the poor boys a scrap of wool. Just feel that stormy wind, trying to blow them off their perch up front."

Heero sensed a harsh stretch of cloth settle over his shoulders, stinking of stale horse sweat, human urine and blood. He huddled closer to the boy and clutched the bedraggled blanket around them both.

"Here, then," the other boy told him. "Hold you the leather just so. That's the right of it. It comes back to you now, don't it? Rattle the straps along their backs, but only just a little. The poor creatures' nerves be all shot to perdition. You needn't hold them hard, dear. They are standing next to fainting with the fear and weariness and cold and all."

"Thank the Saints' hearts, we're moving at long last," a croaking voice called from the back of the wagon. "How it rattles me poor riven bones, though, to be sure."

The weary horses plodded. Clinging to the leads, Heero dozed with his eyes open, staring at his own belly. The boy next to him had his head fallen upon Heero's shoulder, where he mumbled and whimpered in a tenuous unease between sense and delirium.

"Halt right there, men. The Major says we're to bide here 'til further word. Who are yourselves, then?" The man stilled his horse, the animal in a foul lather, in spite of the frigid wind howling around them all. "How come you here so late?"

"Sure and we sodjer boys did give pause to wash our socks in the Coa River. Knowing as we do, the Major likes us proper and tidy like."

That brought a guffaw from the gawkers standing all around the cart.

The officer opened his mouth on a biting reprimand. But raising his lantern high enough to view the bloody injured, mangled limbs of the living mingled with the frozen corpses, he clamped his jaw against it. After a minute, he shuddered, then shouted. "Don't just stand there galping, you lot. Help them out of the wagon and over toward the surgeons."

That brought a great stirring, shifting and groaning all around them.

"And how are we to tell the wick from the wan, I ask you? With each colder than the last. We could be placing the penny bits on their dreary eyes, laying them stiff bodies out in rows. And tomorrow, when the sun strikes up warmish, they'll be blinking the coins away, and calling out for water, certain sure. Seen it before, I have. T'wouldn't be the first time, tell you that."

"Here now, boy. Let loose, you can if only you'll try. You've arrived and can take your rest at last." Heero felt someone prying his frozen fingers off the stiff leather reins.

"Look at the face on this one, all golden features like buttered toast. Think you, he be a Portagazy then? Ho, Davy, there. Try a scrap of your Portagazy lingo on this one here."

"Er, ahem. Que caminho leva ao mercado? Nary a shrug. Don't think he be rightly no Portagazy. And surely no Frenchy, neither. Judging by the way Mackee boy, there, clings to him like his onliest long lost brother."

"Smoky hair and blue eyes? More likely a Galway laddie, surely."

"Holds hisself like a proper little gentleman, doesn't he though? Surely not a croppy. Somebody ask the Fourteenth if they haven't dropped a pretty little corporal somewhere along the path, all in their prior haste. Ha ha. Arrah, misplaced you've been, haven't you, poor boy?"

"Sorry, m' darlings, but you're to dismount, so come on down now, the two of you both. Major hisself says we wont see Corunna anytime soon. Nor even the Village Frank this night at the least."

"Damn their eyes, the drunken sodding lot of them, say I. Leave us up to our kerchers in fire and blood, holding out against a couple of hundred thousand at Cackle Bellow Bridge. Meanwhile those that should be thanking and praying for us, be a stomping and roaring out old Methuselam and then some. Hanging's too good for them."

Heero felt the other boy lifted away from him, leaving an arctic hole gaping beside his body.

And then he felt himself hoisted high and dangled toward the ground. Rough and friendly hands held onto him, steadying his stance, while he looked about him in bewilderment.

"What troubles him? Doesn't seem ary a mark upon his body. Nor still he don't talk nor seem to hear us aw right."

"Well then, the next time you have your own head's hair combed by a canon ball, call for us all to come around to view the proceedings, and we'll see how smartly you answer up. Isn't that right, boy?"

Someone stroked his back, and another patted his head sympathetically.

"Duo!" he desperately called into the crowd. And then, remembering the soubriquet, "Mackee?"

A pitiful whimper and then, "Here."

The crowd parted of a uniform accord, and he hastened to the boy's side. Throwing his arm around the thin waist, he drew the trembling body against his own.

"Not the surgeons, for mother's love. Just find us a wall to crouch next, can't you?" came the whisper.

"But you're bleeding."

"Not so bad now, t'isn't. The blood's all frozen upon me, truly. I've a dread, though. If I'm to die, I'd like to keep the hands and feet, meanwhile. Nor have them cut from me by the doctors. See you so?"

"Very well."

"The gods bless you, dearest heart."

Leaning hard upon each other, leaving the cart behind, they stumbled over the dark-shrouded terrain, passing one campfire after another.
Finally they came upon a scattering of little cottages. The closest had watch fires burning before them.

But dragging their feet farther and farther, the boys came upon some tiny out buildings, much battered, and clearly deserted.

Heero kicked at a door until it broke open, and then he helped Duo inside. They collapsed together into a mouldery stack of straw. Heero pulled the horse blanket that he'd clung to all this time, over the top of them both, and they tumbled deeply into unconsciousness.

Sound came to him again, much later.

"I haven't died, have I?"

"No."

"And there I thought I would and all. How strange to be still alive. Do you remember your name yet?"

"Heero."

"Hero is more a sort of praise than a name, I thought."

"It is spelled a little differently than that. It is an old name from a different time and place."

"Oh. These huts hereabouts. The folk that own them have fled for fear, haven't they?"

"Very likely."

"Poor souls. How different this place must have looked before. It can't be right, this?"

"Which?"

"Our using of the place that's meant for the others that belong here."

"If it has saved our lives from the cold, they would maybe forgive us."

"Kindly of them, if they do. But what-for do all the emperors and generals and kings intend by it, in the first place?"

"The fighting, do you mean? I think, perhaps, it is an argument over the peninsula ports. Access for their boats to the sea water." Heero scrunched his eyes tightly, striving to drag some historical sense out of his memory. Though who knew if it were the right Line of history or not?

"They should brew them all a strong pot of tea. And sit at a great shiny table next a bright warm fire. And say to each other, 'now, sir, about them boats.' And 'now, sir, about that sea water hereabouts.' And sort out some way to put all their boats into the water together. Meanwhile contriving not to blow each other to bits quite so much. I should like a strong cup of tea. Wouldn't you?" Duo sighed, settling his cheek against Heero's shoulder.

"Yes, I would. There is a bucket in the corner. If it isn't holed, I could go to fetch drinking water at least."

"Later, acushla. After we have rested ourselves the more." Duo reached his tremulous fingers to stroke down Heero's cheek.

Heero turned, able to see the least hint of brandy tones, as early daylight sneaked in through wall crevices to settle easily upon Duo's halo of hair.

Their faces neared, and their lips met gingerly.

"Sweet, that. More, please."

"As much as you like."

"As much as you may have to give, then."

Heero sat up, seeking to please the boy, lavishing him with easy touches. Eyelids, lips, ears and throat. Tenderly fingering the flesh of his chest, nipples, over his trembling belly. Into the front of his trousers, bringing him up from soft to hard.

Eyes closed, his cheeks dimpled from a little grin, Duo next licked over and around Heero's cock, delighted when he made him shudder.

"Sweethearts' breakfast. Just a little roll with honey," Duo chuckled, turning onto his belly in the rustling hay.

"Will it hurt you too much, trying to take you from the back?"

"Hurt and happy, riding side by side. 'Tis the way of the world, so they say, alas."

Awkwardly, with one uninjured hand, the boy lowered his trousers down to his lean thighs.

Heero hastened to proceed, while his cock was still slick from Duo's lips. He entered evenly, and then tugged them together, onto one side, so that he had an arm and leg under the boy to support him from jarring. With so little moisture to ease them, it took very little movement to generate considerable sensation.

As he nudged somewhat further in and out, Heero concentrated on caressing Duo's cock, lingering over the contours, squeezing and teasing until he enticed the boy's slender body to wriggle upon the pinion.

Duo sighed and murmured, slight sounds only. The little noises, the intense sensations, a swirl of conflicting emotions. Heero gasped and grasped tightly, wringing a single cry from his partner. Their united orgasm felt cataclysmic, a mingling of pleasure and pain, presence and distance, clarity and obscurities combined.

When Heero came back to himself, he hurried to help the boy. Relieved to find Duo still breathing, lips somewhat parted, eyelashes fluttering, as awareness returned.

They drifted toward each other in the settling straw.

"If you can believe what I say is not a lie. But simply something quite extraordinary?"

"Perhaps, darling. We can but strive, isn't it said so?"

"I believe there is someplace. Some Point upon a Line, different, much different from here. I believe there is that Point where you belong."

"Oh, aye?"

"I'm not certain, but I hope. I think, I intend, that I am helping you to travel, to arrive there. At that time and place where you belong better than here."

"And are you traveling there, too?"

The question slammed Heero to an abrupt halt. "I don't know if I belong there. I'm not sure if there is anyplace. Some Point upon any Line where I am meant to linger."

"Perhaps, if we hold on, each to the other, very tight. Perhaps then we would go together?"

Heero grabbed and grappled, wrapped his arms around the slight form, desperately clinging to it.

Exhausted, they slept again.

When the shadow from the doorway shifted, the two did not stir.

Khushrenada aimed carefully and fired.

The single sizzling blast excised one body and carried it away, over a vast distance of light.

Which left the other in gloom, still seeking for scattered crumbs of existence.

Chapter 8

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