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"Horse Tales"Written By: Kaeru Shisho Disclaimer: I don't own any part of Gundam Wing
or its characters, nor do I make any monetary profit off this story. Rating: NC 17 Warnings: Yaoi, Very AU, so very AU it's AD, another
dimension. The GW boys are horses. My apologies. Please heed the warning. Pairings: 1x2, 3x4, 6x5 Summary: A few lucky stallion purebreds are given a second chance at the Horse Haven Sanc-tuary. A/N: In defense of my writing this extreme version
of a GW story… Waterlily and Snowdragon made me do it, heh, heh… " Horse Tales" Chapter Fifteen- Nobility Walks Among Us (o) Duo's POV Looks like Howie got his dream horse, and it's so obviously a vampire it just ain't funny. Yep, Zechs really takes the biscuit, the bloody biscuit. I'm sure Howie knew what he was getting; he didn't have the vet come check him out. We all got checked out, but not Zechs. The Count. The vet would know that what he had there was re-animated horse meat, so no health check. Avoiding eye-opening, public announcements like "this horse is of the undead" meant I was the only one who could warn the others. Not only was I the most practical horse in the herd, the one Heero'd come to lean on, so to speak, but I was the only other horse around that recognized the signs. Yes, indeedy I could. Convincing our buddies would be simple, once Heero believed me. "Duo, that's stupid." "Nuh uh!" I said. "He told us himself." "When was that?" "All that rubbish about being born black and changing to white. That was his transformation from ordinary horse to vampire horse." "All his breed goes through that change." "How do you know that? He told us that. See?" "Not really." "Well, you certainly gotta look at those incisors of his, right? Like fangs!" "Horses don't have fangs." "Which is my point exactly." "Zechs hasn't any fangs." "He does. You just didn't see them." "You are right about that. I saw nothing out of the ordinary." "Then it's a good thing you got me to watch out for stuff like that." "Stuff like what?" "Like vampires and werewolves and zombies. I'm an expert at spotting them. They called me the God of Death." He just stared at me and said nothing. I guessed I'd convinced him. And it hadn't been that hard so I figured it would be light work getting the others in front of the wagon with us. "Duo-" He sighed as if my name weighed heavily on him and I thought he was about to thank me for bringing the matter to his attention with all the promptness it was due, but then we were interrupted. "- here comes Howard and the doctors. Looks as if we're all going out riding today." Sure thing. I was happy that 'Ro and I had had our little discussion, 'cause with that past us I could enjoy the ride. I tried to watch Zechs. From what I could see he was well-behaved, but Heero kept crowding the view. Goldie filled me in on what I was missing, which wasn't much. "Howard giving Trowa's rider some advice: 'Relax your back, don't pinch with your knees, go with the motion, rock your pelvis'- He's just said Zechs was a joy to ride with his soft, broad back and lively gait due to his powerful hindquarters." Seemed to me our little gold dragon was a tad more interested in those hindquarters than was his usual stuffy self. It was just about then that 'Ro shoved his ass in my path. 'Course with him I was trying real hard not to think about what Sunshine and I'd just talked about. Somehow I didn't think he'd be letting me stick anything where the sun don't shine, and I knew I wasn't about to let him do that to me. So, why the fascination, I asked myself? "Oh, here's what your rider had to say about you," Goldie said. Why was he so eager to share today? "His natural rhythm is short and bouncy, but if you want a good ride, you have to teach him about long and deep." Ugh. To keep my mind off sex, I pondered what else I knew about vampires: they drank the blood of their victims, which in turn made new vampires-a rather odd sorta sex act- all evil incarnate. On top of that, they lived forever unless they got stabbed through the heart with a sword, although I wasn't sure about the sword part, something metal, anyway. It occurred to me I should warn everyone about the creature masquerading as one of us. As I spread the word about Zechs, I would also mention how I'd appreciate all the help they could give me keeping him under surveillance. During the day, it would take most of the vampire's strength to keep up his façade and not stress out in the sunlight. It was under the cover of darkness that he'd become his most dangerous. We could take turns observing him at night, since I doubted very much a mere stall door could keep a vampire horse at bay. Funny how differently the others reacted to my news. "What does Heero think?" Spot asked, calm and cool as if I'd told him dandelions were yellow. "He's with me on this." I sure thought he was. "He is?" "I just said so. Watch your back, er, neck, and everyone else's, 'specially at night." "Okay." That was easy. I'd been about right about getting 'Ro on board first. Our little patch of Sunshine, always a bit of an odd duck probably 'cause he came from the weird Middle Eastern desert, became shiny-eyed-excited once he understood what a vampire was. "A Ghul! Oh, I guess you'd say ghoul in Sanc. What you are talking about sounds like what was called a ghul where I grew up, only ghouls feed on other corpses and not just on blood. Looking at things in terms of evolution of the deceased, I guess then, vampires are much more refined in their tastes." "Um, right. Just keep an eye out, okay?" I should have realized he'd be informed. Poor Sunshine had had nightmares from the stories he'd been told. "Absolutely!" Goldie wouldn't hear me out, big surprise there, and accused me of being envious of Zechs' magnificence, and refused to be a part of my "witch hunt." Envious? Me? Not on your life! "The veterinarian health assessment was unnecessary because Howard knew and trusted the other stable's management, not because he's trying to hide anything. Honestly, Duo, focus on Heero before he has a coronary." I had planned to have a heart-to-heart with Heero that night, actually, but I was pretty darn sure Goldie was meaning something else. He usually did. "What do you mean by that? You don't think he's taking Zechs that seriously as a threat to his leadership?" "It's my impression that he does, but Heero can deal with that perfectly well. It's your single-minded interest in Zechs that has him troubled." "That's nuts." I was sure he knew I only had eyes for him and not the vampire. "Most likely, but you distract him." I was about to give him a piece of my mind, when the doctors got it into their heads to stop our consorting and head out on the path through the hills. Back to work, but on a fine spring day it was, how did Sunshine put it? "A pleasure to cavort over the grassland", and that it was. That evening I snuggled up with Heero in his stall with the excuse that it wouldn't be safe for me to fall asleep with a vampire roaming at large. "Duo, stay if you want, but no more vampire stuff." "Huh? You believe me, right?" "I think you're awe-struck over that new stallion and dreaming up a whole batch of excuses to talk about him." "That is so not true!" How blind could a horse be? "I mean, sure he's built and easy on the eyes," wrong direction to take if the hardened, glazed-over look in Heero's eyes was any indication, "but what a bore. He's nothing like you, and you are what makes me-" Oh, boy. How could I finish that sentence without sounding like a needy idiot? "Makes you what?" "Um-" was the best I could do with him rubbing a leg against mine and blowing the hair out of my eyes. I felt hot then cold. I think my hair was standing on end and I forgot everything I was about to say. My heart pounded like I was running a race, uphill. His lips tugged at my ears, sending my skin to shivering and all I wanted was more. "More-" His strong neck curled over my back and his nose massaged my shoulders. "Tell me about this so-called God of Death, or were you just making that up?" He'd paused the rubbing action and I missed it. "Don't stop." "Tell." Obstinate thing. "I told you about Solo, right?" "Older gelding you shared a stable with." "Guiding light, sometimes. He taught me everything he knew, leaving out what he didn't," like sex, which I didn't say aloud. Heero said nothing, but he encouraged me by resuming the back rub, letting me gather my thoughts and sniff back a few tears. "There was this huge dog that would show up every so often and when he didn't we'd see this huge human with a bushy beard. Solo told me about werewolves, explaining how the man and the dog-wolf were the same." "Hmm. How'd he learn about all those creatures?" "He said if I looked through the window of a human's house, I might see one of their magic boxes, a box that showed pictures. He'd get out of the stall and go watch late at night." "He was the one that showed you how to pick locks." "Yeah, he did that, too." "You ever watch the picture shows?" "I tried. I learned the 'horse is a horse song' that way. You remember me singing that?" "Yes. Don't do it again." "Oh, okay. Anyway, where was I?" "Picture shows." "Oh, yeah. By the time I'd learned to get out, our owner mostly drank and slept and the box was dark." "Hn." Another few minutes of massage and I was floating in dreamland. As his nose smoothed over my back over my ass and edged closer to my tail I shivered. Not a good feeling or a bad one. One I couldn't define. "Okay?" he asked me. No, no, no! I didn't care what Sunshine claimed. It didn't sound "fulfilling" or wonderful to me. I didn't want anything stuffed in me and I had no desire to do that to Heero. It was all way too icky. Backrubs, now those were great. "Um, no, actually. But, uh, thanks for asking, though. It's just, um... Can you not go there?" He didn't answer. He just pulled back a ways, leaving his neck draped over my back. "Thanks, 'Ro." He probably didn't want to mess around that way either. Talk about peer pressure... When I woke up, I was still in Heero's stall and he was standing, dozing with the sun rising over his shoulder; at least, that's how it looked. I nudged his ass until his eyes flew open, "Morning!" "No." "Yes, it is. Wake up, honey, while I check on the others." I could hear him right at my heels as I did my rounds, unhitching the stall doors and wishing the inhabitants, "Good morning!" The new addition to our happy home, residing in stall number six right next door to Goldie, had a head-heavy, lethargic stance when I found him. I liked Spot's name for Zechs, his Lordship, but I had an even better one, the Count. Vampires were Count-somethings. "Morning wakeup call! I feel I oughta call you the Count. How does that sound to you?" "I've been called the Lightning Count." Bingo! Like I said, vampire. "Why Lightning?" "Yikes!" I nearly jumped a foot. I had not been expecting Heero to be taking snipe shots over my shoulder. "I asked you a question." Heero said that with his shackles raised. He looked awesome that way with his dominant stallion flare fully powered up. "Why do you care? I surely don't." The Count peered out from under his long white forelock. It was a measuring look for a second before he returned to upturning his morning mash into a bucket. I was kinda wondering why Heero was so keyed up too, until I thought a little harder. Ah, jeez. Why hadn't I put it together that way? Lightning-fire-Heero's phobia. I hoped the vampire couldn't spew out fire or we'd be sunk. I'd never heard they could do that. The Count seemed more interested in his bucket of slop. I glimpsed a few apple treats at the bottom as the oats and mix sloshed to cover it all. "Why won't you tell me? What are you hiding?" Heero was a determined horse, no doubt about it. The Count swirled the bucket contents then set the bucket to the side. "I see. Well, naturally, you wouldn't want any horse faster than you. I can assure you the name had nothing to do with my swiftness. I'm trained for finesse, not speed." Not good enough for my Heero. Nope. "What are you doing with your food?" he asked. This I thought was a fair question to ask. There was no reason to water yummy stuff down that way. "Spoiling it, I hope." The self-proclaimed Lightning Count leaned against the side of his stall, looking completely put out by our intrusion. "You're ruining your food? That's wasteful. If you don't want yours, you should offer it to the others." Like me! Our resident vampire pulled himself to his feet and reared his head to look intimidating. "Oh? You think so? It's mine and if I want it to rot first, I shall let it rot and you will not stop me." The two postured off, nostrils flaring, and Heero carving a line in the straw. The Count whisked it away with a flick of his tail. Like a flash of lightning. Heh, heh. I got it. Heero either did or he didn't, but he wasn't happy at all. "I will stop you. I'm number one." I so didn't want this to turn ugly and asked, "Wouldn't you rather go outside? I could show you around the pasturage." This sounded like a good idea to me, which was why I'd posed it. "The meadow grass is great, if you actually eat the stuff." If he was hoarding watered-down mash then he couldn't have been on a blood-exclusive diet. Spot huffed and strutted off. "It's pretty silly to fight, you know. It's not as if you're cashing in on a heard of mares. Just us." I think he directed that to the vampire and not Heero, but Heero rounded on him, nipping Spot's flank and kicking out at the Count, causing the bigger horse to back up. Poor Sunshine. He hopped from one foot to the other. "Stop this or we'll have the humans involved! Lets' all just be friends." "Good try," I congratulated him, but what we needed was a rallying cry more than a plea for sanity. "Don't be stupid." Goldie surprised me by coming to the plate with a good idea. "It is time for hurdle training. We have no time to waste if we are to carry out our plan soon." "There are hurdles?" The Count asked. "Why didn't you say so from the start?" His eyes sparked and the vampire came to life. I really doubted that it was the expectation of exercise that got him all fired up, but what else? Goldie's cute little tail? He was sure flicking it mighty furiously, heh, heh... "Can you jump?" I asked. This was primary on my mind right now. Goldie practically collapsed. "Don't you know what a Lipizzan is? They are renowned for that!" "Oh, don't mind the press," The Count said magnanimously, or it might have been a selfless comment had it been said by someone kind and thoughtful, but any idiot could tell he was actually lapping up Goldie's blatant adulation. "In spite of our royalty, we are truly an all-around horse capable of performing whatever task is required. What? Have you something in mind?" Heero, on the other end of the love-him-hate-him ladder, looked undaunted by the vampire's grandeur and ancient lineage; a test of courage and ability was more likely to impress him. "Let's see how you hop a trestle first." "It will have to wait. Here comes Howard," Sunshine warned, leaving off the "I told you so." Howard ignored my request for a treat in favor of greeting the vampire disguised as a fancy-ass mount. Oh, yeah, The Count was a sluggish bore around us, but when approached by a person with a kind word, he transformed almost instantaneously to a docile, gentle horse. I couldn't believe my eyes, though, when Howard climbed on his back. "Just look at that display of fiery animation," Goldie gushed, doing the play-by-play with way more relish than necessary. "Unforgettable! See how he leaves the ground with incredible power and grace without losing his proud bearing and superior presence?" "Kind of a show off, isn't he?" Spot snuffled close to my ear. "He's that," Heero agreed, rubbing up against the spotted horse affectionately. I guessed the two had made up, but then Spot wasn't one to hold a grudge against Heero, especially for his reprimand nip. Sunshine "oohed and aahed" enough to make me want to give him a swift kick. I don't know how Trowa restrained himself. Oh, yeah. Love. When a got a peek under his forelock, I saw his eyes were closed. Maybe he was dreaming his love was cheering him on? "Lipizzan horses excel in dressage, especially at the upper levels," Goldie continued. His eyes never left the white horse. Not even to talk to us. We all watched the show a while longer, and then Howard dismounted and let us all mix in peace. "How seriously can one take those dressage competitions?" I asked. I expected Goldie took them very seriously, and probably Heero and very likely Sunshine, too, but none of them admitted it now, letting The Count answer the question. "One does when one is in the moment, I suppose." "Was that a moment then? You had to be concentrating pretty completely." "You are referring to the three "P" level movements- the piaffe (a powerful trot in place full of cadence and rhythm), passage (a slow motion floating trot), and canter pirouettes?" "I guess." "Your execution was breathtaking." We all stared at Goldie as if he'd grown horns, the silly deer, but he didn't seem to care how silly he sounded. It had to be love. It just had to be. Not that I would deny anyone that, but in love with a vampire? "What does it matter how brilliant I was, when the abilities were simply inborn?" Spot snorted. "I had to practice a lot." Well, damn, it sure mattered to Spot, who claimed to have worked hard to achieve the grace that he had. "That's because you haven't natural-born rhythm, as I have. Yes, a natural sense of rhythm that lets me maintain a very even tempo at all times." Spot grumbled something under his breath that Sunshine shushed up pronto with a litany of flattery, which embarrassed the poor guy even more, from the way he was hiding his face behind his fall of hair. And in the end, our hurdle practice got put off, as we were shooed out into the pasture by the help. There were the usual birds and bees and butterflies and sun and breezes. The Count stood off a bit with Goldie waffled about halfway in between the rest of the herd and the object of his adoration, as if to form a link. It was okay. Heero seemed calm about it and if he was satisfied then all was well. We did the usual munching and walking and sniffing and dosing until Heero signaled for us to return home. He led and we followed in a line by stall number: Heero, me, Spot, Sunshine, Goldie, and The Count, assuming his place without quarrel. All in all, a perfectly pleasant day marked only once by The Count when he passed close by me when we entered the corral and remarked about my "luxurious mane and tail." "It's a pain," I admitted, "all the fussing the humans go through to maintain it." "I understand," he said. I'm sure he did with his own amazing, pure white tail that he swished around with abandon, snagging it on thorns. Goldie had occupied himself all afternoon, I'm sure pleasantly, trailing after the big, white horse and nipping the hair free. "There's worse pain." I was about to say something about battle wounds, when I caught the glint of a fang. He was grinning at me; I was sure, or sneering. He just couldn't hide his true nature from me, but before I could call him on it, Heero bumped me. "Is everything okay?" "Yeah, he was trying to impress me with his vampire fang." Heero looked torn between smacking me and kicking The Count. "You know, you're flogging a dead horse with that vampire talk," he told me. "It's hopeless trying to convince me, so drop it." I didn't want to argue the existence of vampires again, especially dead and flogged ones, and since I knew I'd much rather commune with my 'Ro in a fun way than squabble, I nudged him back and got into a little pushing fight, the kind that with Heero was entertaining. When we returned to our stalls, I gotta whiff of something foul, something familiar, something from the past. I wasn't one to dwell on the past. My memories of it were fading pretty fast, but some things could dredge them up with all the clarity of the present. Like Heero's questioning or like smell. It came from The Count's stall. His mash was bubbling, and when I got close up I recognized it for the brew it was. "Poison! Don't eat that. My owner drank spoiled fruit juice that smelled like that and died. I'm sure it can't be good for us." "You mean alcohol?" The Count drawled out in an irritating, careless way. "It's terrible for humans and horse alike. That is why I'm drinking it." "You can't mean that!" Sunshine looked wide-eyed appalled. "You are killing yourself over this move?" "This move? Oh, Lord no. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters. Not anymore." "Nonsense," Goldie snapped over his shoulder. "You were a fighting horse, a warrior of peace-" "I was. My lieutenant owner was killed in battle, a battle that left the lead horse MIA. No peace came from that tactical catastrophe." Mention "peace" and expect Sunshine to charge into the discussion, which he did. "Maintaining the peace even through a show of force, what could be more meaningful?" "There was a time when I was as idealistic as you are now, but no conditions must be met for total peace. First, all weapons must be eliminated. And second... the desire to fight must be erased from people's minds. Both are impossible, thus no permanent peace."* What a downer this guy was. But then, when life just goes on and on and all you do is suck the life out of others, how could you be anything but a depressant? Lucky for us we had our little ray of Sunshine. He was like an anti-depressant with enough positive strength of mind that he couldn't be discouraged by a mere brooding vampire. "There are other ways and people who can write laws for the masses to obey and live together harmoniously, and others who can punish those who disobey. Peace can be achieved over time, I just know it!" "Well, I see there's only one more thing required for true peace. A strong heart that can empathize with people, like yours. You're too pure and too kind... but I guess that's what gives you the right to live."* "We all have that right and we will, starting with Heero." "Heero? Why him? Is he ill?" "No!" Heero said with a derisive snort. "No, but his past owner wants to take him back and we don't want him to leave. We won't let him go, so we have a plan." "An excellent plan," Goldie assured him. "How do the hurdles come into this plan of yours?" The Count's eyes reflected gold and looked livelier than before. Maybe we were the best amusement he'd had in a long time? * Quotes directly from the series Horse Notes: The hierarchy may change whenever you introduce a new horse into an established group. If you introduce a new horse, there's going to be some scrapping and fighting until they re-establish the hierarchy. Every horse is a unique individual, yet the ability to blend in with the herd is of utmost importance. Horses have become genetically predisposed to this blending. This is one of the reasons they immediately begin to establish a pecking order upon meeting a new horse. One horse will ultimately become the leader.
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