Part II: Family Problems

AN: AU (duh), ambiguity warning something major because I haven't had the time to really do much editing on this part. I've been posting stuff that's been around for a while on my harddrive here and at FF.net, under my name, you guessed it, Darkwood. I'm already hip deep into Part V and VI of LoP, actually, but there's a massive time jump that I've got to explain more on before I post anymore, and I don't like the lack of subtlety I gave a certain part of the storyline, so it'll be a while. Whet your appetites on this part and probably part III as well until then.

***

“He insulted me, and you, I might add.”

Duo glares, crosses his arms on his chest. Quatre lets out a sob. “Duo!”

The brown haired boy turns to see his younger brother staring wide-eyed. “Q-Quatre…”

“What is going on here?” Trowa asks the shocked Wufei. “What happened?”

Two silent feet brace into the ground, and Heero heaves gently against the wall. He pushes to his feet and glares, both at Noin and Duo. “I am not involved in your quaint little squabble, leave me out of this,” he says to Noin. Then he turns to Duo and grasps his upper arms. Heero shakes Duo a few times and gives him a meaningful look. “You…” Heero does not finish, but points to his prior seat near the stream.

The longhaired son growls and sits down, dropping his chin to his chest. Heero, meanwhile, heads over to the edge of the clearing, bluff side, and clenches his fists tightly. Noin, half of her face red from the slap of Duo’s hand, just stares straight ahead, ignoring the chance to sit near Duo as Quatre pushes weakly past and collapses on the grass with an aggravated sigh.

He whispers to his brother, “Duo, you should be nicer to the Major. You never know what may happen. She is, after all, only doing her job. Just… calm down, I’m sure there’s some logical explanation for her behavior.”

Noin, for her part, stands composing herself, somewhat trapped in stupor at the actions of the normally reserved older son. She puzzles, swaying on weary feet.

Wufei groans in frustrated aggravation and presses the woman’s shoulders back against a tall tree for support, and then he kneels by the denser side of the clearing, Trowa taking up the other position.

“Look, Quatre,” despite attempting to be angry, his voice softens on his younger brother’s name, “if you don’t want me, you can disown me. I’ve never held much use in father’s eyes except as a pretty face to marry off to the most influential person available. Or their child.”

Quatre sighs.

Trowa watches anxiously, eyes darting from place to place as the shadows of the forest dance before him.

“I’m serious, Quatre. You don’t believe it because he never says anything to you, but he told me, specifically, that he could do with my death.”

“Duo, I’m sure he didn’t mean that!”

“You ask him then. Quatre, I love you like a brother but we know that my mother’s death tore father apart. He can’t stand to look at me, even, because I look so ‘strikingly like her,’ that he can’t stand that I’m alive and she isn’t. Quatre, why do you think he called me to the fort with you?”

Trowa shoulders his riffle.

“Why wouldn’t he?”

“How often do we travel together, little brother?”

Wufei makes a low noise of warning that his brothers note easily, identifying the low whistle as a sign of intruders coming up on them. He motions Heero towards the Kushrenada boys and makes the sign for silence.

“It’s for our safety! This trip is the proof of that. Father sends us separately so that no one can kill both of us off and entirely wipe his line from the earth. Duo, nice people like these young men won’t always be around! If we traveled together…”

“I think this is an unfair judge of that, Quatre. There’s a war going on.”

“And even if there weren’t…”

Suddenly a shadow blocks the light and two calloused hands clamp over two protesting mouths. Duo stares wide-eyed at Heero, who motions him to silence. He nods and Heero lets him go slowly, testing him. Trowa makes a three-mark whistle and Heero yanks his riffle from his shoulder, loading bullets. Duo pulls the slightly bloody pistol from the back of his pants.

Looking over at his apparent travel companion, Heero motions to a case at the small of his back. Duo nods back his thanks and cocks the pistol, getting to his knees in front of Quatre, Heero close to his side. “Where?” Duo asks, almost silently.

Quatre, sensing the change of focus, falls silent and gets down on his stomach behind his brother and Heero, struggling to maintain calm as the motions around him gear up to an alert status. ‘Nothing unusual, I’ve seen this before,’ he repeats over and over in his mind. ‘Duo knows what he’s doing, and so do our saviors, we’ll be fine, we really will…’ Frantically he looks around for Trowa, and finds the taller young man perched halfway up a split tree, calm and unshaken. The blond son allows himself a measure of comfort in that and catches a reassuring glance thrown to him by the silent green-eyed young man.

The Japanese Pilot makes a low clicking sound and points to the trees behind the bewildered Noin. All four hold their breath in the back of their throats. Duo’s brow furrows. Heero, almost completely silently, puts an arm around his back. The smaller young man tenses momentarily, but then relaxes under the reassuring weight of the Japanese boy’s arm.

Quatre watches the exchange of minute comfort with distracted eyes, remaining silent, his active curiosity outweighed, for the moment, by his realization of the danger they face.

Wufei sneaks forward and puts a hand over Noin’s mouth, keeping her silent as she startles awake. Trowa nods almost imperceptibly and the two of them fall back slowly, Wufei handing Noin her sidearm in the process. The four of them watch as the trees move slightly, and the men close in. Duo tenses up, and Heero squeezes his back a moment longer before getting to the balls of his feet in a crouch. Duo looks up at him, but the Pilot forces him down onto his belly in the damp grass and motions to the far side of the stream, which, after a scan of Duo’s careful eyes, reveals a small recess in the rock leading to a slightly larger cave like opening. Duo nods and reaches his hand over and takes Quatre’s, who, having been caught up in watching the motions of his own stoic counterpart, starts and looks over at his brother.

The longhaired boy motions to the rocks, and his blond brother nods. Heero makes a low whistle and the other two Pilots nod. He springs to his feet as shots begin to fire, and yanks Duo and Quatre up, shoving them forward. With no further prompting the two boys make a mad dash for the rocks. Halfway there a bullet speeds towards them, and Duo pushes his brother out of the way as he notices the trajectory of the bullet, while Heero takes aim at that shooter, a small cry comes from the bushes and the Japanese man continues forward, stopping only when he sees Quatre trying to get Duo up and make him go forward.

Growling, Heero veers towards the pair and shoves Quatre forward, pulling Duo up into his arms and continuing forward to the rocks right after the other stumbling brother, closely followed by Trowa and then Wufei and Noin.

Towards the darker end of the cave, Heero flints up a fire on some dry wood stored there and pulls Duo over towards the fire. Trowa and Wufei take up positions at the opening. “Is he hurt?” Noin asks frantically, only to be yanked back by the slightly angry Wufei, who shakes her and then says, “Sit there and don’t move.”

“Duo!” Quatre sobs. Heero puts his hand to the boy’s mouth to silence him. “They’re probably still around, we need to be quiet.” Quatre nods and Heero removes his hand.

“Where were you hit?” he asks Duo. The other boy brings a hand down and places it over his left calf. Heero moves to look at it, but all he manages to see is bloody pant leg. He looks up at Duo, who is biting his lower lip softly, eyes open wide as a sign of his pain. Heero takes out his knife and reaches for Duo’s leg. Duo doesn’t even move, but his brother reaches forward, only to have one of Duo’s hands stop him. “He’s just cutting off the cloth, Quatre,” his tenor hisses.

The blond boy nods, but his scared eyes remain wide even as Heero slices into the first piece of seam. Quatre turns away, finally, as Heero begins to peel the last section of cloth off, blood sticking to Duo’s skin because of the wound, and he accidentally hisses in pain. Heero looks up remorsefully, but the violet-eyed young man waves him on.

“Are wa daijobu desu ka?” a soft voice calls from the opening of the cave.

“Ah… anata wa daijobu desu.”

Noin looks about to move, but Wufei puts his knife to her throat and she remains still. “Soo desu ne?”

“Hai.” Heero puts his knife over the fire, and Quatre turns his head quickly. “Go to the front of the cave, Quatre,” the longhaired young man says to his younger brother.

“But…”

“Do as I say!” Duo snaps. His brother pushes himself to his feet and moves towards the group clustered by the entrance, leaving Duo alone with Heero. “Can we move a little farther in?”

The dark haired boy nods, helping him move to lean on a buried boulder farther inside, but with his leg still in reach of the fire and Heero moves to sit near the wall. He hands Duo a piece of leather, which Duo takes into his mouth and clamps his teeth onto. The longhaired young man pulls a scarf from his pocket and twists it up, and then he places both hands on it and sets his back against the rock.

“You seem to know about this.”

“I got shot in the shoulder once, had to do the same thing.”

“Really?” Heero arcs a brow.

“Ok, so not exactly.”

His companion nods and takes the hot knife from the fire, reaching and sitting on Duo’s upper leg to steady it. “Gomen nasai,” Heero whispers and puts the knife into Duo’s leg, seeking, and finding, the musket ball, and flipping it out quickly. Duo, in his defense, only bites down on the leather, and plants his hands on the rock instead of the cloth.

The dark haired young man reaches back for the cloth and wraps it tightly around the longhaired young man’s calf and shin, almost cutting off the circulation. He slowly climbs off of the sweating young man, and looks at the others, seeing Quatre clenching his fists. Duo starts to get up, but Heero pushes him back down to the rock. “Rest. You may not be able to walk for a while, at all. I am sorry.”

“I’ll mend,” Duo says, and then leans thankfully into the cool surface of the stone. Quatre, noticing the passing words, returns to the area, appraising the look of his brother carefully, and then he curls up by his side, glaring at Heero intensely before he hears Duo ask, “Is it all right to sleep?”

The stoic boy merely nods; looking at the blond brother intensely angry, “We can’t move out now, ne?” he asks the last to the other two.

“Hai.” Heero stands and recovers more wood before leaning against the wall in an exhausted mental capacity, and closes his eyes slowly. Duo does so as well, extending his hand to pet his brother’s hair until he calms down, and lulls off to sleep. Duo, being the only one left awake as the outdoor light starts to fade, stares into the fire as it dies to embers, which he stokes only a little to bring warmth, but not light.

Trowa motions to Wufei that he’ll go take his nap, and Wufei nods, motioning to the woman, whom Trowa takes farther back and puts up on a wall behind his own knife. “Take a rest, you’ll need it, because we’re moving out in the morning.”

“But Duo’s hurt!” she whispers. “We can’t…”

“Duo will be fine,” a darker voice says softly from across the room, a tanned hand gently brushing hair from his temples. “And if he can’t walk, I’ll carry him.”

Noin makes a disgruntled noise from the wall, but feels the point of Trowa’s knife in her neck. She gulps slowly and then leans back more. “Whatever.”

The braided boy wakes with a start at the brief touch to his face, but keeps his eyes closed as Heero continues to gently stroke his cheek. He had fallen asleep as soon as the Pilots had begun to speak Japanese softly in the falling darkness.

“I know that you’re awake, Duo,” Heero whispers to him. “How do you know so much about fires?”

“Quatre was pampered,” his voice comes out rough. “He always had the entire guard with him, while I had a guide and maybe a bodyguard. This isn’t the first time this has happened to me, so I know what to do. The guides don’t always hate me despite my family.”

“Then why didn’t you have a gun with you?”

“Quatre wouldn’t let me.”

Instead of snorting, which he usually would have done, Heero smiles slightly, and says softly, “You care about him, don’t you?”

Duo blushes brightly, “He is my brother, you know.”

“What did you mean by saying that about your mother, then?”

“We have the same father. My mother died when I was two months old and father fell apart. He went everywhere without me, left me with a local nun, and he did everything he could to try and forget about my mother and me. He joined the military, a year later we received news he was a Major, and then a Captain… by the time I was ten my father was a general. He met the Princess of a foreign country, and he liked her so much that he brought her home… and they were married.”

“What was he then?”

“He was a Colonel. I was seven or eight, I don’t really remember.”

Heero nods quietly.

“I hated her with everything I ever felt. She was pretty. Blond, like Quatre, and she was rather short. She wasn’t even as tall as my father, and my mother had been that, to say the least. She wasn’t graceful, she didn’t know our customs and…”

“And?”

“She died giving birth to Quatre two years later. At first I felt happy, and then I realized he had just become like me. I felt so sad I wept for days. I went to the chapel and Sister Helen found me. She picked me up and asked me what was wrong. ‘I have sinned,’ I said to her. She stared at me blankly…” Duo’s voice gets fainter and fainter as he continues.

“Duo, perhaps you… we should get some sleep while we have the chance. If you can’t walk tomorrow… I’ll carry you, and even though you weigh next to nothing, my body does weigh something, and getting me up this mountain will only be harder carrying something in my arms.”

“Ok,” Duo murmurs sleepily. “’Night.”

“Good night… Duo,” Heero replies and closes his eyes until he feels something against his hand and looks down, noticing Duo’s dirt marred pale skin against his own darker tanned hand. He smiles warmly and closes his eyes again, feeling pleasant pictures and feelings welling up inside of him for the first time in years.