16-Aug-2002
Pet Shop of Horrors: Earthsong
by bonnejeanne and cassiopeia
Title: Earthsong
Author: bonnejeanne (bonnejeanne@yahoo.com) and Cassiopeia (cassiopeia@gundamwing.net)
Archive: http://www.no-assumptions.com/gundamwing/
Category: yaoi, AU
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: Series
WARNINGS: Lemon/Limey stuff, AU
Disclaimer: Pet Shop of Horrors characters and universe are the property of the copyright owners. Our stuff is ours. No money being made here. As with all our fics, while our goal is to stay as in character as possible, any discrepancies are our mistakes.
Feedback: Any and all comments welcome, be they short or long.
NOTES: This is a sequel to our first fic, "Blood". See Part One for full Notes.
Earthsong: Part Fourteen
Getting out was considerably less difficult than getting in. The building seemed oddly quiet and the excitement at the close-by warehouse had ceased at some point while they were inside.
Chang had to decide where to take everyone. It was late in the evening, and they might have been expected at the temple D and Leon had been to earlier, but the young man decided to take matters into his own hands, and arranged for a van to pick them up outside the trading company area and take them to a house that had once been his home. Though he didn't live there now, it was kept well, having been the place where his mother resided until her death a few years before.
He woke the old couple that were live-in caretakers, and then did his best to make sure that the Count, Leon and Chris were comfortable. Sending Nine and Blank off to get some rest, even though they both protested, he settled himself in the main room, where he could watch over his guests' safety himself. Ti-lung seemed to watch him closely and he found the jewel-eyed regard unnerving, almost as unnerving as having a lizard talk to him.
D accepted hot water and bandages but shooed Chang away with a look as he pushed Leon into a chair to clean his gunshot wound.
Unwrapping the folded shawl from Leon's arm, the Count pulled away the remains of his sleeve to expose the torn flesh. The odd thing about it was that it hadn't bled as much as it should, and it didn't look quite as bad as it ought to. Leon could tell the bullet was still in the wound but he hadn't felt himself going into anything like shock, which was very strange indeed.
Leon didn't know what he thought about having everyone fuss over him, and grumbled softly through a frown before making any intelligible comments. "It's not bad," he said, hoping to stop some of the attention, though it was the truth as well. "I can't even feel it. Much." He turned his look on D, traces of the frown still evident on his face. "I guess... you should..." Leon's voice stopped and he didn't want to think about what came next. His stomach especially did not want to think about it.
"You will feel this," D said, with an oddly cheerful smile. Then his expression became a neutral mask and one slender hand closed around Leon's bicep and squeezed it - hard. Even as a yell was trying to make it out of Leon's throat, something seemed to *splurt* out of the wound and the lead pellet popped out with a bit of blood and dropped onto the floor.
The detective wanted to make a comment or two on D's delightful bedside manner, but held himself back. It hurt, but it also felt good to have the bullet out. "Thanks," he said in a low voice. "I think."
With only the briefest hint of a contrite look under the curtain of hair, D carefully and gently cleaned the wound with hot water and a clean cloth. "Sorry, My Leon," he murmured as he bent to give the flesh a light kiss. Then he bandaged it carefully with a clean, dry cloth.
It ached a bit, but again felt no where near as bad as it should have. As D finished, he glanced over at Chris, who was curled up on a bed in the same room, eyes closed. Carefully, the Count perched on Leon's lap and rested his arms around the man's shoulders. Nose to nose, so to speak, he murmured softly in a voice that would not disturb the young child.
"That was very brave, My Detective," he said. Then a bit of emotion flickered across his face. "Very brave. And if he had killed you..." his eyes seemed to glow for a moment and Leon was reminded for some reason of the wild storm over the pet shop and the lightning splitting the sky.
Leon snorted softly at the compliment, then closed his eyes. When he opened them again, a small smile tugged at his mouth. "I thought when you said no killing, it was probably supposed to include you." As he finished speaking, he brought his arms slowly around D.
The Count did not answer in words, simply tightened his arms around Leon and dropped his head to rest his chin on Leon's shoulder. There was a vibration in his body of tension, but it wasn't something that Leon could put a name to. It wasn't something D was willing to put a name to.
With the other man in his arms, Leon's mind got very quiet. After a moment, he moved his face into D's hair, putting his lips near the Count's ear. Quietly, at the edge of audibility, he spoke. "D..." Leon stopped to lightly kiss the other's neck, then started again. "D... How did I... back there..."
"I told you there would be changes," D murmured, in the same tone, his voice almost shy. "You won't notice them perhaps, except for something like this. I don't even know what all of them will be. I hope...." his voice faltered even at that slight timbre. "I hope it is... what did you say before? Worth it..."
Leon didn't answer, moving away from D's neck to find the other man's mouth in a deep kiss, allowing nothing less than D's full comprehension. That it was more than merely 'worth it'. That Leon would change nothing. Absolutely nothing of what had happened between them.
The being in Leon's arms responded to the kiss in a way that made the rest of the world cease to exist for a little while, for both of them. When it ended, and it ended in a way that was anything but abrupt, Leon could remember feeling a warm body pressed against him, slender fingers on his shoulders, his neck, in his hair. A taste and scent that could not be identified but which immersed him. A throbbing of blood moving through bodies but whether his or the other, it didn't seem to matter.
When they curled up together on another bed, both fully clothed, to watch over Chris ostensibly, still neither of them noticed when a small dragon crept silently into the room and curled up next to the boy.
He huffed silently, warm breath tickling Chris's cheek, grumping inaudibly about the softness of the mattress and how uncomfortable it was, but with his chin propped on the blond child's elbow, even the little dragon found a pathway to the land of dreams.
The scent of incense was almost reassuring, and soothed over the edges of Leon's perceptions when he found himself walking through hallways that were unfamiliar. Because of the incense, he knew it had to be the pet shop. And if it were the pet shop, he knew D would have to be nearby some where. If he kept walking, he would find him.
After wandering for a while, and seeing many strange things - weird beasts, and even weirder... well they *seemed* to be people, but there was always something a little off, no matter how attractive some of them were. Like those two women... sweet, seductive and beautiful, but why did they want him to go from one to the other, and what did they mean by 'pollinate' them?
The longer he walked, however, the more his desire to find D increased, growing slowly like an uneasiness at the back of his neck. He started opening doors at random - *that* turned out to be a bit more exciting than he'd anticipated. Behind one door he found a sunlit meadow and watched three people have a picnic - a man, who looked like his father, a woman, who seemed to be his mother, and a little tow-headed boy who seemed not to have a care in the world... it made him uneasy and even angry to see it and he backed off and slammed the door good and hard.
In another place he saw what he thought was D, as if from far away. He was standing on a balcony at the top of a building, looking down, and a face turned up to smile flirtatiously, but even from the distance he could somehow see that something was wrong - the eyes turned to his, not only were they both the same color, the deep amethyst of only one of *his* Count's two eyes, but they seemed to swirl with malice and something even more disturbing. And they *saw* him.
He took an unconscious step away from the balcony rail and all but ran into a solid form. A hand on his shoulder steadied him. Turning, he was stunned to see what might have been the "other half" of his Count. The same beautiful face, with two gold eyes gazing into his, as coldly rational as the other had been perceptibly insane. It couldn't have been His D, he realized, for the figure was dressed in a beautifully tailored, *Western* man's suit, the expensive material as fine as Chinese silk, but giving a wholly different impression.
The look in those gold eyes, while not flirtatious as the other, nor disturbing in the same gut-churning way, was anything but welcoming. The doppelganger for His Count pulled him back into the hall and closed that door firmly. But his expression seemed to carry a hint of cool satisfaction that he had seen what he had seen.
"Time enough for that meeting - time enough to come," he said, in a voice like D's.
Leon didn't know if he could talk. His voice didn't want to come out, not here. But the man with D's voice and D's face and D's hair angered him. It was an affront that someone should have taken the Count's form so completely. "Who are you?" he asked finally, forgetting that it was difficult to speak here.
For all his effort, the question was ignored.
"Will you seek him even here? Not let him escape you even in the realm of dreams? How typical of your race. How you want to own and possess. Smug in your limited existence... well, since you are here, let us see if we can find what you seek."
Without another word, the figure facing Leon pushed him down the hall, his slender hand seeming to barely move, but a great force propelling Leon forward.
For a moment, Leon suddenly felt sure he had the right door in front of him, but another slight touch propelled him to another door, that seemed to be beside the one he wanted, yet around a corner from it at the same time. The door opened and he felt an odd sense of vertigo as he passed inside. And he realized he'd been in this room before. The cloying incense, the torchlight... the gold cage hanging from the high ceiling...
There was D - right there. But something was wrong. The other figures of the room were all frozen, all staring. And D was bent over something, something Leon couldn't quite see - oh, it seemed to be a man... but even without seeing D's face, Leon could feel the building distress in the young man, like a physical blow. Could feel it turning in on itself, circling, the anguish, the pain, the disbelief and the terrible knowledge. Around and around it circled, pulling tighter like an emotional tornado. The force of it starting to rip apart the one inside of whom it boiled and tore. The hands cradling the still figure in his lap so reverently, so lovingly... spread and clutched, clawing the air.
A scream seemed to come from somewhere but how could that slender throat have ever produced it? D's face lifted, flung up as if to attack the heavens with his eyes, the gushing of tears - (We don't cry) - reflecting off a face that seemed to twist, always beautiful, into an expression of loss it was never meant to hold. And then something within the Count broke, and the madness came, bringing its smile. Beautiful hands clawed the air and suddenly there were human screams. Chang's body ripped apart gushing blood. Lui's figure exploded into pieces of flesh. Cyclone winds snuffed the torches and a small boy's cry of fear was answered by a dragonet's terrified howl. A thunder began to build, drowning out the other sounds, almost all of them, but not quite muffling the laugh of anguish and rage that filled the sudden darkness...
A jerk on his shoulder pulled Leon out of the door and back into the hall, and the door shut.
"So sorry, wrong door," the gold eyed man behind him murmured.
Leon could not close his mouth. There was something wet on his face, like a rain drop, and he couldn't even move his head to turn and stare at the gold eyed man. He did not know what he had just seen, but he never wanted to see anything like it again.
Now it seemed very important to know who the man with him was. Leon made himself turn somehow and grab the man by his suit. "*Who* are you?" he asked again, and this time, it was hard to speak for a different reason. He couldn't catch his breath, as if he'd left it in the room behind the door that the gold eyed man had shut.
"I am Count D," the man answered, even as his body yielded to Leon's shaking grasp, offering no resistance. "This is my shop you are wandering around in. Didn't my grandson tell you so?"
Leon grit his teeth angrily at the answer, but instead of trying to shake the truth out of the man, he dropped the fine material and took a step backwards. "You're not anything like him," he said bluntly, then paused. Grandson... D's... "You're... you came back? You were away..." Leon spoke mostly to himself, his voice quiet, then he looked into gold eyes and didn't try to say anything else.
The gaze back was immutable. "If it were in my power to stop what has begun, I would do it in less than a breath. But my vigilance has been for nothing. I traded his life for this... this contagion. Now you hold half his life in your clumsy hands. His heart... but when that is crushed, unlike a human's it will not die quietly and leave his mind to function like a machine. It will wreck everything. Every part of the perfection of who he is. A beautiful spirit will become a monster, with such power..."
Leon sifted through the words for some kind of meaning. Not much of it made sense, but for some reason, he found the speech had left a picture in his mind, of swirling, crazed, amethyst eyes. "Who... was that man? On the balcony?" Something was growing inside Leon, feeding itself until it got big enough to break loose, and it was something he hadn't felt in a long time.
Doubt. It made him sick to his stomach, but he tried to ignore the feeling. "Tell me," he demanded, though his voice held a shake.
Two things happened at once. The door that Leon had intended to open, before being pushed to the other, swung back behind him. "Leon!" a familiar voice, one which he could never mistake no matter how similar it might be to any other, its tone drenched with that warm emotion that belonged only to him.
At the same moment, the gold-eyed man in front of him faded like a ghost, from substantial to non-existent in seconds, leaving only a hint of wind and the soft sound of leather wings flapping down the hallway. But not before Leon saw the answer on fading lips, no sound but the shape of the two syllables easily read before the image was gone.
*My son.*
Leon's eyes fell shut, and he had to swallow three times before he could do anything else. "D," he answered, but did not open his eyes or turn around. The gold-eyed man's words would not leave his mind, would never leave his mind. Beautiful... Monster... Beautiful Monster... My son...
Leon did not think he could open his eyes anymore.
Hands moved around his waist, then turned him to face the other blindly. "Leon?" The slight question showed the beginning of hesitation. "Something is wrong..." Fingertips brushed his cheek and forehead gently. "You are dreaming, My Love..."
Leon grabbed D as soon as his fingertips touched his face and held onto him like he thought he might try to get away. Sill, he did not open his eyes. "Where were you?" he asked, his breath gone again, and the awful feeling in his stomach continued to grow.
D's body pressed against Leon's chest. "I was in my dream," he answered, and it almost made sense. "I had a nightmare... but then I remembered that you were safe, My Love, and it turned into a beautiful dream of sunlight and water and the sounds of birds and children's laughter..." Warm lips pressed against the underside of Leon's chin. "Come inside with me..."
Accepting everything that the Count said as true, Leon finally opened his eyes. "Make my dream beautiful, too?" he asked, then realized that D had, just by coming into it. He shifted away then, and took D's hand, to let the other man lead him inside.
The slender fingers entwined with his as odd-colored eyes gazed back into his own, warm, caring, even, he could see it now, needing him. "I will do everything in my power to make it so, always," D murmured almost shyly. Then he moved through the door, drawing Leon with him, never turning but walking backwards, his steps as graceful and sure as if the possibility of a stumble simply didn't exist for the moment. Beyond him Leon could see blue sky, and smell salt air, and see sand and seashells glimmering iridescently, and hear the sound of a laugh he could not ever remember, but somehow knew to be Chris.
At the sound, Leon smiled, his eyes going to D. "Better," he said, stopping to touch D's face, to cradle the right side in the palm of his hand. "Beautiful," he added, and his mind cruelly finished for him.
Monster. But he did not let it show on his face. In fact, made the thought go away.
A little question seemed to float across D's face as if he could hear things Leon didn't say. But as Leon's mind cleared, D's face did also. Suddenly he smiled, and then tugged Leon's hand, pulling him faster towards the sound of the waves and the cry of white birds in the wind.
And after a while, Leon found himself waking, his arms wrapped around a warm, slight figure. The time in the sunshine faded like all beautiful dreams do. And the time in the dark halls faded and tattered into fragments that began quickly to lose their minimal coherency.
On the other bed, a dragonet sneezed, leaving a faint trace of sulfur in the air.
TBC