Lovely
Chapter Twelve

By Dreaming of Everything

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing. I'm just playing in the proverbial sandbox.

Author's Notes: Sorry it's taken so long! That said, this is a longer chapter (to help make up for that) and also a very important one, plot-wise. You could even say that this is the beginning of the end. ;)

As always, huge thanks to my beta, Lady-Frisselle! And another thank-you to all my wonderful readers and reviewers.

oOoOoOo

Duo was jogging through the palace gardens, an almost meditative act—the movement, the vague impression of flowers, the cool morning air damp against his skin. His passage disturbed the light fog that was layered over the ground.

When he paused to fumble with his flask of water, Duo realized, without much worry, that he didn't know where he was. That happened—more so in the castle than in the grounds surrounding it—and he'd adjusted to the little quirks of life in the enchanted place. Once he started actively trying to get back, the grounds would rearrange themselves again—the far edges would go blurry, and he'd get a headache if he stared at them too long—and then he'd find his way back to the cutting garden or the knot-work gardens or some other place he recognized, and then he could make his way back to the castle, easily—and the castle itself would doubtless become visible again in a little while, and then he could steer himself using it.

So no, he wasn't worried. Just curious. And Duo was a force of nature when it came to satisfying his curiosity. He was worse than a sorcerer's cat, he'd been told—and Duo had chosen to take that particular comparison as a compliment. It wasn't like he hadn't had worse ones.

Duo started walking again, stretching out his muscles—he didn't want them to seize up. As he walked, overgrown branches lined with thorns reached out to pull at his skin and clothes. It was strikingly different from the austere, clipped and, most importantly, controlled beauty of the other gardens—and the design wasn't any more informal than any other part of the garden. There were dark yew hedges on either side of the path, very tall ones—they had to be ancient—and he could almost see, almost, the remains of the patterns that had once been carefully planted in. Doubtless the fragile plants, the ones that had needed babying, were dead by now—and the annuals, the bulbs that needed replanting each spring (although there were crocus shoots starting to poke through the ground, which made no sense, because all the bushes and the leafy plants all had their foliage, so why were they only starting to emerge now?) had been replaced by hardier plants, volunteers and weeds.

That thorny vine was going through everything. —No. It wasn't a weed. It was roses. White roses. He could see the first buds, just starting to crack open, ahead of him. And then full blossoms, further on. Even though it was too cold out for roses. Even though the crocus hadn't even started to bloom yet. Duo shivered.

He remembered this garden. He glanced around nervously, but didn't see any verain, this time. Verain, or verbena, Quatre called it—for sorcery. And for madness. It gave you power, but it took more than it gave, always. It left anyone gifted powerless and crazy, and if you knew how to handle it—the story went—even the ungifted could find power. Then it drove them crazier.

The ground was drifted with petals, and his footsteps left bruises against the white. Despite that, he couldn't see any dying roses. There were buds, and roses fully blown, and roses at every stage in-between, but no roses past their prime—no roses to leave dropped petals at all. And the gardens were still untended, so nobody could have cut the dying roses away...

White roses, every single one of them. Not for love, but for forever. Red roses, pink, yellow, orange, cream, peach, mauve, fuchsia, and all the mixed colors, even green roses—they were for love. Different types of love, and they could have different nuances, but still—love.

Except for white roses. Even if people didn't always know that. People assumed it meant eternal love, but they were wrong...a white rose just meant eternity.

Duo was kind of unsettled.

There was a courtyard up ahead, still flanked with those yews. Still filled with white roses. Duo hurried up a little, because he was unsettled, yeah, but he wasn't going to let that stop him, oh no. And he was still curious.

Aaand here was the verain, all in and around the roses. Its sweet scent, like lemon if it was razor-sharp, an edge that was aromatic, indescribable, filled the air.

There was no fountain in the center of courtyard, not even a statue set into the palm. Not even water lilies. It was just a smooth pond, unexceptional—

—except that it was frozen solid.

Duo moved forward, staring at the pond in fascination. The ice was smooth, flawless and hard. It didn't reflect the branches of the trees above the garden—there were four big dogwoods, one in each corner of the garden—or anything else, not even the sun in the sky up above, or the clouds, but it did show Duo's reflection. He looked down, fascinated—what was causing that?

A sudden voice, deep and surprised, made him startle. “Duo?”

“Heero!”

“What...what are you doing here?”

Duo wasn't expecting the honest surprise in Heero's voice. It made him sound younger.

“I was going for a run and I just—found this place? Where are we?”

There was a pause. “This is part of the curse,” Heero said slowly. “This is the—the Mirror, that's what the servants named it. It's always frozen. And if you...if you think hard enough, it shows you what you want to see. I've...seen my companions of the curse, after they've left. A lot. One girl tried to find me and cried when she didn't. One man tried to kill himself when nobody believed him, and then was institutionalized. A woman very early on tried to lead a mob back to find me.”

Duo stepped forward without even thinking, to lay a hand against Heero's forearm, wanting to comfort him. It took him a minute to remember that the contact might not be appreciated, but by then—by then, Heero was drawing a little closer to Duo, and then—somehow—they ended up hugging, and Duo cursed the people who'd come before him, silently and then cursed the witch who'd left the curse for being so cruel as to give him this, out loud but not offering an explanation for the obscenities.

The hug ended awkwardly, both Duo and Heero unsure what to do with themselves and each other. Duo wanted, somewhat fiercely, to try and kiss the other man. But he didn't. It would be...

Something. But hell. He could think about things later. Right now, he wanted to satisfy his curiosity when it came to the pond. Mirror. Magicked thingy.

“So—it shows what's happening out in the real world?”

“If you think about it hard enough. It should work for you, too. I think. I—I believe it worked for the servants, while they were alive. It works for Wufei. He used it for a while, at the very beginning. Looking at his clan. ...It's better not to.”

“I don't have anyone to look at,” Duo said honestly. “I don't care enough about that bastard Ellyaugh, for example. And everyone else...” Everyone else had died in the plague. Maius, July, Emily, Sarali, Tob, Derry, Jam, Jerry short for Jerrisan, Jilli, Artun. His family. And his mother had died long before that. Duo shivered, trying to shake off the names that still haunted him.

And he was staring blankly at the pond. Magic thing. The Mirror. His eyes focused, and he stared, uncomprehending, at the image on the frozen surface for a long, almost endless moment.

“Who is that, then?” asked Heero, sounding both cautious and questioning.

“I don't know—no.” Duo's breath caught in his chest. “No, no, no—no—that's Alis. All grown up, but it's—it has to be her. I remember that scar. And it's—but she died. Gods above, she died, I was there with her—it was when we were all dying, except me, when things were worst—she should be dead. She must have—how did she live? Oh God. I don't—I didn't—”

“Who is she? Alis?”

“She was—my sister. Not by blood, but we were all—us street rats. Families had better chances than you did alone, and we were all close. That's Alis. She was rude and violent, but she liked—she was close to Emily. They'd been a team, picking pockets, long before they'd joined up with us. She like me, too. All of us. We were a family after all.”

“...You didn't know she was alive?”

“I...I thought they all died, during the Plague. I...I could have sworn...” Duo took a step back, away from the pond. Alis was making cheese, pushing a hanging churn each time she passed the small room, laughing over her shoulder—silently, they couldn't hear anything—at someone outside the tiny dairy.

Heero was there behind him, a hand against his back to support him. Duo leaned against him gratefully.

“I didn't know,” he said, again, stricken. Years-old guilt came flooding back.

oOo

Duo was very quiet at dinner that night, although he attempted to hide it. Heero was quieter.

After a while they both gave up. When Duo stood to go, Heero asked his question.

“Duo. Will you marry me?”

“No, Heero.”

“...You should go.”

Duo turned around to look at the lord, but he was turned away from Duo already, facing the wall. His posture was set, firm, and hurting. He wasn't talking about leaving from dinner.

“But the curse...?”

“You should go. You're not going to break it. Nobody will. The sorceress who cursed me knew that, damn her—it's nothing. I'm not asking it of you. You should go. I might...I can find where the girl lives. Your sister. Alis? It's...you should go. I won't hold you.”

Duo wrapped him up in a silent hug from behind. Heero stiffened momentarily, then relaxed a little. He did not move to return the gesture.

“I'll find Quatre and Trowa,” Heero said quietly, after one long minute, two. “They won't be able to leave without you. This is their last chance.”

“Thank you,” Duo whispered, holding Heero a little tighter for a brief moment, then releasing him. “Thank you.”

“You owe me nothing,” Heero said, numbly.

oOo

They left the next morning. Duo had barely slept. He looked torn as he stood by his horse, the beast looking grumpy at finally being used.

Quatre was hiding worry, barely. Trowa was as inscrutable as always. Wufei was just as blank-faced, but considerably more haughty. Haughty-looking, at least; Duo thought he was hiding sorrow, too, and a good measure of concern.

Heero looked—something. It was hard to tell, with his face. He sounded pained. It had to be hard for him, Duo thought, and he felt a slight pang of guilt.

He didn't know what else to do, though. He needed to go. Alis...he'd never imagined that anyone would still be alive. And it looked like she'd done well for herself...

And at least Quatre and Trowa would be let free, too. Duo knew that the blond-haired boy had been fretting about his family. Not only because he missed them, and knew that they missed him, but because of power dynamics within the Winner family. He was the only heir, after all. That made him important. And he'd heard rumors about all those daughters...namely, which ones of them had suitable sons.

So they'd be set free. They weren't supposed to have been involved in the whole thing at all. So that was good. He wouldn't be leaving any loose ends behind him. He'd—he'd leave things the way they were, at least.

He was going to miss Heero.

The good-byes were curt and largely unemotional, with Quatre's farewells being the exception.

And then the three of them took their leave.

Duo's heart hurt, so he didn't look back.

oOo

Heero was numb. And cold. He curled up a little tighter, and tried to wish the world away. Tried not to think. Tried to accept the obvious—the curse wasn't going to be ended. He was not going to go free. It would unravel, eventually, from one end or the other—maybe he would die first, maybe people would stop showing up first—and then that would be it, no matter which one, he'd die. He was ready.

And Duo. If Duo wasn't the one to break the curse, then—then no one was. Heero had known that, though. Known that no one was going to break the spell. Even though Duo had been there longer than any of the others, even though they'd been—been close, even if they'd just been friends, he wasn't the one meant to complete the spell. Or he was, but Heero wasn't going to force him to stay. Or even—

Duo wouldn't have thought to have gone, if Heero hadn't said anything. And five hundred years ago, or four hundred, or one hundred—Heero wouldn't have said a word. It wasn't doing anything wrong, technically, to not say that Duo could leave, especially since there were such specific conditions that needed to be met for it to happen. And it would benefit him, to have the curse lifted, which would even make Duo happy.

...But it would be wrong.

That was the crux of things. Even if Duo didn't know, it would—it would be hurting him. Heero respected him. And he deserved to know. He deserved to find his, his family. They so clearly meant so much to him, or had. The plague...

Heero wondered how it had happened, then thought of Duo again. Of what he would do, now that he was free again, both from Ellyaugh's slave pens and from Heero's castle and its gilded rooms. He'd find something. He had a determination to survive—and he was smart, strong, willing to work. Fiercely intelligent, in unexpected ways—he wasn't educated, but he could think.

The thought of him made Heero curl up closer around himself. His limbs felt like blocks of ice. There was frost, crackling in his fur, and his breath misted in the air. Everything was so cold.

oOo

Heero had given him instructions on where, approximately, Alis was, so Duo found her without much trouble. He'd always had a knack for hunting things down—not that he'd had the chance to practice, recently. Especially since Heero seemed immune. Which was just like him—damned good at disappearing, despite his size and what he looked like. You wouldn't think that hundreds of pounds of muscle and fur wearing nothing but breeches would disappear in a castle filled with crystal, embroidery, fine paintings, precious woods and marble, but he did. It never failed to amuse Duo, actually, and sometimes he could even coax a laugh out of Heero about it—

And Heero had a lovely laugh. It's memory made something painful pull tight in Duo, but he ignored it. And kept on walking. He'd ditched the horse first thing, once he'd reached the city—there was no better way to attract attention than to look like you had money, especially when you had no reason to. He'd sold off his clothes, too—even the plainest things he'd been able to wrangle out of his damned closet were clearly well made and expensive, and several centuries out of fashion, to boot.

It was a good part of town he was in. He was impressed—not a wealthy district, but a safe one, where there were lots of good, plain folk—merchants who'd been moderately successful, people who'd had a business they'd built up from the ground do well. Nobody with real money, which would just attract more trouble anyway, but people with enough to get by comfortably and then some.

Quite a step up from begging in the street, and pick-pocketing.

Duo froze when he saw her. Alis. It was definitely her—she still moved the same, and it was—it was just like in the Mirror. She was all grown up but still the same girl—he could see her, like the ghost of the Alis he'd known had been transposed over the face of a stranger. Eerily familiar but not right at all, almost.

He knew she'd seen him, too, when she dropped the plate of cheeses she'd been carrying, shock written large on her face, and threw herself at him.

Duo caught her and hugged her close as tears prickled in his eyes, and he hid them in the fabric of her dress, listening at her babble—he was babbling himself.

They'd drawn an audience, but Alis snapped at them, voice loud and not seriously angry, and they dispersed, subtly.

“We should go somewhere quiet,” he said.

“I know a good alley,” she said, bright and unashamed even dressed nice in proper clothes, with a milkmaid's sign stamped proudly on her sleeves and hat and a dairymaid's sign on her starched white apron.

Duo laughed. Some things didn't change, and he was happy for them. Alis smiled back at him, wicked.

She did know a good alley, a fair ways away from her home district—which made sense. There were crates to sit on, and nobody to eavesdrop. They settled in, made themselves comfortable—laughed a little bit more about the expression an urchin had pulled when Alis had pinched his hand when he tried to go for her purse.

And then it went silent.

“What happened?” Duo asked at last, meaning everything.

“I...I don't remember well,” Alis said, looking away. “Things were bad, you remember? I remember! A little. Most of it. You—you got scary, at the last. Lilting to the sides, y'know? I understand, don't worry, Duo—what with so many dyin' and all the littlest and everythin'. You weren't right, and that's to be expected. It's just natural, right, and it happens—I weren't much better neither, you know.”

“I remember,” Duo sighed, twisting a thick loop of braid around one hand. He didn't remember going sideways at all—not like she was saying...

“So I cut when I got a chance. It were a lady—you know, high-up and proper'n all.”

“I'm guess she don't know you talk so, now-a-days?” Duo said to her, street accent mockingly thick and one brow arched expressively. Alis stuck her tongue out, not at all like the young lady she'd become, then continued, clearly ignoring him. Duo understood: it was nice to talk the way you'd grown up, even when it had long since faded from how you spoke every day.

“And the lady, I knew it were my chance—I wanted to go for you others, but there weren't time—she was there for some urchin, yeah, and didn't care much which, just so's long as she got one to show round—and I was a pretty thing, so I knew I got a chance. And the bruising was just beginning, and I knew...we all knew...

“But I'd heard that the ones what had money had found a cure, if you paid for it, so I went for it—and she done picked me, right? I got healing and I did my tricks for a while, you know, curtsied for her ladyfriends and was sweet and ate all dainty, and then I went off, and I dunno what happened to her. But I got better, and after, I went to look, but our place were all cleart out—the Rough Street group got it. I didn't care enough to fight it, so I left. I got work, I do cheese and butter, and then sell it—the lads like a pretty face, and I like it, yeah.” She smiled, wry. “Aren't all good, but there's nights in the streets to fix what civilizing I had, and I find I like my dinners regular-like.”

“Me too,” Duo said, matching her smile and her accent. “I know, us rats—we need us some trouble now'n'again, mm?”

“And what 'bout you?”

“Me? Ohh, I got taken in for slaving. It's the eyes, right? It was a bastard to get done, but I slipped in the end.”

“You were always good at it. Slip'riest of us all.”

“...I would've sworn you died. Sworn on my mother, but she dead too.”

“You sure your mother's dead and done? I never went, neither. Just disappeared. You guessed, right?

“No, no guessing—I remember, Alis, remember taking you to burn in the piles—”

“Wasn't me, obviously so. Right, Duo, you have gone sideways—crazy!”

“No more than you, bitingest Alis of us all—they don't call you that now, I'd guess.”

“You'd be surprised what the boys say 'bout me.” Alis smiled slyly, and Duo laughed out loud.

“You're a threat, Miss Alissindrine,” he said. “I'd pick fighting monsters over you!” That made his heart turn over painfully—he hadn't thought of Heero until after the words had been said. And then it was too late.

“I thought you died,” Duo repeated again, a few silent moments later. “You and all the others. Maius, July, Sarali, Artun, Jerry—”

“Not all,” Alis said, brow crinkled with worry. “Jerry didn't die of Plague. He went down when the Rooks went after our dinner and he didn't know it was time to quit.”

“Oh,” Duo said carefully.

“...You might not remember clear,” offered Alis. “After all, you were coming down sick then too.”

“What?” Duo said, clearly shocked—he whipped around to face Alis, intense.

“Towards the end. You come down with the bruises, I seen it start, 'fore I left—on your hands. All purple-like, and yellowy-green. You know. I seen it.”

Duo was silent.

“What? Don't remember?”

“...I don't.”

oOo

Duo knew he'd never gotten the Plague. He knew. But...his hands...what he'd heard...

oOo

Alis had found a good life. Duo had found an out-of-the-way corner and scraped himself up a bed. He'd worry about getting more money, finding a way to live, later on—there were always opportunities, he told himself. He didn't need to worry about starving, about falling to the worst side of the streets. Alis had managed to pull herself out, after all. And during the Plague.

...He missed Heero. Missed him fiercely. He missed Quatre, and would miss him more later on, when his absence made itself known, but mostly—right now he missed Heero. He missed Wufei and Trowa, but it wasn't—like that.

Duo bit his lip, hard. Heero had no interest in him like that. He was asking out of duty. They were friends, and that was good. And he didn't—he wasn't—

He wasn't going to think about this. Instead, he was going to eat some of the food he had brought with himself, from the castle. Heero had been—worried about him doing well. Duo had had to be pretty insistent about what he was and wasn't willing to take, and about what simply wasn't reasonable at all. Wufei had then gone on to glower at him and mutter obscenities while he packed Duo, Quatre and Trowa all big lunches, and then an extra packet of food for Duo, which he had presented to him with a death glare that just dared him to say anything.

Duo being Duo, he had promptly made a laughing comment—something about mother ducks and manly honor—and then taken off, because he was stupid enough to say that sort of thing, but not stupid enough to let Wufei catch him after he had.

...Duo missed Wufei too. And Heero. It...hurt.

But he'd found Alis. One of his family, the family that meant most. The family that he'd thought was dead.

...He'd been wrong. But he remembered Alis dying. And she—he hadn't had the plague, ever. Not even the beginning symptoms. He'd been one of the very few luckiest ones—by the time it had burned itself out, the Plague had sickened almost everyone, very literally. He was the luckiest because he hadn't gotten sick at all—the simply lucky had gotten it early on and recovered; there had been a resurgence, later on. For two weeks, a month, it had almost looked like the plague was over, back when it was simply catastrophic; then it had come back, even deadlier, and everyone who hadn't gotten it before had gotten it then.

Except for the very few. Including Duo.

But that wasn't what Alis remembered...

She remembered him with the plague. She remembered him with bruises on his hand. And she remembered—she said Jerry hadn't died of plague. Little Jerrisan, who had a name bigger than he was. But it couldn't have been a fight with a rival group of street urchins, because Duo remembered taking him to be burned, like he had most of the other kids. He remembered taking Alis, too.

Alis, who was still alive. Not dead of plague at all, and not burned up to ashes to keep the disease from spreading. But Duo remembered it, perfectly, like he did almost all of his life—even when he'd been far too young, he remembered. He couldn't have been more than two, three, when his mother had started teaching him the flowers—and she'd been dead not too many years after that. He could see it happening in his hands, could remember the feel of the cold, bruised and veined flesh of Jerry, Alis, all of the others, against his hands—the unique, sick feel of the swollen lines of blood and pus, mixed, that sometimes burst when you pulled too hard on a dead child's limbs, trying to move the corpse a little further away from where you and all the others slept—he remembered, he was never, never going to be able to forget.

The smell had been worst part. Even worse than the feel, because you could try to forget that, but the smell was everywhere, it wasn't just your memory—the streets smelled of it, the alleys were worse, and it was so strong in most of the houses that it had made Duo retch. And it mixed with the smell that came off of the burning corpses, which also made a constant rain of ash fall down on the city, like snow reversed.

...But enough about that. Living in the past didn't do anyone any good.

Duo turned back to the remains of his lunch, and busied himself pulling out some bread, cured meat, a piece of fruit—he was careful that there was no one to observe him while he was at it. He wanted the chance to eat his dinner unmolested, after all.

He pricked his finger on something sharp as he rooted through the bag, and he yelped, sticking the bleeding digit into his mouth to suck on it—whatever it was had drawn blood, damn it. And he didn't think Wufei was stupid enough to stick an unsecured knife into a bag.

More gingerly, this time, Duo put his hand back into the bag, and pulled out a rose.

He looked at it, perplexed. Wufei was far more human than he gave the impression of being—in a totally different way from Heero, of course; Wufei was just an asshole—but Duo really really didn't think that he was the sort to send roses in a guy's lunch. The brunet eyed the rose more closely, holding it gently by the stem, careful to avoid the wickedly hooked thorns—one was stained almost black with his blood, but they were all tipped with red, just a quirk of the plant's coloring. It was odd, though—the rose itself was very pale. Was it—white? In fact, it looked like the white roses that grew around the frozen Mirror...

White roses. For forever.

Duo paused. Forever...it was a very long time. He flipped the rose in his fingers, then paused as it sparkled, unexpectedly, with the faint glitter of magic. And again.

...Not much magic, though. The faint glimmer of ice-white flecks was very faint indeed. Just enough to cast a faint illusion, or too—

Struck with a thought, Duo realized that the rose had been in his bag all day, and no doubt greatly abused in the process. But the rose was still perfect. Curious, he tried to tug out a petal, and found it impossible; he tried to crease it, bruise it, snap the stem, but it stayed the way it had been—perfect, pristine, a full-blown rose that could have been made of porcelain except that it was alive, and it was preserved, spelled to persist and to last. Duo had run across the magic before, but never seen it applied to something so, so trivial—

With a shrug, he put the matter aside and stuffed the rose back inside the bag. There was no reason to get rid of it—and some part of his heart resisted, with an almost frightening insistence, throwing away any of his last, tenuous links to Heero. And to his time away from the world, locked up in a spelled castle.

There was still a chance he'd run into Trowa again, which helped, minutely. There was a chance that they moved in the same circles, or at least circles that were, potentially, at the same (low) altitude. Although he was definitely friends with Quatre, which might mean that he'd moved up in the world. Considerably.

...He'd been offered help by the Winner heir, too, and he'd turned him down point-blank; Quatre had had the grace to not be too offended. So there was that. Duo had no idea what Trowa had decided...and he could be something of an enigma.

He really really missed Heero.

Duo purposefully turned his mind away from—him.

What was he going to do? It wasn't like he had tons of (legal) marketable skills. He was in good physical shape—there was always manual labor, assuming that he could find something that would keep him interested. Or interested enough, at least—he tended to get edgy when he got bored, something years in a slave pen hadn't managed to cure him of. And employers tended not to like his version of 'edgy.' Because Duo was, and always had been, very good at finding something to amuse himself with.

...And his eyes were a liability. He looked like he could work magic: purple eyes? He had to have the gift, the knack. And he had, once—but he'd burned himself out in the plague. Not a scrap of magic in him, anymore—but nobody else knew that. And magic drew trouble. Everybody knew that. Especially after the plague—and Duo understood.

He wouldn't want to fire someone who had the gift, for example. And there was no good reason why anyone—anyone—gifted would be forced into working with their hands for a living, unless they were looking for trouble, or something was wrong.

And there were too many people fighting for too few jobs.

Duo could always go back to pickpocketing, although he didn't want to. Maybe Quatre would have a job for him—but that was still a little too much like taking handouts, and he had far too much pride for that, not that he thought that Quatre wouldn't give him a real job. He could probably get work if he talked to Alis, who would have connections around the neighborhood, at least, although that was likely to be boring work, too.

Beggars can't be choosers, his mother told him, the memory nothing but her voice, now. And the smell of her: lavender, and something clean—

—or sharp, like ice, oncoming winter—

It was funny how memory worked, how he could remember that voice, that smell, so clearly—one minute, caught perfectly—but have no image to match it. He had other memories of his mother's face, her body, but that one was just—gone.

Maybe the scavenging market had improved since he'd been imprisoned. That was a chance, maybe even a good one—although there was no real reason to think so, since things were being rebuilt again.

—No, Quatre wasn't going to be able to offer him a job. He was—nobody knew he was gifted, because he could hide it but also because it was considered wrong to the Maaens. He couldn't hire anyone who was his opposite, looking gifted but not. Which was Duo.

Duo didn't belong in this world anymore. He'd been imprisoned too long, he was too alone, too lost—the rest of the world had rebuilt, while he'd been rotting in a slaver's cell. And then he'd been in Heero's world, where everything was—different.

He had no way to get a job, no way to move on, nothing to build with or on.

And something felt wrong. Maybe it was just the aftereffects of his unsettling conversation with Alis, but—no. That wasn't it. Something was off. Wrong, unutterably, implacably so.

He didn't know what, but he was worried. And he couldn't keep Heero out of his head. Duo fumbled the rose out of his pack again, being careful with his fingers this time, so that he only barely pricked one of them.

It looked older, more blowzy and open than it had this morning, when it had looked fully blown already.

But it had been spelled. That was crazy, to think it had changed. It was just the light, no doubt.

Something was wrong. Duo stared at his hands, the shadow of the rose cast across them, and could almost see the dark as discoloration, a bruise, stippling his palm, his knuckles, heavy and deadly.

--End chapter 12--