Arc III, Chapter 57

The days had bled together. I knew what we were doing, why we were doing it, and more importantly, how it had to be done - but nearly all of my senses had been dulled to vague pinpricks of awareness. If there was pain, it was smothered; if there was heartache, it was swallowed; if there was desperation, it was ignored. Every appendage and limb felt cold down to the marrow, and my body didn't really feel like it was completely mine anymore.

I think that's what shocks me when I finally see Heero again: the awareness of who I am.

I didn't like the way he grabbed Hilde, but I could tell by how she was mouthing off to him that the rough treatment didn't bother her. Hilde had weird vendettas against all sorts of people, so her dislike was nothing surprising. As soon as we returned to the estate, she'd been the only one in the right state of mind to deal with Otto's corpse, given how Meilan was keeping an eye on me and the Duchess Guards– well.

The litany that had pulled me through the hoursdaysweek of travel, of return, of alarm - it faded away as soon as I saw him. I had been attuned to every beating heart within the estate, as desperate as I was to keep every one, that it had not occurred to me until I saw Heero that I didn't have to do it alone. That I didn't want to do it alone.

That I didn't want to be alone.

Heero's hands were hot on my face. It was one of those small changes that I wondered at through the fuzz my mind had been in lately: why was everyone else so warm? Hilde said my body heat was now naturally cooler than others - herself being the exception, for an obvious reason - but Heero's skin felt pleasantly warm as he cupped my face.

Still, it stung a bit to have him look at me and the first thing to come out his mouth be "no."

...Geez, I even went ahead and lost all my memories for him, but he was still so fucking rude! I had to swallow down the urge to smack his hand away from my face; now that I was looking at him, he looked like he needed a good night's sleep and probably some one-on-one counseling with Quatre, because even his usually stoic expression was being quickly eclipsed by panic.

"I wanted to say 'welcome home' but you're making this pretty awkward, Heero," I told him frankly.

Heero froze, hands still on my face, though his expression had stilled to that in-between state. I could hear Meilan choke back a laugh but didn't acknowledge it; we were still weird around each other. Every time I looked at her, I remembered how I reached out to her with blood-slick hands; every time she looked at me, she must be seeing something much worse.

"...Duo?" Heero croaked out. He sounded close to the verge of tears, which was a completely new tone from him.

I placed my hands over his, gently pulling his hands away from my face and back down. I threaded my fingers between his own, since I think that's what he was looking for from me right now: the reassurance that I was still there. There was something about that twisting darkness that lived under my skin that threatened to overtake me even now, because it would be so much easier to give in to the cold acceptance.

I could understand his need for assurance, as this was a new thing for me too; I rubbed my thumbs over the backs of his hands in comfort. Still - things needed to be said. "Heero, you can't just come back and start choking Hilde."

Heero blinked down at me, not really seeming to understand.

"Just because she looks dead on her feet doesn't mean she's actually dead, nor that I want her that way," I continued patiently. Hilde was both a comfort and concern, the full extent of which was known only by very few. Whichever one she decided to pan out to be was a problem meant to be ignored for now, however, since I needed her more than ever.

Now that Heero and the others were back, it would be easy to divvy up the work around the estate. We'd managed to increase patrols and security around the provincial capital and the manor, but recent changes had necessitated increased secrecy around certain aspects of our internal affairs. Estate servants who couldn't follow the stricter regulations were redistributed to other areas, and the ones kept to the manor walked about with wary but determined eyes.

Melissa was a blessing at this time; she'd taken control of the servants alongside Jiroh, ferreting out the ones prone to gossiping and keeping a mindful eye on Coralina and Kaori. I appreciated her all the more now, especially with her help with Coralina, who had yet to speak a word to anyone since the fight with Otto's men.

I don't know if it's fear or something else that keeps her quiet, but she attends me just the same, only her eyes were now averted as if she couldn't quite will herself to really look me in the face. I attempted to give her time off but she only kept coming back to work, a silent refusal to comply. I eventually just let her, making sure that when she was off, Frederick was off as well so that he could take her down to the market or otherwise occupy her attention.

The Duchess Guards - if they could even be called that anymore - worked with Commander Broden to secure the estate, and also the province at large. Mikhail had taken the lead on the collaboration, delegating tasks to the other members where they best fit, as Simon was still recovering from the loss of his left eye. Takeo and Berion finally managed to cooperate long enough to organize training for the soldiers stationed nearby, helped by Mifune when she could be spared.

"I need to speak with you," I stated. I wasn't even sure who I was directing it to: Heero, whose hands still clutched at me like he was too afraid to let go - or Relena, who stared back at me with a grim expectancy?

I attempted to let go of Heero's hands and turn around to lead the way back to his office, reminiscent of his own return just earlier this year, but Heero refused to release me. Perhaps he thought if we didn't move, if we just stayed in this moment, the shadows would drain from my eyes and everything would return to that time he first returned home.

Over Heero's shoulder, Asahi smiled from the shadows that only I could see.

Even now, the loss ached sharp and wept bitterly.

If I thought about it too long, then tar-like fury seeped up into my throat. With that anger came the horror, though, at what happened afterward: regret and devastation so thick that even now, I could not bring myself to look any of my guards in the eye. Asahi would have laughed it off, perhaps, but it didn't matter what Asahi would have done because he was dead.

There was no returning to that moment of homecoming in spring.

I jerked my hands out of Heero's hold. He may have held on even then, but the living would always recoil at the first touch of death; Deathscythe knew this best, winding into the shadows that lived in the crooks and crannies of my physical being. From between the gaps of my fingers, it reached out - dislodging Heero's hold and leaving the stinging bite of cold against his skin.

"We'll talk in your office," I decided firmly, uncaring for the way my shadow spilled amorphous across the floor. Heero didn't seem to notice, his expression stuck even as his hands trembled, but the others did: both Quatre and Trowa were staring down at it with careful, hawk-like eyes, and Wufei had one hand on the hilt of his sword.

Meilan's voice came out, cutting and fiery: "The Duchess has regained all of his memories."

Heero inhaled sharply.

I turned and started to walk away. No one stopped me, and for a moment, no one followed - until I heard light steps begin to follow me. I didn't need to look back to know it was Relena, Deathscythe aware of any living existence near me for the simple reason of always wanting to take it.

Her presence here was a surprise, but not too much of one. This was not because of the novel that foretold a future that we'd dashed across the ground, taking Asahi, Sayaka, and Lyle with it; nor was it because of some plot by the Crown Prince, who was likely fearing the worst now that his beloved friend had yet to return.

Relena, the dearest and only friend I'd ever been allowed to keep, had designs of her own.

The others had begun to follow us. Heero was moving faster, passing Relena in order to keep pace with my steady stride, but wisely thought better of trying to offer me his arm in escort. Catalonia looped her arm with Relena's, unbothered with the tense atmosphere, smile wide and eyes curious as she watched my shadow flicker across the tiles, independent of the way I moved.

"...You look unwell," Relena said.

I felt my lips tick upwards at the corner. It was a familiar greeting, one she'd used when she was first ushered behind the tall walls and closed doors of the Maxwell estate. When we'd met in that dead garden in the early fall, when I'd been put back together enough to greet an outsider and examined to see if I could pass as something resembling normal - those had been her first childish words to me.

"Then I am human yet," I replied lightly. If I had looked well, then surely that would mean G's lessons had finally leeched the last bit of humanity from me. Still, "Don't test me right now, 'Lena. I am not in the mood."

Word had long spread by the time we made it to Heero's office. Both Mikhail and Mifune waited by the doors, bowed low out of courtesy, and I swallowed the urge to put them back at ease. Surely anything I would say or do would only set them further on edge; better to avoid acknowledging them at all, so that I did not draw back up unpleasant memories.

Heero's office had been left relatively untouched, except for the few maps and other resource documents that Broden had pulled to bring over to my study. I couldn't bring myself to take a seat in the sitting area as I might have before, instead moving to stand before Heero's desk and refusing to turn around as the others filed in.

Heero didn't move to sit behind the desk as I had wanted him to, but then again, when has he ever done what I'd wanted? He stepped up beside me and paused for a long moment, but when I refused to look at him, he moved forward to stand in front of me instead, turning his back to the desk and blocking it from my view.

The only ones who bothered to sit down were Meilan and Catalonia, the former more out of spite of the atmosphere. Relena remained standing, though set herself beside where Catalonia sat, whereas Quatre and the others were spaced evenly apart as if to give themselves room to spring into action.

Again, I ignored this. The reaction was expected - just as they could sense what lurked beneath my skin, I could sense what lay under theirs. At least these secrets would be out in the open now, a lanced boil to drain out the way we had rotted. It was better to handle this now while we were all present, and before they saw what I was keeping in the basement.

"What happened?" Heero rasped out.

That would naturally be the first question, and also the most difficult to answer. Too many things happened, all at once and slowly over time; the beginning was unclear, the middle too horrible to articulate, and the end result was the hollow way Heero stared at my unblemished neck.

Should I tell them about how Otto had attacked us on our way home in a plan of the Crown Prince's design? How that plan would have worked, had it not been for the spider's web of secrets that my entire family kept? How the plan had failed and I'd cut his head from his neck, and now his corpse waited for further mutilation in the basement under our feet?

Or should I tell them about how Asahi had been killed, cleaved in two from shoulder to sternum? About how Sayaka had taken too many blows to the face, so that we could only identify her after I'd called to her ghost? About how Lyle had thrown himself bodily between four fully-trained knights fed off scant drops of Libra's power and Daigo, and how they'd disemboweled my gentlest knight before I'd had Otto's corpse cut them down?

Or maybe I should start from the beginning, from Solo's butterfly collection and my dead nanny, from the torture in the basement and the whisper of the ghosts? I could tell them about Relena's sweet, poisonous convictions, or about Hilde's obsessive endurance; I could tell them about how Solo collared me with an heirloom that had only ever been used to kill, or about the deal I'd made in the greenhouse that had taken so much from me and yet had given me more than I'd ever hoped.

"The Crown Prince wants me dead," I said.

If he were a lesser man, Heero would have startled; instead, his eyes moved up from my neck to meet my gaze. Interestingly enough, however, Relena was the one who flinched - taking a step toward me with wide eyes. The others made no movement, unnaturally still and tense with expectation.

Catalonia was the one who finally asked, "Why?"

I felt my lips stretch into an unkind smile; Heero's gaze turned to stone in kind. "I don't know," I answered truthfully. "I know I'm annoying, but wanting to kill me for it seems a bit unfair."

"Don't joke," Wufei bit out.

I didn't explain how it felt like if I didn't laugh, then I would just break down and cry. Every day now felt like I was balancing precariously on the edge of a blade, and sometimes I wished that the servants or knights around me would realize I was much too dangerous to leave alive. Wasn't it because of me that Asahi, Sayaka, and Lyle died? Wasn't it because of me that Coralina refused to speak again, that Simon lost his eye, that Daigo woke up screaming from nightmares?

I didn't respond - I couldn't.

Asahi is dead, I wanted to say. Sayaka and Lyle too. But I can call out to them even now, pull their ghosts from their path and speak to them. They will answer me, as they had before, but it will not be as they had been alive - because ghosts can answer, but they do not feel. They exist as impressions of who had been, a faint memory given form and presence that only I could see.

They are dead, but I can still see them, I wanted to say. I want to see them so badly, I want to pin them in place so that they can never leave me - but I can't, can I? Because I love them. They are dead but I love them and they have already left me–

"Duo!"

Heero's voice ripped me out of the dark turn of my thoughts, but that darkness had leaked out: the daylight leaked skim through the window as if eclipsed by an unseen moon, and the air had chilled to such a degree that for a moment I could see our breaths as fog. Heero's hands burned with warmth from where he grabbed me by the arms, and I wondered why his burned hot when the thing inside me turned my skin so cold.

"I didn't mean to," The words fell from my lips automatically. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, I'm sorry, I'm sorry–"

Heero made a noise I couldn't identify - a cross between a gasp and a sob? - and then crushed me against his chest. One arm wrapped around my back like a vice, hand pressed into my hip, the other cradling the back of my head. I felt his heartbeat like a drum, his warm skin like a burn; he was alive.

Was I?

I tucked myself into Heero's hold. He's alive, and I think I am too - so his touch is fine. He reached out to me first, he hugged me first, which meant he wasn't scared of me. He was a warm, welcoming furnace, a blaze that I could fall into because surely Heero was the only thing in this world that would never hurt me...

"They're just shadows, Wufei!" Meilan snarled. From within Heero's tight grasp, I could see now that she'd jumped up from her previous sitting position - or maybe she had been jerked up by her husband, who had one hand wrapped around her wrist like he was going to pull her out of the room. "Are you afraid of the dark too?!"

Wufei met her words with equal heat. "Those are not just shadows, I can sense– that thing in them!"

"You would see more than just dancing shadows if it were dangerous!"

"Woman–"

"I am the one who saw them fight! Who saw them kill! I know better than you what Deathscythe is capable of!" Meilan hissed, pulling her arm free and then turning to storm over to where Heero still held me in his arms. "And you! You will stop hiding and sulking by yourself!"

I flinched.

"As soon as we came back, you refused to speak with anyone if it was not about business! You have avoided me, you have avoided your guards - and you have even avoided Hilde Schbeiker! Do you intend to mourn alone?!"

Her voice cracked on the last sentence.

Meilan is braver than me. She is kinder than me too.

Proud, straight-forward Meilan Long - who crawled towards me with a broken leg and several ribs that day in the forest, who gently pulled me away from Asahi's cooling body, who fearlessly demanded that I allow the dead to rest once all of the threats had been dealt with.

"Meilan," I choked out.

Meilan's spine was straight, her will iron. There was a reason Nataku had chosen her bloodline, why she could host even that small fragment now; Meilan would step up whenever she was called upon, unflinching and with eyes ever facing forward.

"We were attacked on the road," she began steadily. She would speak for me, for this moment of weakness where I could not make the words leave my dry throat. I closed my eyes, felt the way Deathscythe brushed down my spine and settled back into my bones. "Otto and his men outnumbered us, and they attacked first."

Heero's arms were tense around me at the name. Klementz Otto - my false paramour, who lied to me and I lied to in turn; I pulled at the ghosts who haunted his steps and let them whisper the truths of the Crown into my ears.

"We fought, but he..." Meilan faltered, eyes flicking to Relena. But I had not chased her out, and she had come following at Heero's heels - that was all the assurance Meilan needed to continue. "Otto was not normal. He also had something in him."

Her eyes fell on me. "The Duchess called it Libra."

Agitation flashed across the faces of the others. I wasn't sure if they would know the name as surely as I did when I first saw it, or if they would only sense something Other the way Hilde and Meilan had been able to do. When it had broken Meilan under its strength, when it had pierced Hilde through her soft-bellied center - even then, they had not known its name.

"The Duchess killed Otto, and then the rest of his remaining men," Meilan reported. Heero did not startle, did not flinch - but I felt Wing sear across his veins. "Sayaka, Asahi, and Lyle died in combat. We dealt with the bodies and rushed home."

She did not mention how I had reanimated every man Otto had cut down at my order, how I had turned them against each other until every last surviving member of Otto's force no longer drew breath. She didn't mention how I didn't let them stop, how I made their corpses cut and slash and gut and cut and slash and gut– until they became unable to do more than twitch uselessly, flesh and bone and sinew scattered across the ground.

She didn't mention how I hadn't been thinking straight, how I could feel Deathsythe in my throat and on my hands and in my brain. She didn't say how when I tried to call out to Sayaka, to Lyle, to Asahi - how their bodies moved, how they jumped up at my command, stringless puppets with glazed, unseeing eyes.

She didn't mention how that broke something in me that had never quite healed.

Heero's hand at the back of my head held me just a little tighter, but then started slowly stroking through the strands of my hair. It took me a moment to realize what had prompted the action: I was crying. The tears streamed quietly from my eyes, falling onto his collarbone from where he had my face pressed into his skin.

"And how," Relena started, stopped, then steeled herself with grim determination. "How did Duo... How did he come to possess Deathscythe?"

Meilan hesitated.

Relena would not know, because there were things even I could not tell her. She told me of her visions, of her lineage; I told her of my ghosts, of my intentions. But there are secrets that don't belong to just me, and there are things I could not have admitted to aloud before because I was too weak to bear them.

"Is this not foretold in your vision, Your Highness?"

Quatre's voice startled us all.

His calm, even tone sounded almost curious - it was as if we were discussing bad weather. Relena reacted worst of all, freezing and turning to stare at him with the look of cornered prey. I remembered the way she used to grimace when I mentioned Master Quatre Winner to her, back in the early days of my engagement and then subsequent marriage to Heero.

Heero was "loyal", and he "loved" me. That was what Relena continuously reminded me; it was as if she chanted it enough, I would finally believe it. Trowa Barton was "aloof but gentle-hearted," and Chang Wufei was "righteous and fair."

Relena said this too: Quatre Winner was kind, sincerely kind - but he was dangerous.

"You know the future - or at least, a future - and you know of what we carry," Quatre continued slowly. Ah - so she'd told them of her visions then. Her "story" of the future, the narrative she had only ever told me in parts because she so feared I would follow the trajectory of my storyline willingly. "Where was Deathscythe in your vision?"

Relena did not respond, but that was okay - she wasn't the only one who knew the answer anymore.

"Hilde."

Quatre turned cerulean eyes on me.

"Hilde had the Deathscythe in the story," I explained, pushing away from Heero slightly to be better heard. He pulled his hand away from my hair but did not fully release me; perhaps he needed the reassurance of my physical touch as much as I craved his. "I was dead, so it went to her."

"She works for Duke Maxwell," Trowa said. It was not a question, more a stated conclusion.

I almost wanted to smile. Wrong.

Hilde did not work for my father, nor my brother. To work under them implied she listened to them, that she heeded their orders - but that wasn't quite right. Hilde listened just enough to gauge if they would be of use, she followed orders only so long as she saw their merit. When she'd swallowed my blood, when she'd cut into her own flesh and pushed the parts of me G had torn out into herself - she did so for my sake.

At the request of my family, she'd agreed to become a monster.

But she'd only agreed because of a childish promise that she would throw away her life to keep.

"Hilde had Deathscythe not because she works for my family, but because she is family."

I pulled away from Heero and he let me go. He didn't understand; no one did, I could see it in their eyes. This was also not a surprise because the only remnant they had ever seen was Meilan - who had long been accepted by Nataku before she'd ever imbibed It.

Hilde, though - Hilde had been man-made. She was an aberration, unnatural because the nature of Death was never partial; like Wing - like Life - it could only exist in full. What my family did to me in the basement, what Hilde had accepted into her body - it was heresy, it was an abomination.

"In my family home, I was often locked up in the basement because of– what I could see," I explained. Heero made a small, aborted movement; as if he wanted to reach out and draw me back into his arms. But there was no amount of gentle touch and warm hugs that would change what had already happened. "They thought that it was our blood that caused it. And if the blood is the cause, then they need only get rid of it..."

I looked into Heero's eyes. He had his mother's eyes: kind but sad.

I had my father's: bright and cruel. "How do I explain how much it hurt? When they made me bleed, when they sliced off little odds and ends, over and over and over? How it hurt so much more when my father saw how quickly those wounds healed?"

I used to scream until I couldn't anymore, and then I would make the ghosts around me scream for me. I would rage and beg, I would turn the room ice cold and hurl ghosts at the door until it rotted - and then G would come back in and cut me up so more.

"They took those parts of me, all those cursed little bloody bits, and they pushed it into Hilde. Over and over again, every single day for years, they dragged me down into the basement and bled me into Hilde until her eyes turned purple."

It had stopped working then; Hilde's eyes had turned but her health had waned. G would dribble the blood into her mouth at the end, would lay her on the same table he'd used to tie me down and cut me up. She would force herself to swallow until she couldn't anymore, her breathing weak and ragged.

Then one night in winter, Solo sat beside my bed and told me she had passed.

The next day, my father said I would debut in the upcoming spring.

When I saw her again, years later and standing in the foyer of the Yuy estate, I had thought for a fleeting moment that it had been her ghost - finally coming to see me on her path to the afterlife. But she was alive, all warm flesh and blood, though neither her nor I could tell if it was even her's anymore.

Heero's expression now had finally shifted into something I could recognize: horror. That is what it means to be me, in the end - something horrific, something despicable. I am grotesque in all the ways it matters.

"The Deathscythe belongs to my family, and there was enough of me in her to be used," I recounted. "She must have gotten it the same way I did."

I wrapped my fingers around my throat. The black pearl choker was long gone now, the power within that had kept me from properly perceiving it fully drained into my body. The moment it had been clasped around my throat, there had been no turning back; it began to feed itself into me, to warp my thoughts and settle itself snugly along my every nerve and sinew. Deathscythe had sealed itself to my very soul the moment it brushed my skin, and it was as much a part of me now as my very heart.

Hilde would have died eventually. Because she was only a part of me, it was not enough to satiate my cursed heirloom. Every time Hilde dared to wield that terrible power, it took another swallow of her life to do so. She would have been given Deathscythe to use with full knowledge of what would happen to her by the one who had allowed it to leave our family's vaults.

--"The Maxwell ducal family is unique for two things in Sanc: the first is their belief."--

But I would not die - and Solo knew that.

--"Do you know the second thing they're known for?"--

"My brother gave me Deathscythe." And I didn't know why.