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Between Night and Day	By : kracken Category: Gundam Wing/AC > AU - Alternate Universe Views: 1261 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing and I don't make any money off of this

Chapter List
- 1-Between Night and Day
- 2-2
- 3-3
- 4-4
- 5-5
- 6-6
- 7-5
- 8-8
- 9-9
- 10-10
- 11-11
- 12-12
- 13-13
- 2
- 3
- 4
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"You seem distracted, My Prince."

The Ifrit was a flash of gold in the air, a voice that was heard more inside the head than outside. It was a breeze against Heero's cheek before it pulled itself into human form and stood before him, golden hair a riot of loose strands, eyes large and bluer than the bluest sea, and a face as innocent as the angels of Christian teachings. Dressed in a swathe of sea green gauze, that seemed to float about it like a cloud rather than earthly weighted garments, it gave a tempting outline of a body as equally as wondrous as the face.

"I am not," Heero replied simply and leaned on the stone railing of a balcony poised on a cliff face. He let the high mountain winds chill him while he watched the sun breaking through tall peaks and coloring the black, craggy forms with colors every bit as vibrant as the Ifrit. Golds, blues, peaches, and rust reds crept softly forward until it touched the forbidding walls of the fortress and the figures that stood there.

Like rarified air, the sunlight passed through the Ifrit, giving it a ghostly appearance even as it made it's hair glow like heated gold. As for the creature of the night, it seemed to avoid him and leave him untouched, his skin remaining paler than milk, and his eyes refusing to cast back even a faint reflection. Even his dark hair seemed to drink it in and leave a null void.

"Where do you look, Oh Prince of Night?" the Ifrit wondered with a smile that could melt granite with its gentle warmth. It was hard, when that smile was turned on Heero, to remember that the Ifrit were creatures more formidable than his own race, children of the first song; wild beyond measure and full of deep cunning, knowledge, and power. That this one suffered servitude to a prince, never ceased to amaze.

"At the sunrise, obviously," Heero replied irritably even as he narrowed his eyes and hated the way that it touched his skin.

The night was Heero's element, the moon the mother that watched over him and aided his hunting with its pale light. The sun was his enemy, making him feel weak and exposed, burning his pale skin and robbing him of his senses, if he stayed in it's light too long. It made him vulnerable and no creature that hunted prey sought after that condition. The Ifrit was right to wonder, and maybe to worry, if they possessed such emotions. It was hard to imagine a creature of air and sunlight owning human feelings and concerns.

"Prey escaped you," the Ifrit guessed and then sighed. "Night creatures are so single minded. You pine over sustenance as if after a lover, and refuse to rest until you satisfy your hunger." Ifrit were not so delicate. They sucked a man dry of every ounce of life force and left a husk, unconcerned over issues of morality and a prey's willingness to die. A life force didn't sour, after all, like tainted blood, or become poison because of a prey's unwillingness to die.

"Prey was unwilling," Heero corrected and let his eyes leave the mountains and travel down into the valley where the trees parted around a small town. Wisps of smoke, from chimneys, rose into the morning light. "He was.... most... compelling."

"And you will cast your glamour until he comes to you willingly, unable to help himself," the Ifrit knew. "I enjoy watching night creatures split the fine strand of their own beliefs. Only take willing prey, even if your very nature makes them willing."

"It is nature," Heero replied, and it was the inescapable truth of the matter. There weren't excuses that needed to be made, or, as the Ifrit put it, a strand of belief to split. Their nature dictated their actions and he would no more consider apologizing for it than a mountain cat for waiting under cover for a deer to pass it by. Heero waited for his prey with the same patience, with the same instinct and need for survival.

Only it wasn't the same, Heero thought, frowning, and the Ifrit seemed to have sensed that as well. Long years of the hunt had never caused Heero to stand in the unkind light of the sun and actively wish to see his prey.

"I should inform Chancellor Jay," the Ifrit warned.

"Should you, Quatre?" Heero wondered absently as he stretched every sense, every bit of his power and tried to see into the town as the sun reached into the valley and ran golden fingers along cobbled streets.

"I have pledged him my fealty," Quatre reminded him. "He charged me to guard you."

And he was a tireless guard, during the day, when the Ifrit drank the sunlight that allowed him to gather form. Otherwise, he was a powerless creature of the air, a breath of breeze against the skin or a ruffling through a person's hair. It had been a powerful sorcerer that had bottled such a creature, murdering mountain bandits, and the misfortune of a rock slide, that had cast it aside on a mountain track, and the hand of a creature of the night that had finally found and freed it. His thankful pledge of a thousand years of service to Chancellor Jay was nothing when compared to the prospect of a deathless Ifrit spending eternity in a bottle cast aside on a mountain.

There! Heero say his prey blinking and yawning with weariness and carrying a basket towards the market. The man's braid swung to and fro, the sunlight catching strands and making them the color of fire in his brown hair. He was wearing a dark brown tunic and black overcoat, homespun pants and solid, brown ankle boots. Laces were half tied, hooks undone, and his coat put on haphazardly. He looked like a young man unpleasantly roused from sleep and sent on an unpleasant task.

"Ah," the Ifrit said, following Heero's gaze. "He has an interesting life force. Touched by a wizard of the dragon clan. Something runs through him... binding him to nature... to... wolf and hawk. Your prey is not a common man. I can see the attraction."

Hunger. Heero could hear it in the Ifrit's voice. Heero warned, as he watched Duo sleepily buy two dozen eggs, two live chickens, and a half slab of bacon, "Touch him and you will think that eternity in a bottle is a blessed condition."

The Ifrit was silent, startled, and then warmly, it replied, "If I touched that one it would not be My Prince that would punish me, I think. His protector would certainly deal with my infraction personally."

Heero had surprised himself. The warning had been instinctive and empty. Perhaps his Chancellor had power over the Ifrit because of a vow, but Heero was certainly no match for a creature that could command the elements and eat a man's essence. Was it simply because he was wanting his prey that badly that he had spoken so unwisely, so out of character for a cold creature of the night?

The young man's protector would not blame him, he thought, would not seek him out for revenge, for making his ward his prey. Taking revenge on a lightning storm, or a flood through the valley, would have been just as ridiculous. Heero hunted. His prey had unwisely traveled at night and had allowed the glamour when he could have fled at first sight of Heero. Heero was not to blame for his nature. The Ifrit was another matter. Whether he fed, or not, he would continue to live, even as a mere wisp of light and air. His feeding was choice and therefore more suited for blame and revenge.

"Will you continue to be unwise?" the Ifrit asked as Duo made the journey back to a tall house and disappeared inside, protected with warding spells from any form of spying.

The sun was begriming to hurt, Heero's skin tightening and blushing with the red of the blood of his last prey. Until he absorbed it completely it would lie uneasily, as if seeking an escape back to where it belonged. More rest was needed. Like a snake, a torpid state was best for digestion.

The Ifrit was gaining solid form as the sun began it's journey overhead. It followed Heero with audible footsteps, now, and even smelled like cinnamon and honey as it passed close to Heero and motioned to a bed of leaves, forest earth, and fine salt within a hollowed out slab of granite.

It was tradition and myth, to lie within mother earth and to rest on her dead and on the leftovers of his own prey while he slept. Salt was the only byproduct of his feasting, exuded out of his skin with sweat and crystallizing as it touched air. It made a soft bed, one that his people believed was as necessary to life as the blood that ran through the veins of their prey. Certainly they sickened when their beds of leaves, earth, and salt weren't periodically refreshed, but Heero had never heard of any night creature eventually dying for lack of it. Since living sickened wasn't a particularly attractive prospect, he doubted that anyone had attempted to find out whether death would eventually result.

Heero removed his clothes and slipped into the hollow, sleep overtaking him as soon as his skin pressed into the bedding. The Ifrit looked him over, as if needing to make certain that all was well, and then took up a position beside the granite bed, at attention and eyes turned outward. For a thousand years he would keep his post, if need be, guarding even Heero's corpse if he were to pass over during his sleep, to keep his vow to Chancellor Jay.

Heero, for his part, ignored the Ifrit. The fortress of the Vampire clans had not been seriously attacked in ages. That Chancellor Jay imagined that Heero needed any protection was a puzzle, but one that Heero didn't dwell on, just then. His thoughts remained on a young man with brown hair touched with flame, until he passed into his torpid state.

TBC
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Between Night and Day