Yoedian Arl

((Thanks go in bunches of flowers and chocolates, to my betas, Spence and Tracy… without whom, I’d be just another hack writer. Oh.. wait. Scratch that. I am a hack writer. But I’m still very grateful for them! I’m learning SO much from their aid!))

Chapter 6: Calm Seas, Stormy Faces

Morning on the sea has a way of erupting out of the sea’s edge. Either when manning rigging as I’ve come to learn, or in the midst of one’s sleep; the night is never long enough. It slinks about one’s ankles and just before the sense that it may be a long night hits, the sun tinges the air with light. No - it is not the morning that is long in coming, neither the night that is too long in keeping its post. It is, instead, the false dawn of that first light, before the true lights shine across waters and under clouds, when the horizon just begins to show as a dark humped shaped, too long and straight to be real, but leaving one thinking of legendary dragons encircling the earth. That light is the longest.

That next day, I woke to the predawn turning the black of my room into a murky world of uncertain shapes. I closed my eyes once they had opened, wanting to return to rest and turning, reached to grab the blankets at my waist.

Fingers met with warmth and my stomach quailed. In my sleeping mind I recognized that this was no blanket though I was warm enough for it. Keeping my eyes closed, I schooled my breath so that my... my bedmate? would not waken as well.

Suddenly very awake, my mind raced over the moment. There were many possibilities of course. The captain was my greatest fear - no matter what he’d said to me about not having interest in me. Or one of the crew? I was kept in the babe’s book for my safety. But then, sleeping beside me with an arm over my abdomen was not necessarily dangerous.

Then there was as well the night time visitor, though I can’t say that I was ready to believe that. That creature, whatever it might have been, with its cool skin, its hot kiss, and the inhuman spell settled onto me remained a mystery.

I knew my night time visitor was man like in appearance. I had felt his legs under mine, the breadth of his shoulders, and dreamt his closed lids and shadowy brow. On one hand I wondered what a light would do to him, reveal him to be. Was he pale as moonlight? What color his eyes, his hair? Were his fingers and toes webbed, though they had not felt to me to be so. Was he hideous… would it matter?

Did it matter? And why? What need I a glimpse of his face? He was… was…

The truth, of course, was that I hadn’t allowed myself to think beyond the animalistic portion of my brain which had need of the peace brought by lips to lips. I could not remember what occurred beyond a single kiss, uncertain of what things were done to me after. That also gave rise to more questions.

But did I have any right to speak against a phenomenon which kept me functional? I had need, grave need, of that cleansing touch. And there was the crux of the matter. I could not look too deeply into something which kept me human, yet how could I continue to allow myself to be claimed by some creature?

There being no immediate answer, I had been going about my work. It was easier to ignore the deeply churning water of thoughts on the matter. They lurked thick as tar underneath my almost too casual recognition of the curse which hung over the voyage like a black sail.

A kiss, that is one thing. The intimacy given by sharing a bed with a monster? What would that make me?

No - I still could not even think it. I closed my eyes more tightly in a desperate bid to escape the insanity of the very situation I’d found myself thrust into by being hauled from the jaws of death and drawn into the web of darkness surrounding this ship.

Perhaps I too was becoming trapped in the intricate lines of deceit cast over the voyage. Nevertheless, I pushed my thoughts deeper within, where I might not have to listen to the questions. I might have been dreaming. I must have been dreaming.

No. I was dreaming. And the one thing about dreams was that one had control over their destinies. I could choose who it was that held me. I could choose to step out onto the deck and fly to the moon, walk on beams of starlight if I wanted and have tea with the cloud maidens said to entice seasons one after the other.

The desperation to hold onto my sanity could grasp the only creature I felt I could trust. And with a murmur of his name, I shifted, praying that there would be no answering tug in that alien arm. There was none and with a sigh of relief, I let go the dream and slid back into a deeper sleep.

- - - - - - - - - -

The next two days passed quickly. I was concerned both over Heero’s health as he began to slowly recuperate after his fever broke and Wufei’s silent anger at my sharing the greatest portions of my food with him.

Heero slept the entire two days but for the times when I woke him to give him water and food. It was not his sleeping that bothered me, but the fact that the captain had taken to hanging about the outer rooms once Heero regained his senses, unwilling to go in and see the ill man, yet just as unwilling to leave him. The excruciating pain of confusion the braided man endured drove both he and I nearer to this edge he flirted with and only the constant night time interludes kept me sane.

On the other hand, the ex-first mate was an issue I refused to feel badly about. Wufei reeked with feelings of injustice, mounting to a fevered roiling in my head as I sat every meal with his bowl of gruel between my knees. But he was looking better than he ever had since I’d begun to feed him. While he remained painfully thin, there was a pale living color to his skin that only meals of real food could add.

I made the plan then, seeing how well the Southern sailor seemed to be getting on better, that I should begin to split my food in another day rather than feed him all. I could not continue eating gruel because after Heero’s coming to, I was back in the kitchens and expected to check on Heero every few hours on my own time, time I simply did not have. As well as these tasks of a cabin boy, I was also to man rigging, or learn to do so. And I was finding this increasingly difficult without proper nutrition.

True to his word, the captain no longer followed me with his eyes. He had shown himself to be fully devoted to his prisoner, as I came to think of Heero. No look he could give me would frighten me in the way he had before. But it did not make me any more comfortable. For while I had come to see he would never use me in such a manner, I also had come to see the root of his madness.

To love another human being so intensely, to need them as badly as Duo needed Heero, that was insanity. Here, his very heart walked outside his body and the same, I came to think, of Heero as well. But neither could have the other. There was a wound between them, as great or even greater than the love I felt coming from them. And the pain of that wound gave rise in Duo to a burning hatred. Therefore, torn between a desire to destroy and an equally painful desire to cherish, he was fated to be broken to pieces before long. And when he did break, or broke fully - for I found that I already thought of him as broken - I feared for us all.

Those few days felt like weeks. I fought hard against the loss of social graces upon my soul, wanting to remember perhaps, that this may have only been a momentary diversion from my life; the life I would return to soon. But sitting below in the galley with a bowl of hard tack between my knees I could not very well ignore the fact that the hands wrapped around the stale bread were cracked, bleeding in places where rope work had not yet hardened the skin and blisters erupted from the skin. I was still very much a soft creature, and my hands would return to their natural pink and clear finish, but I feared that certain cuts would be long in fading. This was not so momentary after all.

Still, despite my attempts, I fell into that abyss of the mind a short time from my discovery of Heero’s illness. The day had gone by quickly, full of rigging practice and work with Cook. I still had pots to scour and a galley floor to scrub before I might bed.

Earlier in the day I brought Heero his water and the small bits of softened pork in a miniature stew made from half of my water ration. Entering the babe’s book, I found the captain leaning over Heero’s bed.

The braided man’s face was a study in human suffering. And if I were not capable of all but tasting the agony on my lips, I would have still have been able to see it, so obvious was he. He had newly arrived, carrying the scent of sea wind and clean sweat upon his person into the room. It made the small cabin seem even smaller. He with the free and dangerous spirit, a tiger caged. And no matter the size of the cage, when one is locked within, it will always be too small. The sensation of danger made my breath catch.

Heero still slept much of his time away, Yet, I had not been aware of the braided man’s ever having come to that bedside after my telling the captain of Heero’s fever breaking. It had seemed to me that the captain only waited, pacing at a distance, for the time when Heero would be mobile, at which time he would have quitted the babe’s book altogether. Therefore it surprised me and I did not seem to find it fitting to announce my presence immediately.

When Heero’s lids stirred, the captain straightened and a heady wash of fear rose from him.

Heero was groggy, both with sleep and with the passing illness. Seeing who was above him, he wet his lips and in a soft murmur called the captain’s name. A smile lit his lips and a wave of tenderness enveloped us all.

"Heero," the captain’s face white, he fell to his knees and closed his eyes when the young man on the bed reached for him, tracing the pale man’s face with trembling fingertips.

"You -," the soft voice echoed in my skull. Was this what it had been like before? "Are you well?"

"I don’t know," Duo’s fear spiked and then like a storm breaking over the fore of the ship, burst inside of him. The weight of the moment began to tip dizzyingly.

"My love…" Heero sighed and it was weight to one side or the other. As Heero spoke it, the tenderness shattered and the last word strangled half way from it’s birthing, broke, emerged hard, frightened, hurt, and beyond hoping. Something passed between them then and I do not know what it was, but I fell to my knees with a gasp. Something so deeply hurtful was there that I was sure I would rather have died than endure it one moment longer.

My head bent, I heard, rather than saw, the rustle of clothing as the pair of them moved. A soft sigh from one of them, heart break reoccurring, and then the tread of boots as the captain rushed past me and took with him half of the equation of pain.

I felt lost, struggling to my feet some time later and going to give Heero his food. He did not look at me, only stared with deadened eyes at the wall on his other side. I left his food at his side and made my way out to the galley, my head aching.

Loathe to return to Heero at dinner time, I instead spent longer with Wufei. He did not like the fact I fed him my own dinner that night as usual, but had come to see my being there with a sort of resignation that took much of the fight out of his resistance.

"It doesn’t kill you to see that things won’t follow your expectations, now does it?" I spoke cheerfully to him, more a matter of habit and less one of actually feeling well. Truth be told, I was in a shadowed mood.

When he did not look at me, only opened his mouth for the next bite, I sighed, sensing how neither of us would gain from this. But stubbornly I clung to the fact that he needed the help, what little help I gave him. Maybe it was simply that I wanted something I felt I had some control over.

Was that why? Why I clung to this duty of feeding him? The possibility sickened me. Sitting down against a wall I groaned and let my head fall to my knees. "I don’t understand, Wufei. I don’t understand this. It is all so strange, so mad. Theo tells me nothing and you don’t speak. The captain - why does he do what he does? It seems so wrong on so many levels to me."

I lifted my head then, exhausted from the interactions of Duo and Heero and finding no solace in the quiet disgust Wufei sent my way. I was weak and he, a stoic man chained to a wall, had been drawn into my weakness with me.

Anger flashed and I leapt to my feet, pushing my face into his. "You don’t know! You can’t know what this is like, can you? You, here, hiding from what happened, the great key to a secret that will kill us all!" My body felt the lack of energy, my shifting into a hateful mood so sudden that it even startled Wufei. At the shock from him, I laughed in a mock triumph. I was too tired to even attempt to stop myself. The injustices of his feeding, his chains, his weakness, all seemed like nothing compared to the emotional pain so strong it had become physical that I had felt from Duo.

"We’re dying, don’t you see?" His darkened eyes wide, he stared at me, listening as I hissed into his face. "We’ll all die. Theo, you, me, the captain… Heero."

That name. It skittered across us both and Wufei shuddered, trying to turn away. Quickly I snatched at his chin, forcing his head back toward myself. I think we were both surprised by my strength. But then, he had been made weak from his imprisonment. "And you have nothing better to do than to judge me. Of all the foolish… idiotic things!"

"H-heero?"

His voice. I did not recognize it. How could I? He’d never spoken to me. I stumbled back from him, my heel falling into the bowl of half eaten gruel. "What?" I suppose I might have been able to say more if I’d had the thought to help me. At the moment, however, I was lost in amazement.

Wufei’s black eyes stared at me, worry calming him. "You.. spoke of.. Heero…" he rasped brokenly.

"The sailor. The sailor who was injured. I’ve been caring for him…" I stammered. "The captain and he, they hate one another but they - I don’t know. It’s all been so confusing."

Wufei only nodded and closed his eyes again, turning his head so that he might hide it from me. "Yes, it wasn’t always that… way. They are well?" He answered himself and groaned, "No - they are not."

Still confused, I shook my head, the dumb one now.

"I had hoped…" he murmured. "But what could I expect? At least he is still alive." Then an intense look crossed his face. "What has happened?"

Wincing, I sat down slowly, my body feeling as if it were floating, as if I were dreaming again. I had been dreaming this morning hadn’t I? Dreaming of Trowa. He had been holding me. But I was afraid of him. Why had I been afraid of h-

"Sailor.." the broken whisper cut into my thoughts. I looked up at him. My eyes stung. "What has been going on?"

I’m not sure what exactly I told him.. I do remember though, that he did not speak and by the time I had finished speaking, I had convinced myself that his speech was a part of the haze I walked in. I had unloaded myself, telling him, this mute man, all of my secrets. Speaking to him was not as difficult as it was with all the rest of the crew; I had spoken to him day after day after day. It was a habit to ramble on in his presence.

But what secrets had I told him? I would like to look for him one day to find out what it was that I revealed. Even now I do not remember. And when I finished, I did not feel any more free. Instead I was wrung dry. Like a long forgotten doll, I limply stood, carrying the bowl and my own plate, and emerged into the dying sunlight.

The crew stood at the water barrel, getting their daily ration and a thought struck me. Approaching the line, I got into it and finally came face to face with Trowa.

The green eyed man frowned at me.

"I know I’ve already had my water. Heero would do well with a second ration. He has been ill and he-"

"There will be no extra rations," a cold voice broke against mine from above. Near the helm, the captain leaned over the railing and glared down at me. "And because he is ill, he might do best to have his rations cut in half. He is not using as much as the rest of us."

"But, ser!" I protested. The captain’s strangely blue eyes were purple with anger.

"You defy me, boy?" his shout rang clearly. "We are low enough as it is. We cannot afford to give any extra water. Mayhaps it is all that stands between our death and our reaching home."

It was the truth. The men heard and they understood as well. I could sense the uncertainty they felt. There is nothing more dangerous, more deadly to a seaman than the lack of water. A man may go for a month or more without food. But to go without water. It would kill us all.

But half! The same strange rage borne of the emotional storm I’d been thrown in rose once again. "What good is reaching home if we’ve become inhumane?" I shouted, my face turning red.

He laughed down at me, cold and disgusted. "I’d prefer inhumanity to death, little golden bird."

"Half though! He is ill! He’s been without water for two days with a fever! He’ll die! You’re dooming him to-"

"Enough!!" his roar frightened us all. He was on me in moments and I could feel his breath on my face. "You will do as ordered, Yoedian Arl. Or no matter how lucky your pretty face is, I’ll have you keelhauled. And if you happen to survive that, I’ll throw you in the stocks with that dog, Chang."

I could not breathe. I stared at him, bent somewhat back with his hands trembling with rage, fisted into my shirt. I could sense it then, the madness I’d felt before, but stronger, seething and rushing upwards. It was close. Closer than it had ever been before.

Quailing, I managed a nod, inwardly begging forgiveness of Heero, knowing there was nothing I could do. A moment later found me sprawled on deck, looking up into the green eye of a sailor. The expression in that eye was that of a stone statue. What he thought of my childish display I could not tell.

My face burning with rage and embarrassment, I struggled to my knees and then slowly stood, leaving them all with their shock and their anger and their worry and the million other emotions flitting through them, each one too strong for me to shield myself from considering the state I was in.

Broken in spirit, I brought Heero his food and fell into a chair after he’d begun to eat. It did not take more than a half moment for me to fall into a restless sleep.

A hand on my shoulder reminded me of duties and I started, looking up. Warmth flooded my entire being, seeing the bright eye gazing down at me. "Trow-a?"

He pressed something into my hands and turned. I stared down at the cup of water. Extra… water. "Wait!" I called and he halted. Something about the way he halted made me think wistfully that he may have done anything I told him. It was a ridiculous concept and I shoved it aside at the same instant. "Please," I amended. "I can’t take extra water. The captain. If he hears of it, what will I do?"

He did not turn to me but spoke into the doorway with a voice that I would have easily succumbed to myself, would have followed direction from without thought. "The men each gave some of their daily ration." And before the realization that the crew was responsible for this could sink in, he had gone.

I stared down at the water in a daze. Then standing, took it to Heero.

- - - - - - - - - - -

The skies were clear the next few days. Clear of every sign of cloud, bird, and of winds. A desert of smooth water surrounded us, glassy and mirroring the sun until it burnt my face and hands when I was up in the rigging.

I had been surprised to find that Wufei actually continued to speak It had not been a dream, as I’d first supposed, nor had any other part of that hateful day. We two learned quickly to keep from any extended speech about the plight of the voyage, though upon each entry into his prison I immediately told him how the captain’s prisoner was in short words. This seemed to be all the first mate wanted to know. The rest of the time was spent speaking of other matters.

While it was a relief to have someone to speak to, I could not call Wufei a friend then. This voyage was not to be a place on which friendships could be made. Still, he was a companion and we regularly spoke together. He still fought me with his stubborn silence and waves of angry emotion over the matter of feeding him a goodly portion of my dinner. But I argued that it was going to go to waste unless he ate it. After allowing one plateful to be left in a corner of his cell to go rancid, the insensibility of letting any food go to waste fought my battles best. His arguments remained and he would eat. So I was satisfied.

He intrigued me, this Southern noble. He told me only little of his childhood, some of his life before. But he was more than willing to listen to me speak of myself. And I had been speaking to him so often without response it did not seem unusual to continue to fill the silences with my prattle. Therefore in him, I found a place I felt safe to speak and took what freedom I could from it. I told him of my Moon Arl Isle, the wheat fields and corn, of my love for my home, of my hopes to return. I told him of my struggles to learn the rigging and found to my delight that he had tips for me on the subject to help ease my transition. I told him of the stillness of a sea without wind, the growing restlessness of the crew, the fear I felt in them. But most importantly, he was the one man I could tell of what I ‘sensed’ from the others. He held the secret of my senses. Only the one secret, however. I never told him the status of my birth. Nor did I tell him of Trowa.

The rigging was simplified after the information Wufei gave me and yet it grew steadily more difficult to keep up with the work given me. I was no fool to not understand the reasons behind this. The gruel may have worked well had I been assigned to the galley alone, or perhaps had kept to the rigging only. But to do both, to work so hard, I needed more than half of my plate. I was starving myself. The skin on my frame began to shrink against my bones, my ribs showing under the growing need for more muscle which somehow covered my lack somewhat. I had never been overly strong. There is no need for it in dancing and speaking of politics over glasses of sherry as was my prior wont.

Some few days after the doldrums had come upon us, I discovered from Theo that we were a month out yet, possibly more considering the way the weather had become so unhelpful. I tried not to pay attention to the fear that we might not make it to land, our water was already running low. I felt that perhaps it wouldn’t matter so much that I would last a day or two less than the rest due to my treatment of myself.

Wufei’s water rations were cut short as well, but he did not need it as much as the rest of us did and I did not fight that as I had Heero’s. Instead I continued to work as hard as I was able. Yet under it all and through it all, I suspected that the captain’s intention was to kill me.

From that night when Heero had woken and spoke to him, the captain had skirted the edges of his sanity with greater and greater frequency. He haunted the ship, often late into the night, his eyes turning red rimmed and his face pale under the sun-darkened skin. Pacing the decks he would bark orders, growing increasingly violent when someone failed to follow his directives immediately. And with me he was twice as harsh.

I suspect that because I was privy to moments occurring between he and Heero over which he felt nothing but derision, his anger at himself wrapped itself around his feelings for me and they in turn, transformed to hatred. Because he could not destroy himself in all good conscience, why could he not then, kill me?

Whether my sense of this was correct or simply a product my having been steeped in the captain’s madness, I may never know. But as the week went along, I became further and further disoriented. Even the late night kisses did nothing to quiet the bird’s chatter of my heartbeat in the morning sun. I began to see the ship as a great prison and long for my freedom.

Thus it was that while Heero slowly healed, I found myself one day staring out at the horizon from atop the rigging, the yard arm only feet from my head, wondering at the way in which the sun, which rose that morning, shimmered in my eyesight. It flooded my view, drowning me in light and I smiled.

Balling my fist into the ropes, I began leaning forward to dive into it as one might into some sweet pool of ambrosia or scented water. So close it was, so golden and beautiful. Should I go, should I follow it’s beckoning, I would be free. I need only open my arms like great wings and catch the light under my fingertips, mount the path forged for me.

Yet something held me back. Even as I leaned into the doorway of blinding rays, my hand was clutched, held fast. I turned my head, staring at my fingers as some dim realization that it was not that I was caught, but that I could not set myself free by letting go the ropes, began to come clear. My brow crinkled in confusion. Why would I not go out into that golden expanse? What could possibly keep me there? I need only, then, release my grip.

Letting go of the rigging was the hardest thing I’d ever done. Some part of my mind knew that I would be dashed upon the deck. Here, above the ship, there wasn’t enough air in the sails to make the boat lean and below me I could see the wooden panels where often, in a moment of tacking, I might have seen only white froth of the sea.

I could hear singing from afar off; the voices raised in a cadence for the morning, men going about their daily duties and keeping to a steady rhythm of song so that the work would not be so toilsome. There, a shout of direction, here the rustle of sails where some of the men worked at mending the canvas somewhere below.

How long I hung there, leaning out into the sunlit void, I do not know. The ropes trembled under me and I sighed. The wind. Was it coming back? Everyone would be so relieved.

I knew, somewhere within, that I would die. And perhaps, death was not something I wanted. But the sunlight, the far off sense of seafarer’s song, someone calling out, the touch of breeze on my cheek - it all conspired against me and gave me an overwhelming sense of well being. I was overworked, with little water and even less food. The sunlight stretched before me like a great golden road. Smooth and dazzling, it was so wide it almost engulfed the prow of the ship and I could not see the bulwarks from the blindness. I ignored the small voice calling out to me, telling me not to do this, that I was only seeing the unreal before me. I knew that at the end of that road, there was my home. I could see the wheat heads bowing and shimmering with each soft puff of air. My mother’s voice danced against my ear. She would enfold me. I had missed her these passing years in New Hartlin just as I’d missed my lands, my people, my island. And all I had to do was let go.

My fingers ached from holding on, an ache I did not recognize until I began to loosen them. The sense of coarse rigging burning my fingertips as my hand released it was accompanied with a delight I’d not felt since the last time I held my wife, Therese, in my arms. I smiled, sensing, in a way, that the road was coming. It would rise up and hold me like a child, and I might be where such things as water and blisters and aching joints meant no more than the touch of a harvest moon’s beam on the tip of the nose.

Only then did I realize I had made a mistake. Looking down, I saw the deck, the busy men singing and shouting out directions. So very far, I did not often take notice of it. They had not seen me. No one would know until the crash of my body to the deck. Sickening vertigo slashed through my body like a fire. A scream crawled into my throat and in that split second eternity of death’s gaze I wondered if I’d be able to sound out to warn anyone. It was strange, hanging in midair like that, my body feeling light with the fear and inevitability, how slowly time went. I had time to worry about the extra work my death would make for them all. I wondered if I would break through the upper deck and fall through, cracking some supports or just the planks? Would I ruin any of the cargo, falling like that? I had never seen a man fall to ship’s deck before. And then, would it hurt so terribly much or would I die quickly?

The wrenching at my shoulder was as sudden as the rest. It turned me in a quick and violent manner and I dangled there, caught at the upper arm by a crushing grip with one foot in rigging. If time had become so infinite in the seconds before, now it rushed past me, a surf of seconds catching up with reality and I blinked, almost completely unaware of my surroundings. Like an infant, I was lifted and the scream I had tried to loosen turned into a soft squeak of alarm, muffled into a body held tightly against mine. The rigging cut into my back and a strong arm tightened further about my waist.

Sobbing, I clung to my rescuer. Had that just happened? Was I dead? Why would anyone have been up here? I had until breakfast bell to keep to the rigging.

I could feel him then. I was limp. The only reason I did not fall was the fact he kept me trapped between the rigging and his body. I could feel the rise of his chest and the warm breath on the back of my shoulder, right above the collar. His arms trembled yet he was no more out of breath than had he taken a walk around the deck.

"Can you climb down?" I heard a breathy voice against my neck and I shook my head, my nose bumping against a collar bone, realizing that warmth was invading my body but doing nothing to quell the fear. I let myself look through slits then, wanting to see if this too was only a dream. I wanted to see how far the ground was from my feet. I turned my face, resting my cheek on a bare chest, and noting that he was bare to the waist, in pants held up by a single rope. I could see a perfectly formed and pale foot caught in the rigging. Beyond that was the deck with men staring upwards, their faces blurry shapes. They were so far from me and their mouths like black dots, opened in shouts which I could not hear over the rush of blood in my veins.

My body shook and I followed softly spoken directions I was only half aware of, looping my arms around the set of smooth shoulders, burying my head into that warmth so that I needn’t see the world underneath us. He waited for me until I was strong enough to hold myself to him, then I felt him carefully lower us down the ropes. And no matter the moment, his powerful descent felt like flying.

He alighted with me still holding to him. Strong fingers took my wrists and unbound them from about his neck. Set to my feet, I reeled slightly and had to step away. A hand reached out and caught me for I might have fallen otherwise. He held me at arm’s length while I stared at the deck, wondering if I should sit upon it and touch it with my face and my back, my hands and my arms, to prove to myself that it was indeed only a deck and not a flat plain of death rushing toward me.

"What is it about the rigging and the golden bird?" asked his voice at my shoulder. This time, though, it held a note of harshness and ice I had not been aware of while in the ropes. Shocked, I turned and looked up into his violet blue eyes. All at once, I was engulfed in the discouragement I’d been swimming in for days. To think I was trying to flee the very monster who had captured and saved me. It was irony at its best.

I snarled at him, meaning to sound scornful but yet unable to speak. To my ears I sounded like nothing but a weak creature, doomed to die and saved from the cat by the very man intending to have me for his dinner. And he knew it as well. His eyes glinted and with a smirk, he raised a brow, silently asking if that was all I could say for myself.

"Ser," I wanted to run from those eyes when I heard Theo’s voice behind me. But they held me pinned with the derision suddenly flooding my senses.

Turning me away from him, he relinquished me to Theo’s care. "He’ll return to the ropes when he’s had a proper rest. Don’t let him endanger this ship with his foolishness again." Then he turned and stalked away. I could see the play of muscle beneath the pale skin, the way it rose up along his spine to the point of his collar and there, suddenly turning golden like the sun. Tears stung my eyes and did not fall.

I think I laughed then. Because I could not help it. It was a sound without mirth, high pitched and almost indistinguishable from a cry of pain. I think that it was not just my hurt that was in that sound, but his madness as well. And from somewhere, somewhere on board, a tainted wire of darkness like jealousy wound itself around both of the emotions and made it twist uselessly as a ribbon in the wind that rose just then and brushed against my cheek.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
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Chapter 7: Theo and Quatre try to discover who it is that has been visiting him at night. And Quatre and Wufei make a pact which Quat isn’t sure of.

((Wow. This story is really starting to suck me in. [laughing] Dunno what that says about me, but I’m so looking forward to the next chapter! I’m glad people are enjoying it and are willing to wade through the words to get to the story under it all. I so enjoy the comments left! Thank you!.)

On to reviewers, the life’s blood of any writer with an inner cat who is as dependent on petting as mine seems to be. [beaming]

Haywire: You are, my dear, such a wonderful person to be so kind as to read these drabbles. I love finding your name on the list and thinking "yay! She’s here!" again. : ) Thank you! Thank you for just reading! And you’ll have to tell me what you think of the anime. (Err.. I’ve never read it neither. Heh heh *erm - cough* heh) And just think! It only gets WORSE! Yay!))