*...* denotes thought
~~~ indicates scene breaks
Author's note: read this carefully or it will be easy to become confused.
Embrace the Night Part 1
Colony L1 AC 81
He had been observing the boy for the last thirteen years; watching, from the beloved shadows, as the cumbersome braces on the slender legs were changed again and again. A weakness in the lower limbs, the doctors said. That was what kept the youth from walking. A weakness that could not be fixed, despite the tremendous advances in the medical field at the doctors' disposal.
He had watched the hope fade from wide blue eyes as the child accepted the fact that he would never run and play like the other boys who lived in the orphanage. Later, as the handicapped child grew older, he had felt the despair as the youth realized that he would probably live out his days alone, with no one to love him, no family to mourn him, or remember him when he was gone.
After all, who wanted a cripple when there were dozens of other children who were... complete in both mind and body?
He was the only one who sensed the true depths of the boy's despair, of his heartache; the only one who knew how the earthed youth yearned to run in the golden light of the sun, to walk in the silver shadow of the moon.
He was the one who heard the sound of muffled tears in the dark of the night. For others, the boy put on a brave face, but alone in his room, he wept bitter tears - tears that ate at his watcher's soul like acid. At the time he had not understood why he had felt and shared this young mortal's grief and sadness. The answer to his puzzlement only came years later when he had finally acknowledged his true feelings for the brave soul that had been born trapped in an imperfect body. Feelings that had begun with the first time he had laid eyes on the mortal and had flourished with the passing years.
He had never intended for the boy to know of his existence. Never. He had been content to only watch over the child, an unseen phantom who shared his loneliness and in doing so, perhaps ease his own.
And so it was that he was lingering in the shadows outside the room late one summer night.
He knew the boy had spent the afternoon, as he usually did, sitting in the park across from the orphanage, watching the other children at play, yearning to join them. He had watched as the couples, both young and old, strolled hand in hand along the tree lined path. He had watched families, mothers, fathers, and children, play together, basking in each other's presence. Yearning for what he knew was denied him simply due to physical flaws he had no control over.
The boy had watched life pass him by.
He had skipped dinner and gone to bed early that evening. However, sleep had not come and the boy had lain awake long after everyone else had succumbed to the lure of Morpheus, unaware of his unearthly watcher. A single candle burned at his bedside, its flickering light feebly attempting to hold the looming shadows at bay. The flame danced in the air, throwing pale shadows over the youthful face.
Now, hovering in the shadows on the balcony, he felt his heart ache. The boy was talking to himself, his voice low and soft, but not so low his nocturnal visitor could not hear it.
"You can do it, Heero," he gritted, voice tinged with desperate determination. "I know you can. The doctors could be wrong..."
For the next few minutes, he watched Heero struggle to inch his way to the edge of the bed. He watched as he pulled himself to a sitting position, using his arms to scoot himself over to the edge of the bed until his legs dangled over the side, his feet touching the bare floor.
"You can do it," he muttered. Taking a deep breath, he clutched the spiral molded post at the head of the bed and pulled himself to his feet.
For a brief moment, he stood there, his brow shined with perspiration, and then, bravely, he let go of the post.
A mistake.
He bit off a curse as Heero's legs gave way and the boy dropped to the floor.
"It's hopeless," he murmured, voice thick with despair. "No one's ever going to adopt me." He dashed the silver tears from his eyes. "Or love me. I'll spend the rest of my life in this place and never do any of the things other boys do. I'll never have a family... or a life..."
Using his strong upper arms, Heero pulled himself back up onto his bed. He sat there for several thick minutes, staring at the floor. His slim shoulders slumped in resignation. His wild, unruly brown hair fell over his forehead, hiding his eyes in dark shadows.
It grieved him to see the boy steeped in such anguish. Heero had always tried so hard to be cheerful for the others, to be brave. Always putting his best foot forward, proverbially speaking, not letting others see his misery. He was a young boy, on the verge of manhood, yet bound by his own physical limitations. Who could blame him for feeling that life was passing him by?
He longed to go to the dejected youth, to take him in his arms and give the comfort, the reassurance so desperately needed. But he dared not reveal himself to the mortal, dared not risk letting the youth know he was being watched.
He was about to turn away, about to leave the youth to his private grief, when the boy reached under his pillow and withdrew a small brown bottle. The boy stared at the bottle for a long moment, a pensive expression on his face.
And he knew, in that moment, that the boy intended to end his life.
Without thinking of the consequences, he barged into the room.
~~~
Heero Lowe glanced up, startled, as a tall man swept into his bedchamber. He was dressed all in black (^.^;), from his soft leather boots to the heavy woolen cloak that swirled around him like a dark, looming cloud.
The man gave him a cocky half smile and said quietly, "I wouldn't do that if I were you."
His voice was like ebony satin, soft, mesmerizing.
"Don't do what?" Heero asked, even as he clutched the bottle to his chest.
"Don't take your life," came the quiet answer.
He blinked up at the man, too surprised by his unexpected intrusion into his room, and by his knowledge of what he intended to do, to be alarmed. "W - who are you?!" he stuttered out.
"No one of great importance," the man said, his grin still firmly in place.
Heero blankly stared at the man, his wide cobalt eyes unwavering, even as his mind started racing with questions. With random selection, his mind picked one of the questions and forced his mouth to utter the words.
"What were you doing out on the balcony?" The thought of how the man had been on the balcony never occurred to him.
The mysterious man gave a slight chuckle before answered with, "Watching you."
That simple answer managed to wrest a response from Heero. His eyes widened and his body shrank against the pillows, attempting to put as much distance as possible between his defective body and the man in black.
His voice squeaked out with, "Watching me? Why?"
The man continued to grin and answered candidly, "Well, since I've been watching you since you were a child, I have seen no evidence that I should stop."
For some unknown reason, that statement caused Heero to give a wry grin, a small mixture of both amusement and disbelief. He said dryly, "Does that make you my guardian angel then?"
The man raised his eyebrows and turned his eyes upwards as if seeking the answer in the ceiling. He gave a dry chuckle and said, "Angel? That's not the choice of words that I would use, but I guess you could call me that."
Heero's own eyebrows were raised as he asked sarcastically, "And is your name Gabriel?"
The man shook his head back and forth, and for the first time Heero could see the long, chestnut colored braid attached to the back of his skull. His eyes unwillingly followed the length of hair as it swayed in concert with the man's motions. His mind just barely registered the fact that the man had spoken again.
Shaking his head to try and clear the cloud of confusion from it, he asked, "What did you say?"
The man smirked as he repeated himself. "I said I no longer have a name, but if you want to you can call me Duo, Duo Maxwell."
Heero blinked at the man once, and then looked down at his hands, belatedly remembering the brown bottle being clutched by his fingers. He asked, "Well, if you're an Angel, have you come to take me to heaven?"
"No," he answered sadly. "That I could never do."
"To hell then?" came the quick response.
Duo shook his head in the negative. On silent feet, he closed the distance between the two of them, and took the bottle from his hand. Too late, Heero tried to snatch it back.
Duo quickly backed away from the bed, shaking the bottle in time with his head. "Uh uh, Heero." He shoved the bottle into the pocket of his black trousers, eager to get it out of sight and out of mind. "I'll not let you take your own life. Not now. Not ever."
"I have no life," he retorted bitterly. "I've never been anything but a burden. First to my family, and now to the sisters who must take care of me."
Duo gaped at the young boy before saying, "That's not true."
Heero looked up at Duo, revealing the despair and beginnings of tears in his deep cobalt blue eyes. "It's true!" he exclaimed. "Don't you think I know it is? Why else would my mother have abandoned me?"
"Heero." Duo whispered his name, stricken by the depths of the pain in his eyes.
"I'm nothing but a burden," Heero whispered. "The sisters say they love me, but I know they'd be relieved if I was gone." Heero's head angled downwards until his face was hidden from view, his eyes focused on the light quilt in front of him. Duo watched silently as several wet drops fell onto the fabric, slightly darkening the frayed material.
Before he realized what he was doing, Duo was sitting on the bed, drawing the young boy into his arms. Duo held him close, surprised that he didn't pull away. Instead, the young boy burrowed into his arms, his face pressed into his chest, allowing his grief to be comforted for the first time. Duo felt his shoulders shake, felt his tears soaking through his shirt, the moisture warm and damp upon the coolness of his skin.
Duo held him, rocking his slender body gently, until he fell asleep. And even then he was reluctant to let him go, unwilling to relinquish this slight bond to the mortal plane.
The braided man cradled him to his chest until the first faint hint of dawn brightened the sky. Only then did he lower him to the bed. Duo gazed down at Heero for a long moment, and then drew the quilt over him.
Duo pressed a light, fatherly kiss to the boy's forehead, and then was gone, as silent as the sunrise.
~~~
He reached his lair in Cyprus Abbey minutes before the sun climbed above the horizon. Bolting the door behind him, he rested the back of his head against the solid wood, his skin still tingling from the promise of the sun's warmth.
Closing his eyes, he tried to remember what it had been like to walk in the light of day, to welcome the touch of the sun on his face, to bask in its warmth. The smile he had worn before slipped away, now as elusive as the night.
With a muttered oath, he pushed away from the door and crossed the floor. Sinking down in the huge, throne like chair that was the room's only piece of furniture, he stared into the blackness of the hearth.
The boy was in pain and he wanted to end his young life.
*There are all kinds of pain...* his tired mind thought. Heero's wasn't physical; it went much deeper than that, piercing his heart, his soul. Tired of hoping and praying, he felt he was a burden to the handful of nuns who ran the orphanage.
Duo's heart ached for him. The child had been born to wealthy parents, but from the day of his birth, the Lowe family had been plagued by a constant stream of bad luck. The family's wealth and future lost to them all through a series of bad accidents, had caused Heero's father to give up, eventually committing suicide in the basement of their home on L1. Heero's mother, already having lost two children born dead, snapped with the loss of both her husband and her home. She fled from the family's last refuge, abandoning her only surviving son, never to be heard from again.
It was no wonder Heero was so bitter, he mused. Perhaps he should have told the boy that he was the single ray of sunshine in his own miserable existence, that his life had purpose, even if it was only to bring light into one man's... no, one creature's world of darkness.
But he couldn't tell him that. Duo couldn't give hope when there was none to give.
As he felt the sun rising, Duo felt the faint lethargy that came with the dawn, a lassitude that filled his entire being. Although it wasn't as strong now as it had been over 900 years ago, it was still potent enough to leave him feeling powerless. When he'd first been... made... centuries ago, he had been unable to withstand the overpowering weakness that had come with the sun. He had been left drained of all strength, helpless to resist the calling of the restorative sleep of the undead. However, as the centuries had worn on and he got older, he also became stronger. At first he had reveled in the fact that he could withstand one of the few instinctive callings of his breed, but he had also learned that he was not yet infallible.
The true touch of sunlight on his body still held the promise of death. He feared the sun, the agony of a fiery demise. It was the one and only thing he feared. He had learned that he could withstand the rays of the early morning and late evening sun with a few minor burns, but he was still forced to hide during the hours when the sun was at its peak. However, it would only be a matter of time before he could completely walk in the sunlight with no fear.
As Duo allowed his ennui to fill his weary soul, he thought back to those days when he had first awakened to his new life. Those times had been filled with confusion and frustration. The lust for mortal's blood had filled him with self - loathing, yet the temptation to drink and drink and drink had been too strong to resist. His hearing, sharpened to new heights of awareness, had been bombarded with noise previously unheard. His vision had taught him to be more careful of where he cast his eyes, to avoid prying too closely into the menial lives of those around him. However, the toughest of his new abilities had been the psychic gifts. It took him decades to learn to completely shut out the thoughts of others, to regain his sense of inner quiet, previously taken for granted. Yet, it was in the receiving of these new gifts that he had become like a child. Faced with these new... toys... he had tested the limits of his powers, his endurance. But in the testing, he had needlessly brought pain and death to those fragile mortals who had crossed his path.
Filled with loneliness, with no companion, mortal or immortal, to accompany him, he had left his homeland and wandered throughout Earth, always searching for a new haven, for a new place to call home. Eventually, as the years rolled by, he had seen the expansion of humanity into space, giving him a new, fresher area to roam. In time, he had learned to control his blood lust, to control the need. Taking only what he needed and leaving his victim unaware of the slight loss. It still disgusted him that he must take the life's blood of others to sustain his own existence. However, he had accepted it. It was either that, or go utterly mad.
And an insane vampire was a doomed vampire.
Duo slumped down into his chair, shrouded in the darkness that was his constant companion, with his bleak thoughts as company. For centuries he had prowled the earth, content to wander aimlessly, caring for no one and letting no one care for him. At least, until the loneliness became unbearable. It was only then that he had fully accepted what he was and then turned to the next step. To find himself a mate. To find the special someone who would see past the monster he had become to the man he had once been.
He'd had no trouble for companionship over the millennia. He needed no reflection in a mirror to remind himself that he was still a virile male in his early peak. When he had been changed, he had been a young rebellious youth of 23 years. Although young by the standards of today, he had been considered a man in the time period of his birth, mortal life spans being considerably shorter way back then. His eyes were a deep violet that rivaled that of the purest amethyst, cool and deep, twinkling with hidden knowledge acquired over the years and the spark of youth that not even his great level of cynicism could destroy. His face was pleasant enough, his lips full and sensuous, often quirked in a grin or a smirk. He had learned early on in his life that people were often less cautious around an eternally smiling facade, rather than a silent and brooding composure.
His hair was his pride and joy, although at times it had proven to be a bit of a nuisance. Long and thick, the chestnut strands were intertwined with streaks of gold that shone in favorable light. When he had been made, his hair had been long, as was the popular style of the time. It had fallen in a long waterfall down his back, stopping just over his rear. For several decades he had worn the hair proudly, letting it swing freely. But then, as it is wont to do, style and fashion changed and men started cutting their hair brutally short. Willing to follow style, if just to blend in, he had hacked his chestnut mane off, only to discover that his hair grew back in an instant. Resigned to this unique, if rather unsettling fact, he had started to wear the heavy mass in a thick braid. Now it was simply an extension of his own body, one that he would miss as much as an arm or leg if it was ever possibly severed permanently.
He'd had no trouble finding women, or men for that matter. He did not really care about the actual gender of the person, rather the external and internal beauty of the subject. He found both forms pleasing and arousing. He had had many companions over the years, both male and female, highborn or low. Each eager to please and shower him with affection, until they discovered his true nature and what he was. Some turned away in disgust, some in horror. It didn't matter, it was all rejection and it all caused blows to his heart. Eventually he had given up on trying to find a mate and took solace in brief relationships, often fleeing before his companion could figure out what he was.
But even these shallow, temporary solutions had tired and he had grown heartily sick of his existence. He had several times in the recent history been tempted to succumb to the death that beckoned sweetly.
Thirteen years ago had been such a time. He had been on the very edge of sanity, willing to jump off the cliff and destroy himself. He had been sorely tempted to walk straight into the sunlight, to feel the sun's rays on his face one last time before it destroyed him. That had been the night he had seen Heero for the first time, a small, dark haired child huddled in the corner of an empty room.
He had been crying softly, as if he was afraid of disturbing the quiet of the night, and the sound, so filled with sorrow, had drawn him out of his shell of misery and self pity. He had followed the sound of tears until he had come to an elegant manor house in the upper echelons of society's finest on colony L1.
He had stopped crying the instant Duo had picked him up, staring at him through dark blue eyes filled with tears. And then Heero had smiled at him, a sweet, innocent smile filled with trust. Duo had at that moment vowed to protect the boy as long as he lived. For once, his life had meaning again.
He had searched endlessly though the house for the child's mother, but had found not a trace of the woman. In fact, the house had an empty, un - lived in feeling to it, the furniture being covered in white sheets, the closets empty.
It was only later that he had learned young Heero's story. That Heero had been the only surviving son of Natalie Lowe, and that the woman had fled her home in the middle of the night. The colonists had assumed the child had been with her.
It was that same night that Duo had decided to take Heero to the orphanage run by the Sisters of Eternal Light. When he had handed the young boy over to the nuns, he had stared up at Duo, his little face looking sad, as if he realized he would never see him again.
His heart lost to the young child, he had been watching over him ever since...
TBC...
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