Kyuuketsuki Duo: The, Uh, Not So Wonder Years Part 1
Demons -- Part 5
Heero paced. He had never paced before, and had to admit that he did not see what his young charge found so appealing about it. It did nothing to alleviate the anxiety and concern that he was experiencing for his missing student. He sat down on the meditation beanbag and forced himself to think.
Duo had only been gone for about half an hour since his abrupt announcement that he had business of his own to take care of, and his subsequent departure. Heero had faith in Duo's ability to take care of himself. He had trained the boy himself, after all. But when Duo departed, it had not been in the best state of mind, and Heero knew from experience that the young guardian's performance was unpredictable when he was emotionally unstable, and usually only a single, solid point of focus would be enough to bring his concentration to full attention. The warrior didn't know what his charge's 'business' was about, and could only hope that it would be enough to let him focus sufficiently to keep himself alive.
As time passed, however, Heero had become more and more uneasy, and finally, he became absolutely convinced that something was wrong. The guardian had departed for the Dark, a place where Heero could not follow due to the restrictions of his punishment, and he just could not come up with a reasonable idea of what sort of 'business' the little one could possibly have there.
And what could have upset him so? He hadn't been angry when he left without a backwards glance, he had seemed... sad. Depressed. And determined. Dorothy had spoken to him, this he knew for a fact, and he knew that she had probably made the boy doubt himself, an easy enough task given her uncanny ability to say the most irritating, hurtful things, as well as the boy's own low self-esteem and inexperience dealing with her, but Duo had walked out with a mission. It hadn't been vengeance against the irksome demon. Something she said had caused him to come to a decision of some sort, driven him to some course of action....
Heero's breath caught when the thought of suicide crossed his mind, but he quickly dismissed the idea. He'd know if his bonded one had chosen a self-destructive path, no matter how tightly he shielded himself from him, and Duo wouldn't have gone rushing so rashly to his own death. Would he?
Bah, but all this speculation would get him nowhere. His time with the guardian had made him human and weak. Now was the time for action. Was he not the best hunter of the East? Had exile dulled his skills any? He had been able to find the guardian once, when he did not even know whether or not the heir to the line of guardians existed. Now, armed with intimate knowledge of the boy's mental signature and method of operation, surely he could find the guardian again.
And what would he do when he found him? Would he drag him by the ear back to their home and give him a scolding? Would he arrive just in time to save him from a fate worse than death? Would he find him, to see that everything was perfectly fine, and that he could slink back into the shadows in shame for having doubting him?
Bah. More speculation. He would worry about that when the time came. The plan now was merely to find him, to see what he was up to. He hated not knowing.
Taking a calming breath, he sought to return himself to that mode from which he had long been absent -- the coldly analytical part of himself that had allowed him to become one of the most feared creatures in the East.
He could not track the boy through the Dark, but if he had emerged from the Dark to visit another location, he would in all probability have traveled through the boundary once more to get there, and he had full access to the boundary. The area was vast, but he could do it. The hunt was on. He fixed Duo's essence in his mind, recalled the feel of the guardian's thoughts caressing his own, the distinct blend of human and other, amethyst edged in diamond, and let it fill him as he called the power to himself. He shaped the energy, molded it to his will, and sent it out through the othercurrents with the commandment: seek. The tendrils of power flowed from him and spread a fine web across the plane, a net so delicate and uniquely attuned to himself that none other would sense it as it performed its task. With firm control and the certainty of experience, Heero manipulated it, carefully letting it draw the energy from him in its quest to make contact with any scent of the guardian's trail, painstakingly adjusted its pattern towards those places where the web vibrated in its most peculiar way that let him know that there was something on the edge of its reach, and... there! Target acquired.
Fixing the location in his mind, he allowed a small twist of his lips in triumph as he recalled the energy to himself. The guardian had been clever, to choose a spot so remote from their home to make the translocative jump, but the hunter found it nevertheless. He went there himself, a smooth slide between the shadows was all it took, and quickly picked up the guardian's trail. Duo had remained in the Dark for only a little while, and he had left it in the company of Darkness. The surrounding presence of the Shinma had only lingered for a brief moment before the guardian took off once more into the human realms. The hunter followed his prey.
He stepped out of the darkness into a clearing, and swiftly regained the trail. Tuning his mind to the guardian's essence, he saw the path the guardian had taken as clearly as if the guardian had meant him to find it. The steps glowed brightly to his inner eye, and he retraced them carefully but easily, the thick grasses and woods not hindering him in the least, until at last he came upon a small cabin by a stream. The guardian had lingered within the cottage long, before his path emerged from the home and retreated into the woods once more.
A second wary taste of the air gave him more clues -- there was death here, the feel of the guardian's power, and the trace of a demon, and the threatening aura made him choose to pursue the trail, still relatively fresh, rather than take the time to investigate further within the house. Swift analysis of the path even as he followed it informed him that the guardian had been the one leading, and he was filled with even more foreboding when it became clear that the boy had obviously been trying to elude his demonic predator with an erratic flight. The path was marked with a small dose of the guardian's fear and anxiety, and each second that passed increased the hunter's own. A short time later, and the trail came to an abrupt end. There was no body. No lasting scent of pain or panic. No blood. Nothing.
Not to be deterred so easily, the hunter looked deeper, adding 'demon' to his list of search parameters, and he saw the fading remnants of a portal to the demon realm, a foul blight on the dimensional plane like a festering wound opened by an overzealous, unlicensed surgeon with a rusty scalpel.
He could not follow. Once upon a time, he could have, but the demon realms, just as the Dark, were denied to him now, tied as he was to the earthly plane. But, oh, how he tried to defy that edict, to follow the guardian where he was not allowed, to protect his charge against that which he was not prepared, but the hunter knew, Heero knew the demons, had dealt with them often in the past, and knew they would not scruple against hurting the guardian, his charge, his companion, his student, his teacher, Duo, and he threw himself repeatedly against the wards that bound him all the more fiercely for the knowledge, but to no avail, and he slumped to his knees in defeat.
TBC...
it occurs to me that poor heero has been put into a helpless position yet again, and i must apologize to him before he takes out the author in a fit of redirected rage.
ahem. author prostrates herself.
gomen ne, hee-chan, hontou ni gomennasai! moushi wake gozaimasen! watashi o koroshinaide!
Back to Jei's Fanfictions Page