Notes: My big thank you goes to my wonderful beta DMx04!
Readers demanded, ordered, threatened with physical punishment so here is the second part. See Sol? Lookie, here it is :)
I tried to explain a little bit how the body of a lifebearer worked. Since this whole thing is a fiction, bear with me, okay?
The Claim Part 2
A stinging sensation on his face woke Duo up. His eyes shot open, darting around the unknown place with horror. He tried to sit up, but strong hands held him down by his shoulders. He opened his mouth to scream, but a calloused hand clamped down on his lips, shutting him up effectively. He started to struggle when a voice pushed through the fog that surrounded his mind, "Stop struggling and stay quiet or I will put you under," came the quiet threat.
Duo's struggling ceased, and he relaxed a tiny notch. Heero. Heero Yuy, the Enforcer of the village. The man who now owned his life. Feeling Duo's muscles going slack under his hands, Heero let go of him and pulled back. Duo turned his head to him, his eyes roaming around the small hut. There wasn't much. A fireplace, a table, two chairs, two shelves with dishes and a chest. Heero's home.
"What happened?" he whispered, surprised to hear his voice so rough.
"You fell asleep," Heero answered, not looking at him.
Duo saw him take a piece of cloth he discarded when he had to restrain the braided youth, and wet it in a ceramic bowl with water. He then moved back to his face, cleaning the scratches and abrasions his father caused him. Duo hissed, closed his eyes and tried to move away.
"Stop squirming!" Heero frowned at him. "Your wounds are infected. You are running a low fever already. It has to be cleaned or you will get worse."
Duo bit his lip, knowing that Heero was right. Unfortunately now that all the hassle was over, he started to feel all the pains and aches in his body clearly. After all the things that happened to him in the last couple of days, he was at the end of his rope. He felt tears sting in his eyes and he clenched them shut tightly, not wanting to embarrass himself more than necessary. When he heard Heero get up, he thought that obviously he wasn't that successful.
Duo heard Heero putter around the fireplace and so he quickly wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. Stupid. So stupid. All your own fault. If you had been more careful or didn't start this affair at all, none of this would have happened, Duo chided himself mentally.
"Here." Duo almost jumped, hearing Heero's voice so close. He didn't even notice him come back. He opened his eyes and looked at the solemn shorthaired young man. Heero helped him sit up, then held a cup of some hot liquid to his lips. "Drink it," he ordered.
Duo lifted his hands and laid them around the ceramic cup. He sniffed at it. It had a really pleasant smell. "What is it?"
"It will help you relax and gather your strength. You need to eat, but I suspect you wouldn't be able to keep anything down."
When he said it, Duo realized how queasy he felt in his stomach when he sat up. He swallowed a couple of times to try and keep the nausea down. With a last look at Heero's serious face, he sipped the hot liquid slowly, not wanting to burn his tongue. It tasted like mint and it brought warmth to his chilled limbs. Finally the cup was empty, and Duo returned it to Heero with a grateful smile. He really did feel better now. Heero nodded and set the cup on the floor. Duo then wanted to lay down, but Heero stopped him.
"I need to take your smock off," he answered Duo's questioning glance.
Duo paled, clutching the rough material of his smock tightly. "Why?"
Heero scowled. He had obviously had enough of Duo's never-ending questioning of his actions. "I need to take care of all of your wounds. I noticed that there are some on your chest and belly."
Duo's hands released the smock, and rested them lightly on his abdomen. The burning sensation caused by the smock rubbing against the scratches made him remember his father, how he hit him and kicked him over and over again, calling him a whore.
"Look, I have no physical interest in you, so stop acting like a child!" Heero snapped at him.
Duo blinked a couple of times, forcing the tears down. Then slowly he pulled the smock over his head. Heero helped him and he was grateful. He was sure that there must be some really colorful bruises on his back and they hurt.
Heero threw the smock on the floor. "Lie down," he said to Duo, pulling off the blanket the braided boy's legs were covered with up until now.
Duo opened his mouth to protest, but seeing the glare that was directed at him, he blushed and complied. He fixed his eyes on the rough ceiling and tried to pretend that he wasn't actually there.
Heero's calloused hands were warm and his touches were completely impersonal. He didn't even try to turn them into caresses or anything else. He was doing just what he said he would. Cleaning his wounds. Duo was grateful for that, but at the same time he felt incredibly lonely. He had always been a very touchy-feely person like all the lifebearers were and now he yearned for human touch, for someone to hold him and comfort him. This task always belonged to Solo. But now he didn't dare to ask Heero for something like that. He knew that the Enforcer was a loner, who shied away from the very thing he himself yearned for.
"How did this happen?" Heero asked unexpectedly as he touched a large bruise on Duo's belly.
Duo blinked and turned his head to him. He saw Heero rinse the cloth and start to wash his belly. He moved just above his manhood, where the pubic hair would start if he had been a sire. But as a lifebearer he had very little body hair, his long mane an exception. Duo blushed, but Heero seemed to be unfazed by the whole situation.
When Duo didn't answer his question, Heero looked at him, one eyebrow raised as if he repeated it.
"When... when my father found out that I'm pregnant, he got mad. Really, really mad. You saw that for yourself," Duo started slowly, holding Heero's eyes with his own. Heero nodded. "He tore the clothes off me and started to hit me. I was... I was so afraid that he would kill my child." Duo blinked the tears away again, lying his hands on his slowly drying belly, just over the place where his small baby now rested. "I think he wanted to kill it."
"You could still lose it," Heero warned and his eyes moved to the bruise marred skin of his lower abdomen. Seeing Duo pale horribly, he touched one of his hands and gently squeezed it. "It is a possibility you have to be prepared for. The bruising is pretty massive down here. Did you bleed after he hit you?"
Duo shook his head, his eyes still wide with fear.
"That's good, but we can't know if he didn't cause some damage on the inside."
"So... what can we do?" Duo asked in a small voice.
"Wait. There is nothing we can do besides wait."
Duo shut his eyes tightly, and squeezed Heero's hand he didn't even realize he was holding. Wait... Wait and see if his baby would live or not... The worst situation possible for a lifebearer.
When Heero tried to gently extract his hand out of Duo's, Duo let him go. Heero washed his legs quickly, then Duo heard the wet cloths land in the bowl again. When an unpleasant smell filled the small hut, Duo opened his eyes and looked at Heero. He saw the Enforcer hold a small jar and submerge his fingers in its contents. Noticing Duo's look, Heero explained: "This ointment will help your wounds heal and protect them from infection."
"It smells horrible," Duo noted, and he could swear that Heero's mouth twitched before he scowled at him again.
Slowly, gently, Heero applied the ointment on all of Duo's wounds and the braided boy had to admit that the subtle itching, that he didn't even notice until it was gone, ceased. Duo relaxed.
"Now you have to turn on your side," Heero instructed him in a matter of fact voice as he laid the jar down and started to rinse the cloth in the water.
Duo tensed. He almost asked why again, but then he sighed and turned on his left side, facing the rough wall now. When the warm cloth touched the abrasions on his shoulders, he almost cried out. It burned. But Heero moved quickly, cleaning his wounds efficiently but as gently as possible. When he touched the lifebearer's buttocks, Duo tensed again and clenched his hands in fists. He felt Heero hesitate.
"Duo... Did your father touch you there?" Heero asked quietly,
Duo squeezed his eyes shut, and swallowed, but stayed quiet.
"I need to know if he did any damage. If there are tears in your rectum they could get infected really badly." When Duo still stayed quiet Heero repeated: "I need to know."
Duo swallowed again. "Yes," he whispered. "When... when I didn't get my regular bleeding he... he said he needed to check if I was still a virgin." Duo suspected that Heero nodded at his explanation. It was a well known fact that the lifebearers, when they came of age, bled every month, a sure indication that they were fertile. If the bleeding didn't come, it usually meant one thing: the lifebearer was pregnant. When an uncertainty about the virginity of a lifebearer existed there was an easy way to check - all the lifebearers had a sort of soft membrane inside of them that protected the birthing channel and that got broken during the first intercourse. The channel then closed itself on its own, opening only when the bleeding came, when a child was born or when aroused. Duo bit his lower lip trying to push away the memory of the forced, painful entry of his father's fingers and his rage when he found out.
"I need to check it out," Heero said as quietly as before. "Just relax, okay? I will try to do it as quickly as possible."
Duo took a deep breath and tried to relax as much as he could. It didn't help much though and there was some pain, but Heero was true to his words. Thanks to the lubrication on Heero's fingers, the examination was quick and Heero was much gentler than Duo imagined him to be. When Heero finally cleaned his fingers with a piece of cloth he tore from the wash rag, Duo breathed out shakily. He never, ever wanted to go through something like that again.
"There are no big tears," Heero said after a moment, "just some bruising and swelling. It'll still be better if we keep putting some ointment on it for a while."
Duo groaned silently.
The cleaning then went pretty smoothly, with a small hiss here and there and when Heero finally finished and helped Duo turn back onto his back, the braided boy felt drowsy and on the very edge of sleep. He blinked sleepily at Heero, now a little bit blurry. "Wh't did y' put in t' teee?"
Duo asked, his voice slurring. It had to have been the tea. He had never fallen asleep that quickly.
Heero got up from his kneeling position on the floor, laid the rinsed cloth on Duo's warm forehead, then covered him up with the warm blanket again. He tipped the water out of the bowl in the bucket at the foot of the bed and put the things he used in their proper places. "You need to sleep and gather strength." He then put more wood in the crackling fire in the fireplace to keep the hut warm, buckled his sword to his waist and took his bow and arrows.
Duo watched him from the cozy nest the Enforcer built for him. "Wh'r 're y' goin'?" he asked, and finished his question with a yawn.
"I have work to do. I patrol the borders and I neglected my duty today."
Because of me, Duo mentally finished with the thing Heero didn't say. He really was a burden for the Enforcer. But his mind was too foggy now to think about it.
"I will try to bring us something to eat. Shinigami will protect you while I'm away," he said.
Shini- what? Duo asked himself.
In answer, Heero opened the door and let a large black dog in. If Duo hadn't been half asleep, his eyes would have fallen out of his head. Never had he seen a dog as big as this one.
Heero walked the animal to the bed, and took one of Duo's hands in his and brought it to Shinigami's muzzle. "Friend," he stated clearly, looking the dog in the eyes. Shini sniffed at the new human's hand, then licked it and wagged his tail. "Protect," Heero ordered, not letting the dog's eyes go. He repeated the word two more times before laying Duo's hand back on the covers. Shinigami then looked at Duo who was watching the whole scene with an odd detachment. Whatever Heero put in that tea was really powerful when it finally kicked in. Shinigami wagged his tail at him and showed his sharp white teeth in a dog's version of a smile.
Bow and arrows in one hand, Heero touched Duo's cheeks with the other. "You are still running a low grade fever so stay in bed and sleep. I will make something to eat when I come back. Don't go out of the hut without me. The woods are dangerous here. If you have to go, use the bucket. Don't go outside, I mean it, Duo," Heero repeated, catching Duo's chin and lifting his head, forcing him to tear his eyes from the smiling dog and look at him. "If something happens, send Shinigami after me, he will find me, okay?" When Duo just blinked at him really sleepily, he asked again: "Okay?"
After two more blinks Duo nodded. "'kay."
Heero nodded and turned around. Before he managed to walk out of the hut and close the door behind him, Duo was asleep. Shinigami hopped up on the bed and after he sniffed Duo from head to toe, he laid his head on his new human's abdomen. He had someone to protect.
TBC...
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