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On A Pale Horse
-Death Has a Mossy Aftertaste-

Duo pulled his hand away from his middle and grimaced. His fingers were shiny with a slick red substance. Blood. It was goddamn blood from his goddamn stomach and there was enough of it to paint a wall. This job was supposed to have been easy. It was a cakewalk, a virtual baby mugging, and he had screwed it up somewhere along the line. Screwed it up? Yeah, okay, he'd slaughtered it.

An alarm sounded in the distance. It was too late to do the owners of the stolen property any good at all, but at least the stupid thing went off. Duo cast a look over his shoulder, calculating the distance between his current location and the residence behind him. He had cleared the blast zone but was at least half a mile off course and he was running late. His partner would blow the charges in exactly forty-five seconds. They were supposed to meet up two minutes after the explosion. Duo wasn't going to make it.

"Well, nothin' left to do but hold my guts in and run." The voice fell flat on his ears. That wasn't good. He hiked the rucksack higher on his shoulder, pressed a hand firmly on the bleeding wound and took off.

After a minute, he was on the ground, half-decayed leaves filling his mouth. The sound of the explosion had startled him into tripping over a stray branch. He spat out the mouthful of leaves and then crawled to his knees. That was all he could manage until he worked his way over to a tree and pulled himself back to his feet.

He was not going to die like this. He was not going to die because he was too careless to catch a stupid booby trap before he'd set it off. "Heero wouldn't have set it off." He took a step, his leg crumpled and he landed with a mouthful of the spongy dead fall again. "Wuffers would have dodged the damn bullet." This time it was a struggle to just force his knees under him. "Trowa would have balanced on the trip switch and still wouldn't have tripped the switch. And Quatre..." His hands slipped on the slick undergrowth and he got yet another shot of those tasty leaves. "Quatre would have pulled a Luke Skywalker. This is not me tripping your switch and all that."

He worked the rucksack around so he could fumble out its contents. The book was big. It was at least two feet by one foot by six or seven inches. And it was ugly. Its leather cover was so old it was beginning to crumble to reveal the wood underneath. Duo didn't know what the book was or what the geek freaks wanted with it, but he'd been given a job; snatch the book and hand it off to Heero. So, hand it off he would. He pulled it onto his stomach. When he didn't show up at the rendezvous point Heero would come looking. He was not the sort of person to fail a mission just because his partner was stupid enough to get himself shot.

"Nice job, Maxwell," he mumbled closing his eyes. He swallowed hard and then snickered. It was funny in a way. Shutting his eyes was the only thing he had the energy left to accomplish and it occurred to him that death has a mossy aftertaste. Mmmm... Moss...

"What are you giggling about?" Was that Heero? "You're late, baka."

Duo's eyes popped open. It was Heero. Duo's partner was looming over him with crossed arms and a frown. "Sorry. I ran into a problem."

"Get up. We're moving." Brusque as always.

"Can't."

"Explain," Heero demanded before he reached down and shoved the book to the side. "s**t, Duo." He tapped the hand Duo had pressed to his abdomen and replaced it with his own. "What happened?"

The icy pain Duo had ignored up until this point decided to branch out and tear rends through Duo's entire nerve system. "Damn!" he gasped. "That really hurts."

"How much blood have you lost?" His hands were in constant motion, checking the wound and then tearing fabric from his shirt to use as a bandage.

"About forty gallons. Ow."

"I told you..." The hands stopped momentarily. "You knew I didn't bring my first aid kit."

Oh, he liked that one. As if he'd done this on purpose. "Yeah. From here on out I'll try to schedule all my fatal wounds with your secretary."

"Shut up." He did. Duo had never heard that tone from Heero before. It was almost as if he were upset or something.

Oh, right. The mission. Right now, Duo was making Heero fail his mission. Well, we can't have that. "The book."

"What?"

"The... The thing..." The pain was making it hard to focus, but Duo flailed his hand until it hit the book. "We came here for. It's here. Take it. Go." There he had his orders. He'd go finish the mission.

"I told you to shut up. I'm not leaving you here to die."

The object under Duo's hand jumped. Duo glanced over to the book and then his focus was permanently attached to the pool of blood around the book. It was growing smaller. Duo froze. The book was absorbing it. The book was feeding off of his lifeblood. It jumped again. Duo opened his mouth to scream and the world went black.

A/N: "Italics" is Duo speaking in Standard. No italics mean he's speaking Valdemaren. After this chapter, he should be speaking mostly in Valdemaren, so you've only got to be confused for a short while.


On A Pale Horse
-It's Not All Clicks and Whistles-

Duo screamed his head off for all it was worth. No sound came out. He couldn't move. He couldn't see, but he damn sure remembered what had happened with the book. Just thinking back on the thing gave him a mental shiver and the image of the book sprouting a tongue that lazily lapped at the pool of cooling blood invaded his thoughts. He violently shook that vision away. Well, he would have if shaking were possible. What the hell had G gotten him into this time?

But then again, it didn't matter. He was dead. It was sad that he had to go out in such an uncool way, bleeding to death in the middle of friggin' nowhere. On his list of lamest ways to die, bleeding to death made number three. It was beat out only by old age and falling down the stairs. What happened to his Blaze of Glory? He wanted his Blaze of Glory, goddammit! A guy deserved his Blaze of Glory, didn't he?

"Duo?" The voice was a little melodic and had a sweetness to it that could only belong to a female.

What the hell was invading a guy's perfectly decent death rant?

"Wake up, Duo."

Wake up? But he was already—

Duo's eyes popped open. He was in a small blue room. The single window above the head of the bed was thrown open and a small breeze tickled the edges of a sheer curtain. There was a single chair next to the bed, occupied by a young woman in an emerald green dress. Her expression was one of exhaustion, but her grey eyes sparkled as she smiled down at him.

"Were you the one who woke me up?" His question was met with confusion and a slurry of some language he didn't recognize. When Duo indicated that he didn't understand, the woman jumped up and ran out of the room.

"'Kay. That was kinda weird." That unfamiliar language bothered him. He was positive that he could at least identify any of the 50 or so spoken languages left in the system. He couldn't speak all of them, only about half. Still, that one was completely alien. When he'd snatched the book he was in Germany. Now, Europe had as many languages and dialects as Treize had roses but this still wasn't anything like those. Now, if she'd only come back and talk some more, he might be able to get somewhere.

He struggled to sit up but there was pain in his abdomen from the gunshot wound and his arms were unwilling to cooperate. He managed to use the headboard rails to pull himself upright before the woman entered again, followed by an older man and a woman. The newcomers were dressed in identical white uniforms.

The man was thin as a rail even though he topped both women in the room by at least three heads. He kept his brown hair trimmed short and it was easy to tell that the huge smile that graced his face was a common feature. He said something in that same strange language and then he placed a hand on his chest and said, "Dean Ayden." He gestured to the woman who also placed a hand on her chest. She introduced herself as "Anndreth."

From Duo's position Anndreth looked to be about Trowa's height, but she resembled Relena in many ways. Same light brown hair and blue eyes. Same determination behind those shiny blues. She nodded to Duo and then claimed the empty chair, crossing her legs and leaning forward. "And you are?" she asked.

Duo didn't recognize a word but the meaning was clear so he grinned, pointed to his nose and replied in kind, "Duo Maxwell."

"Doh Mackswell?" Anndreth repeated.

Duo shook his head and pointed to his nose again. "Duo Maxwell. Duo." He pointed to the man, "Dean Ayden," and then the woman, "Anndreth. I learn real quick. Keep talking."

That only served to confuse her so he tried, "Where?" and pushed both palms toward the floor.

"Where?" Anndreth repeated this time in her own language. "Haven."

Haven? Where the hell was Haven? "Haven where?"

Anndreth's jaw dropped for a split second. "Haven is in Valdemar. Where——?" Duo didn't understand the last bit of what she'd said but she'd pointed to him. That was easy enough to decipher.

Now, how to answer? He was on Earth when he passed out and the breeze was direct evidence that he wasn't on a colony. He pointed up. "L2."

She shook her head and turned to Ayden. She said something and then turned back to Duo. "Where did you come from?" she repeated, this time a bit slower.

"Come from L 2," said Duo, just as slowly and pointed to the ceiling again. "You come from Haven in Valdemar." Her jaw dropped again. "Keep talking." He gave them the universal keep going gesture. At least, he hoped it was universal.

This time she seemed to understand.

* * * * * * * * * *

Ayden and Anndreth were patient people. They talked with Duo, teaching him as much as he could handle and correcting his syntax when necessary. Still, it took several hours for Duo to absorb enough Valdemaren to be capable of asking the questions he most wanted answered. The sun had nearly set and Ayden had fetched several candles to light the room.

The candles bothered Duo even more than the unfamiliar language and country name, but not quite as much as the fact that aside from a lot of stiffness and some bruise-like pain his abdomen was completely healed. "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Toto," he muttered.

"Pardon?" asked Ayden setting the last candle in a sconce attached to the wall.

Duo shook his head. "Never mind. Um... It is not."

"It is nothing," provided Anndreth. Duo wasn't positive but she almost had to be a linguist to be able to figure out his mangled attempts as her language.

"Nothing." Duo nodded, filing the new word away in his mental dictionary. "I be here, how much time?"

Ayden corrected his sentence before holding up both hands, fingers splayed and then a single hand with two fingers bent. He counted off his fingers aloud as he did. "Thirteen days."

Two weeks? He'd been unconscious for two weeks? Holy crap. "You're kidding? A joke right? Ha ha." He mimicked laughing.

The man shook his head. "It is no joke. You slept for thirteen days. You were hurt." He indicated Duo's wound. "Very sick."

If he had been missing for two weeks, Heero was going to kill him when he caught up to him. No one ditches Perfect Soldier Boy when on a mission. Well, not without major repercussions. Y'know the ol' omae o korosu. Right back at you buddy! What did Heero do, anyway? Leave him for dead? And he promised that he wouldn't.

Or maybe Duo really had died and this was Hell? He took a moment to look around. Okay, there was no way that this place could be Hell. Heaven maybe? Yeah, right. Shinigami in Heaven. That was about as likely as Wufei standing above a crowd of women, smiling and then revealing his love of all things pink and fluffy. He shook his head. He needed to stay on track.

"Thirteen days. Okay. I get here how?"

Ayden and Anndreth cast each other a glance before Anndreth replied, "That is what we want to know. You were found inside the walls, near the Palace. No person should be able to get that far without being spotted. Did Onette bring you here? She is the one who got help for you even after your heart stopped beating."

Duo only caught half that. "Say again?" The woman repeated herself, describing or pantomiming any new terms. "Who is Onette?"

Anndreth had glared at him as if he'd sprung a second or even a third head and then told him that Onette was his friend. Not that he ever recalled meeting someone with that name.

"My companion she is not," he protested past the glare. "Met her I have not." Anndreth's glare morphed into a blank stare, but Ayden gave him a small smile.

"She is not my Companion. I have not met her," the man said gently before he caught Duo's eyes in a sincere look. "Duo, what do you know of Valdemar?"

"Nothing," he admitted immediately. "I know of Valdemar not—I do not know of Valdemar." Duo knew the location of every satellite of Earth and had a map of the entire planet in his brain. Valdemar was not on it. Suddenly, he didn't feel so well.

"Where do you come from? Where is Eretoo?"

"L 2," Duo corrected. It was only fair. "Far away. Too god dammed far away."

A/N: "Italics" is Duo speaking in Standard. "No italics" mean he's speaking Valdemaren. :Colons and Italics: indicate Mindspeech. Whoops! Looks like the legend keeps growing. Sorry about that.


On A Pale Horse
-When Animals Attack-

The first part of Duo's plan involved acquiring something a bit more appropriate in the way of clothing. The hospital gown he was wearing, while considerably more substantial than any he'd woken up in before, was still a hospital gown that barely hit his knees. In fact, in it Duo looked like an adolescent child using his older brother's hand-me-down as a nightshirt. The whole look was topped off by his tousle-headed, bare footedness.

Padding down the still corridor, searching for anything resembling a storage closet, Duo rounded a corner and practically slammed into a crowd of chattering teens dressed in light green. These people sure loved their uniforms. Green must be for doctors and the light green for students. Ayden had mentioned something about a school, but Duo couldn't decipher much else of that particular run-on paragraph. He escaped detection only because the group was too busy chatting, yawning and rubbing sleepy eyes to notice the escaped patient before he jumped back into the empty hallway. Reversing his route eventually led him to a set of double doors that were propped open by a couple of white marble doorstops in the shape of horses.

The new wing was quieter than the one his room was located in, but as he passed by a closed door he could make out the cadence of a lecture. The voice was too muffled, and Duo's grasp of Valdemaren too weak, for him to make out more than a few words, but the teacher was enthusiastic enough to make Duo wish at least some of the school's he'd attended had faculty as impassioned as the man behind that door. It wouldn't have mattered if he cared or didn't care about the subject; he would have been drawn into the learning environment and maybe not slept through more than half of his classes. That type of teaching produced an infectious knowledge.

With a shake of his head he moved on. The next several rooms were empty and he soon came upon a copy of the previous double doors. These ones were closed so Duo pushed through them and tried the first door on his left. It proved to be a bathroom. Literally. There were three rows of bathtubs through the center of the room and the far end was taken up mostly by a large copper water heater. Duo winced at the primitive plumbing, not because he disapproved of having hot water in which to bathe, but because it proved his nagging suspicion that returning home was an impossibility. His home colony had more sophisticated equipment than this place did and it was the poorest of any of Earth's satellites. This place was so far from home it was like another universe entirely. Hell, it was probably another dimension.

But Duo had no time for self-pity. There was hot water and fluffy towels waiting and with the enthusiastic class going on down the hall he'd have a few minutes to make use of both. Snatching a towel, he noticed that there were two stacks of the pale green uniforms he'd seen on the teenagers in the hallway earlier. It made it almost too easy.

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Freshly cleaned and changed—though he'd still have to do something about footgear later—Duo pushed his way out into the warm morning air. The sun was shining directly in his face and as soon as he exited the building he had the distinct feeling that someone was watching him. He squinted against the blaring light. Straight ahead there was a shadow looming in the sun glare. An arm automatically raised to shield his vision when—

:You're wearing the wrong color.:

"Yeah," he began, still squinting hard, trying to force the shadow to become a clear image. "But I couldn't find anything bla—" He froze. Whoever spoke had done so in Standard.

The figure ahead stepped forward—each step chiming like a bell—and blocked out enough of the sun for Duo to get his first look at the owner of the voice. Duo's heart thumped hard and he fell back against the door. It was a horse, a huge, white monstrosity of a horse. Now, Duo was an artificial boy. He grew up in a fabricated world with simulated sunlight, synthesized weather and recycled air. It was only after descending to Earth that he learned a valuable lesson: Duo and wildlife had a tendency to disagree—violently—on all things. His mind flashed to many a night he'd spent under the cover of trees that he'd been beaten, bashed, bitten and generally assaulted simply because the local fauna had decided that they didn't want him around. It didn't matter what type of animal it was: squirrels, birds, mice, rats, wolves—that had been a horror filled night—, skunks, cute wittle itty bitty bunny-wabbits all hated him. Now, he was facing down an animal that was easily twice his size with a jaw span that he was positive could engulf his own head and hooves that gleamed like polished gundanium razor blades.

The horse snickered—could horses snicker?—and took another step forward. Duo cowered against the solid wood of the door behind him, squeezing his eyes shut. The fearsome creature snickered again and then wuffed in his ear. Duo heard himself squeak. It was a pitiful mewling sound.

Wait a minute! Wait just one god damned minute. Duo does not squeak. He's Shinigami. He's Death. He makes others squeak.

Duo swallowed his heart back into its proper position, faced his tormentor and, as ridiculous as it sounded, opened his mouth to give the horse a piece of his mind. He didn't count on immediately getting trapped in a sapphire-blue gaze.

His first thought was, "Heero?" His second, "Oh, my."

The feeling that engulfed him could only be described as pure, undiluted love and acceptance. It was a heat that reached down into his cold inner being, down into the areas filled with guilt, loneliness and self-loathing and it warmed them. It went far beyond anything Duo ever felt before and he allowed himself to drown in the sensation until a voice called him back to the surface.

:I Choose you. I've waited eons for you so don't even think about running away.:

With a start, Duo found himself with his arms clamped desperately around the horse's neck, tears pouring down both cheeks. He turned his face into her silky mane, ashamed of his inability to cease his weeping. The torrent of tears wore themselves out after a few moments and aside from the embarrassment, he felt wonderful.

"Don't tell anyone about this," he mumbled. "I'll never live it down." The idea of talking to a horse didn't bother him as much as it probably should have. This was a guy who frequently had long conversations with a mobile suit; talking to a horse—a living creature—had to be an improvement in his mental state.

: Oh, don't worry,: the horse began with a hint of amusement in her voice, :I intend to hold this over your head until I can make use of it.:

Duo couldn't help but smile as he pushed himself away and tapped her nose with a forefinger. "You really are an evil, evil creature."

:Aren't I, though?:

Oh, he liked her. She was someone he would have absolutely no trouble getting along with, a perfect companion. His Companion. "You're Onette."

:See, I knew you weren't just a pretty face.:

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Tehlin maintained a rapid pace, remaining silent until they had put a good bit of ground between the training field and themselves. When they were clearly out of earshot, he slowed to a stroll and spoke up. "These dreams, what does he see in them?"

Simaree hesitated a moment, trying to assemble her thoughts into a coherent, cohesive whole. She really hadn't learned anything else about the visions from Alaen since that first confession. The kid had taken to dodging her and her questions at every turn. Half of the time he'd notice her approach and, not bothering to conceal his actions, turn and run off in the opposite direction. The other half of the time he gave her lame excuses and ran off in the opposite direction. And the few times she managed to corral him, he just stared at the ground and told her that he was fine and the dreams had gone away.

But he wasn't fine. He walked hunched over, his face was either flushed beet red or drained to the color of fresh snow and he was startled by every little sound. He was avoiding her and he wasn't talking to his friends. He wasn't confiding in anyone and that was making her just as flustered as the Dean was.

"The dreams all revolve around a boy who calls himself Death, but Alaen used a different word for the name and then translated it. Shimmi- Shimmilani or something. He says this boy flies around from village to village destroying them and killing everything in his wake. There was also something about guardian statues that defend against this Death kid, but I'm not really sure what that bit was about either."

She came to a stop, sure that Tehlin was about to tell her to get herself back to the nursery until she could stop whining like a baby over inconsequential matters. She kept her gaze fixed on the Armsmaster's back until he noticed she wasn't beside him and turned to face her.

Before that deprecating command could leave his lips she delivered her defense. "I know it sounds ridiculous. I know I'm taking up your valuable time, but..." So much for a defense. This was not helping her at all. "You didn't see the look on his face. He was panicked." Tehlin held up a hand, but Simaree ignored it and plunged onward. "And when he mentioned the dream, the only thing I could think was 'Foresight.' And I tried to talk to Dean Ayden about it but he's always out. And—"

"I believe you."

"—it's just so, so irritating! And—Huh?" The girl came up short, mouth flapping like a fish. "I— You— What?"

"I said I believe you, so stop jumping to conclusions." Simaree flushed a little. Tehlin was right, she wasn't being fair to him. "You did exactly what you should have."

She was hit by sense of relief so profound it brought tears to her eyes. Finally, someone was going to help Alaen. "What should I do, sir?"

"We," he caught her eye, "Are going to collect young Alaen and then we're all going to see Ayden."

"Thank you, sir." It was inadequate, but it was all she could think of to say.