[the forsaken]

Title: The Forsaken
Author: Link Worshiper
Pairings: 1=2, maybe some others if I feel like it
Rating: PG-13
Stuff: Fantasy AU, fluff, sap, language, adventure, WoW nerdiness
Disclaimer: I own Gundam Wing action figures? Warcraft and its lore belongs to Blizzard Entertainment. Both things are being played with out of fangirl love.

Thanks to danse and Natea for the once over. Despite the fact this is part of Natea's birthday present, I still needed her to fill me in on the Alliance history they don't teach us on Horde, so thanks for that also =P

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Part XI
The Stonewrought Dam

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By the time the trio reached the edge of the wetlands and the safety of its tree-lined pathways, twilight had given way to inky darkness. Heero was starting to feel the weight of the day's march on his shoulders, but he knew there was no way that Trowa was going to sacrifice the cover of night for his benefit, so he settled for munching on a small loaf of bread instead as they lingered in the shadows, deliberating what to do next.

Beyond the trees stood the enormous dam that held the loch back, controlling the flow of the water from the lake above with a series of regulated waterfalls. It was another testament to dwarven ingenuity and a monument of times ages past. Just standing near it was enough to remind Heero how truly small he was, and, while Duo and Trowa continued to bicker about which way they should approach the Badlands, Heero was left to ponder, not for the first time since they'd started, whether or not this entire endevour would prove worthwhile. He was just one person, and not a king, or even a prince; how could he ever hope to stand in the way of an ambitious man like Milliardo Wrynn?

"We should come around the eastern bank," Trowa was saying, practically shouting to be heard over the thundering waterfalls. "Then we can be sure to avoid Thelsamar and any Allies that might be lurking there."

But Duo was shaking his head throughout Trowa's suggestion, though. "It is but a small town, and it's must faster to travel down the western bank," he shouted back. "We are heading to Kargath, are we not?"

"I wouldn't know!" snapped Trowa; "You've been extremely close-mouthed about what we are even doing down in these parts, aside from escorting your human pet back to Stormwind. I don't see why we're even walking at all!"

Duo chose not to even get into an argument with Trowa about whether or not the Undercity giant bat handler would have allowed more than one person to ride one of his precious mounts, especially if one of them was clearly not part of the Horde. Instead, he cut to the heart of it: "Because, if you've forgotten, I also told the human I'd help him get rid of his curse in exchange for one of Stormwind's treasures," he reminded Trowa tartly. "And to do that, the first thing I need is a blade forged of the strongest metal we can find, which, in these parts, would be thorium - and there's loads of it just south of here."

"I still don't see why you're so adamant to help him," Trowa grumbled to himself, irately tugging at Heavypaw's mane.

Duo blithely ignored the elf and turned to Heero, surprising him with a question about his opinion on the matter. Heero, who had only been half paying attention to what seemed like a typical argument between Trowa and Duo, was startled and unsure what to say.

"It boils down to efficiency or precaution," Duo summed up, raising his voice even louder to reach Heero's ears.

It didn't take long for Heero to come up with an answer. "The western bank," he said with a shrug, privately enjoying the irate look that crossed Trowa's face as he spoke. "If our next destination is indeed that Horde outpost in the Badlands, then it is the natural decision. Besides," he added, growing more confident as he continued, "there is nothing for me to fear in Thelsamar."

"Well, aren't you lucky," Trowa groused, clearly not pleased that he was being challenged on both sides. "What a shame it is we all can't be afforded the same luxury."

Duo interjected before Trowa had a chance to get too much more out of hand. "So it's settled, then," he said, waving Trowa off like a miscreant fly. "We'll climb up the dam and travel down the loch's western bank." Rubbing his palms together, he grinned a dastardly grin, eyes glimmering in the darkness. "Let's get started then, shall we?"

Duo had barely whirled in the proper direction when Trowa voiced his opinion yet again, his voice far more firm than it had been before: "I still am not at ease with this," he said staunchly, as if he were issuing a decree. "I still think that it would be more prudent to avoid any Alliance villages at all costs."

Halfway through one of the small rivulets that fed into the wetlands, Duo splashed back around to face Trowa. "As we head towards the biggest Alliance village of all," he sighed with an unmistakable twinge of sarcasm. He marched right back up to Trowa and straightened, trying to measure up to Trowa's stature as best he could. "Look, you're either with us or not," he said, jabbing a skeletal finger into the center of Trowa's chest, "and we're going down the western bank!"

Trowa's mouth quivered wordlessly for a few moments before he finally retorted, "Fine! And I will go down the eastern bank." He let the meaning of what he said sink in on Duo, and a small grin tugged his lips as he added, "Don't expect me to play cavalry when you get held up around Thelsamar." With that, he turned his back on Duo and started to head in the opposite direction, Heavypaw at his heels.

Duo stood defiantly in place as he watched Trowa head towards the eastern side of the dam, his expression tight and unreadable, despite the show he'd been putting on earlier. "Smug bastard," he muttered to himself.

Hearing him from his spot a few paces off, Heero volunteered a small sympathy. "If it makes you feel better," he said, his tone frank as usual, "my friend, Quatre - that priest Trowa's been talking to - has a particular way of putting such 'smug bastards' in their proper place."

His expression tweaking a bit, Duo glanced over at Heero and asked with a suspicious nod, "What makes you so sure he could manage one like Trowa?"

At this, Heero couldn't help but let a small chuckle escape his lips as he replied, "Well, he managed to cull me."

The assurance was more than Duo could have asked for.

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So massive was the loch, it seemed as if the entire star-speckled sky fit within the confines of its banks as Trowa rounded the eastern edge. The surface of the water was perfectly still, despite the flow of the dam's waterfalls that channeled immeasurable amounts of it to the basin below, and he felt a sense of peace in this newfound solitude. He hadn't meant to argue with Duo before, and he trusted that Duo was smart enough to take care of himself, so he stopped concerning himself with it and instead took the moment to enjoy this brief reprieve from his companions. It wasn't until he was on his own again that he realized how tense he had been for the last few days.

It satisfied him only briefly, however, for it didn't take long for a spell of loneliness to set in. Duo and his impulsive scheme to help that damned human might have been ridiculous, even obnoxious at times, but that haphazard attitude was one of the things Trowa liked best about his friend. Even the human, hesitant as he was to admit it, had a few respectable qualities here and there. He thought about his initial intrigue when the whole situation had been presented to him, and he suddenly found himself remembering why he'd wanted to come along at all. Idly, he reached for Heavypaw and stroked his fur, murmuring, "At least you are always here for me, friend." He sighed as Heavypaw let out a contented purr, wishing the lion could speak the languages of men.

The thought of conversation found Trowa's hand wandering towards his hip pouch, where he kept Quatre's owl charm. When he realized what he was doing, however, he quickly chomped down on his lower lip and quickly pinned his hand behind his back. It wouldn't do to make the priest think he relied on him, especially after that comment Duo had made earlier.

Resolutely, he marched forward, a tight frown marking his features. Peacefulness was certainly a lonely affair.

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Quiet also fell on the western bank as Heero and Duo progressed on their own way. Unsure of what he should say, or if he even ought to say anything at all, Heero spent the time feeling anxious that Duo would mark it as yet another thing he found insufficient about him. Duo, on the other hand, was actually just reveling in the fact that they seemed to be enjoying what seemed to be a rather comfortable silence together. Even including Trowa, he hadn't been able to feel that way around anybody in quite some time.

That sense of comfort was particularly telling by the fact that Duo was able to easily speak his mind when a whimsical thought passed through his mind. "Do you think we're ahead of Trowa?" he wondered, peering into the distance as if he were searching for a sign of movement across the loch, despite the fact that it was impossible to see the other bank from where they stood. He let out a raspy sigh when he realized this.

Heero barely glanced at the water, too busy watching Duo for some kind of sign that might indicate where he was going with this particular train of thought. He wondered what it meant that he only saw Duo as he usually was, his corpse slightly hunched over as he leaned heavily on his staff, lackadaisical, and impossible to read. Considering the slightly guarded way the warlock still carried himself around Trowa, who was his old friend, the easygoing attitude made Heero suspicious that it was all some kind of ruse to lure him into a false sense of security.

"I mean, it is longer, but after a couple hundred years of gallivanting through the woods, Trowa is a very fast runner," Duo continued to muse, knitting his leathery brow. He let out a hoarse chuckle, adding, "The years certainly have been kinder to his body - and his face - than they have mine."

"You look well enough for someone who's dead," Heero found himself saying before he had a chance to stop himself. Flustered, he swallowed when he noticed the comment had garnered Duo's yellowed gaze. "Or certainly no better than you surely did when you were alive," he tried to amend, though it didn't do much to rescind what he'd said. Frustrated, he said rather crossly, "Not that it even matters. Why do you care if he's ahead of us or not?"

"Because we're competing," Duo answered as if it were obvious, though he couldn't stop the smirk teasing his torn lips.

"Is that what it is," Heero muttered under his breath.

"It is," Duo insisted with a note of finality, straightening as much as his misaligned spine would allow him to.

Heero grunted and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "Well, if I had a hundred years to live, I'm still not sure it would be enough time for me to ever quite understand you," Heero retorted flatly, crossing his arms.

"At least you would be trying," answered Duo, turning south with a swoosh of his violet robes, claiming the final word as his.

Heero trotted after the warlock, brooding over this last exchange and what to make of it. The silence that had settled between them earlier returned with Heero's anxiety. He wasn't sure what he wanted Duo to say or do in order to ease his uncertainty, a thought that once again left him concerned as to why it even mattered. He told himself it probably had to do with his newfound doubts regarding how necessary animosity between the Alliance and the Horde really was, but the excuse sounded poor to even his desperate conscience.

It was somewhere during that particular thread of thought that Heero heard a sharp snap behind him, like someone stepping on a twig. He jolted and whirled around, narrowing his eyes at the empty landscape before slowly turning back and berating himself for being so edgy. The second time he heard the same noise, his eyes darted every which way, certain that he couldn't be imagining things.

It was then that he noticed a presence next to him, and he would have startled if the dwarf that had suddenly appeared beside him hadn't reached up to give his belt a sturdy yank, a wordless signal to keep quiet. With another motion, he gestured for Heero to bend his ear closer as he whispered, "Ye be needin' some 'elp dispatchin' that ghoul, there?" The dwarf's eyes darted forward, settling on Duo's back.

Heero blinked in surprise at the dwarf, unsure of how to respond. It wasn't until he realized that the pint-sized man was wearing a tabard decorated in Alliance blue and gold that he made the connection that he was a Thelsamar guardsman and that they had accidentally wandered closer to the town's borders than they'd intended to. Then it dawned upon him that the soldier had probably made the obvious assumption that he was following Duo not because they were traveling companions, but because he was trying to ambush him from behind. Hastily, he whispered back, "It's not what it looks like."

The dwarf furrowed his thick, red eyebrows, frowning. "And wot's tha' mean, rogue?"

"It means what I said," Heero hissed. He glanced up at Duo, who was still a good fifty paces ahead, and prayed that he hadn't taken notice of the commotion behind him.

Though the expression on the dwarf's face was mostly hidden behind his bushy beard, it was clear that he was suspicious of the answer. He glanced at Duo as well, and then back at Heero. Then he put a pair of stubby fingers into his mouth and whistled loudly, alerting not only Duo, but a small brigade of dwarven gunners, who had been hiding amid the rocks. "I'll ask ye again," said the dwarf beside Heero, his voice much more deadly-sounding now, "wot's the meanin' o'all this?"

"Don't say a word, Heero," Duo ordered, reaching into his robes to fetch his wand as he stalked back towards the rogue. He had barely pulled it from the depths of his sleeve, when a shot rang out, snapping the wand from Duo's fingers with a lead bullet that only narrowly missed Duo's hand. It smoked menacingly in the grass just behind the warlock, who was glaring into the darkness and cursing the gunner's marksmanship.

"Has he takin' ye prisoner, boy?" the dwarf exclaimed, his fists already clenching in predisposed anger. He grabbed Heero's belt again, shaking one of those fists at Duo as he cried, "Well, ye won't be givin' any sort o' commands to one o' mine anymore, ye blighted abomination!"

Now very annoyed, Heero gave the dwarf a push, disengaging him from his person. "I told you it wasn't what you thought," he snapped, very much at the edge of his patience. "We're just passing through, so if you'll let us go about our business peacefully, we'll be on our way."

But the dwarf was staring at Heero with wide eyes and a slack jaw. "Dinnae tell me that ye be allies with tha'... tha' thing!" he gaped, extending a quivering finger towards Duo.

"It is of no consequence to you what the nature of our relationship is," answered Heero, unimpressed by this meaningless row with the dwarf.

"Nay, I be thinkin' 'tis," said the dwarf, crossing his arms resolutely, glaring up at Heero from beneath his thick eyebrows. "Because if ye be consortin' with th' 'Orde, laddie, I'll have to assume ye to be some kind of spy." His voice became grim as he added, "An' we dun take well t'spies in these 'ere parts."

Standing his ground, Heero let out a defiant grunt of acknowledgement and nothing more for the time being. Inwardly, however, his mind was frantically clicking through all sorts of hastily concocted plans in an effort to find one that would effectively free them from this mess. He felt a bit muddled by the task, frustrated that years of training seemed to have been so easily replaced by the moralistic battle he'd been engaged in as of late. He glanced at Duo, hoping that he would find something in the warlock's face that might give him some sort of inspiration, but was only further disappointed.

"Laddie...." The dwarf's tone was the cautionary sort.

Heero then turned his focus back on the fiery-haired dwarf, trying hard to ignore the fact that there were no less than six other dwarves with muskets all trained on either him or Duo. His lips parted to speak, at first without any sound, until the necessity of the situation left him fibbing with a sincerity even the most well practiced liars could only dream about.

"Listen," Heero said flatly, dropping to one knee and speaking in a harsh whisper. His eyes darted back and forth, as if he was going to tell the dwarf something very secret. "If you want to know the whole of it, then I suppose I have no choice." His dark blue irises flicked up at Duo, who was watching the situation unfold with a very cool frown adorning his mangled lips, and then continued, unhindered: "We are spies, yes, but of the Scarlet Crusade. The warlock has been... bought... so that we might soon learn how and when to strike at the Undercity and snuff out the Dark Lady Catalonia once and for all."

The dwarf pursed his lips, scrutinizing Heero as if he was trying to decide whether or not he believed him. At length, he said, "Aye, I'll buy it ye if ye kin show me some proof."

Inwardly, Heero grimaced, a little uncertain of how things might proceed if it came to this, but it was too late to back out now. Resolutely, he stood and strode confidently towards Duo, grasping his fleshy arm by the wrist and rolling up his sleeve to reveal the Scarlet crest that was seared into Duo's chalky skin. Duo gasped in horror, only able to curb his outrage because of his overwhelming shock.

Shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other, his arms still crossed over his chest, the dwarf finally acquiesced, "Alrigh', I'll believe ye - for now." He motioned for the other dwarves to stow their weapons and walked over towards Heero and Duo. "I'll let ye pass through town, but only if ye stay th' night. I want some real time to muddle over wot ye be claimin' here. Because I'd 'ate ta think that I'd let friends of th' Horde leave me sights alive," he added with that deadly edge, only to immediately follow up in a much more jovial manner: "An' I'd 'ate even more so ta think I let friends go the night without a meal an' a bed." The loud guffaw that came after his comment didn't do much to assure Heero that his impulsive plan would succeed.

With that, the dwarf guardsman motioned for the pair of them to follow and called his company to fall in line behind them. They marched quickly to Thelsamar, which was nestled between some hills about a league away from where the dwarves had found the pair of travelers. It was a typical dwarven town, with buildings that were cut into the sides of cliffs and wound their way deep underground. Heero and Duo were escorted into the town's inn and down to the most subterranean room the establishment had to offer.

"Make ye'selves at 'ome, and I'll be sendin' sommat down fer ye to eat," the red-haired dwarf said from the doorway. "If ye be needin' somefin', just 'oller." He closed the door gently, though the series of clicks that came after denoted the turn of a key in the lock. Just outside, the dwarf could be heard muttering to another: "Be keepin' a tight eye on this lot. Even if 'ee is who 'ee says, the Scarlets be no less o' a threat to us than a' army o' orcs."

"A' least they won't be runnin' to yon warchief wi' news o' anythin' they find 'round 'ere," said the other dwarf, presumably the one who would be left outside their nightly accommodation.

"Aye," sighed the first dwarf. "A' least there's that."

Heero was staring at the door, a bit surprised that they had actually bothered to lock them into the room. However, spending the night in an inn with a real bed, even under surveillance, sure beat finding comfort on uneven dirt and pebbles, so he was quick to shrug it off. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, which had a frame hewn of heavy oak and a hand quilted duvet thrown over its down mattress, he tossed off his cloak and started working on his boot buckles.

Meanwhile, however, Duo was standing on the other side of the room, glowering at Heero with ferocious eyes and balled fists. When he couldn't keep his anger bottled any longer, he finally snapped, "I can't believe you!"

Heero stopped halfway through pulling off one of his boots to look up at Duo, a look of genuine confusion on his face. "Can't believe what?" he wondered aloud. "I got us out of a real cockup. We're lucky they didn't kill us on sight."

At first, Duo didn't even say anything, and instead just pulled up his sleeve to reveal the Scarlet mark on his forearm, which was quivering with rage. "We'll be lucky if they don't kill us now," he wheezed in a low voice so that the dwarf standing guard outside the room wouldn't hear. "Do you even know what this means?"

Heero merely stared back at the warlock as if he were stupid.

Heero's silence was of no consequence, for Duo didn't wait long for Heero to say anything before taking his turn once more. "It is no mere initiation mark," the hissed tirade continued; "The Scarlets brand only their most fanatic and loyal members with an emblem like this - those who belong to the Scarlet Onslaught. Those, who, in life, were..." his voice started to strangle, falling into an even harsher whisper. "Those who were like me."

Despite the gravitas of such a revelation, Heero still was only able to stare back at Duo with indifference. To Heero's logical rational, learning such a thing was hardly a surprise, considering that Duo had already told him that he had been heavily affected by the death of his older brother at the hands of the Scourge. That Duo had been aggrieved enough to make the voyage to Northrend and pledge himself to the most zealous wing of the Scarlet faction was actually probably something he should have already guessed.

"Well, don't you see?" Duo snapped, abruptly yanking his huge sleeve back down to conceal the mark. "If that dwarf knows anything at all about the Onslaught, he'll know you for a liar. And if he knows enough to figure that, he'll want us dead for it."

"You can't be certain of that," Heero finally said, unimpressed by Duo's speech. "All you've managed to convince me of is that your irrationality is akin to what one would expect of someone who would so impulsively join a brigade like that."

Duo snorted, turning his back on Heero as he shook his bony hand in an effort to get Asahi to crawl out. "Well, you've managed to convince me that your ability to empathize has been put so high up on the shelf, you couldn't reach it even if you had the help." He gave his arm a very powerful flick, which sent Asahi flying from the depths of his sleeve and across the room. Stooping, he flattened his skeletal fingers against the wooden floor so that he could scoop Asahi up when the roach came skittering back. "Especially if it means putting down your damn pride for a minute," he grumbled to his pet.

The clunk of Heero's boot against one of the walls startled Duo into turning around again. Heero was staring straight at the black streak his boot had left on the stone upon impact, his shoulders quaking with rage. Duo got to his feet and slowly turned around with Asahi bouncing in his cupped, bony palm.

"I'm tired... of you... always making these... assumptions... about me!" Heero bit out between clenched teeth. He finally set his steely gaze on Duo, adding angrily, "Like you know me!" He got up and strode confidently towards Duo, grabbing a fistful of Duo's robes, growling, "You don't know me."

Unexpectedly, it was that dangerous smirk that found its way to Duo's face. "On the contrary," he drawled. "I rather think I know you very, very well." He arched his eyebrows and shrugged, "Not that it's all that hard. As I've said, you're just as you always were."

Heero gave Duo a hearty rattle. "As if you have any idea who I might have once been."

Duo let out a tiny chuckle: "Heh, I'm fairly sure I might know that better than even you." He puffed his chest out, causing Heero to stumble back a little, and jabbed a meaty finger under Heero's chin. "Poor, lonely, little Heero, growing up all by himself in Dalaran," Duo crooned mockingly. "Only one friend, who, try as he might, always seemed to fail at getting Heero to play nice with the other children. Ohh, poor Heero, too oblivious to be a part of the world around him, even when it was foisted upon him at such an early, early age...." Duo clucked deridingly, shaking his head like a dissatisfied teacher.

For Heero, this was going just one step too far, and, in a blind rage, he yanked on Duo's robes in an effort to throw him to the ground. He might have succeeded if Duo hadn't had the wherewithal to shrug out of the garment, leaving the rogue holding an empty robe aloft like a coat tree left standing in the middle of the room. But the trick wasn't enough to phase Heero or his ire. He threw down the purple robe and continued to stalk towards Duo, who was now backed up against the side of the bed, dressed only in a shirt, cloak and trousers. Still, Duo would not be moved by Heero's dissatisfaction, and was only prompted to egg him on further.

"Silence!" roared Heero a bit too loudly, shoving Duo backwards and sending him toppling back onto the mattress. He leapt after him, straddling the warlock's hips as he raised his fist menacingly. "How dare you talk about my childhood like that," he growled, ready to give Duo the beat down of a lifetime and hardly caring of how dishonourable such a thing would be. "You weren't there; you don't know what I was like when I was growing up! You don't know the things I struggled with: the things I had - what I lost!"

Giving in to his frustration, Heero let his fist descend upon Duo. The punch never met its mark, though, for just as Heero's knuckles were about to connect with Duo's nose, the warlock reached up and blocked with his fleshy hand. Releasing Asahi from his skeletal grip, Duo then reached up with his other hand to turn the tables and force Heero onto his back, which he managed after only a modest bit of wrestling. Looming over Heero on all fours as he pinned him down, Duo retorted, "Wrong again, my prince. I was there. After all, I knew Dalaran in my youth as well."

Heero would have let some other string of angry words fly from his mouth if he hadn't noticed something else that far superceded the argument in every way. Just over his face, dangling from a chain about Duo's neck, glinted a medallion shaped into the emblem of Dalaran's Kirin Tor mages. But more importantly than that, this particular medallion was slightly misshapen by a deep scar, as though a knife had been driven through the center of it, and it was then that Heero made a startling realization. He took his eyes away from the medallion and refocused them on Duo, unable to believe that he never before recognized the face he thought only existed in his memory.

"Heero?" Duo questioned, wondering why Heero was now looking at him as if he were staring at a ghost.

But Heero wasn't listening, too lost in the whirlwind of emotions that had suddenly kicked up inside his chest. Instead, he could only reach up to touch the leathery flesh of Duo's face as he whispered, "By the Light, it's you...."

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