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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Chapter XXII
Pride

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King Milliardo Wrynn considered himself one of the greatest kings in human history, and though he would never admit it aloud, thought that the orcish attack that had nearly destroyed Stormwind had actually strengthened it by handing him the crown in the wake of the disaster. His father, the high general of the Alliance's armies, had been the younger of two brothers, the eldest of whom had been the reigning monarch when the maddened orcs had descended upon the city, thus leaving Milliardo next in line to rule when the royal family had been lost. Being raised by a man who valued discipline, strategy and cunning had created nothing less than supreme ambition in Milliardo, and he liked to think that choices he made on his own behalf were no different or less important than choices he made for the good of Stormwind and the rest of the Alliance.

It was because of this mentality that he was deeply troubled by the disappearance of Heero Yuy and the Epyon Sigil. For as long as Heero was missing, the harder it was for him to keep an eye on the only person that could possibly jeopardize his reign, not only because of the power he carried in the stolen relic, but because of the blood that flowed through his veins. His only consolation was that Heero was an obedient sort that didn't question much and was none the wiser that he was actually born to be king of the Alliance.

Brooding on such a topic made Milliardo remember the first time he'd seen Heero since the orc invasion, brought in for an audience with him by one of his advisors. Standing before the very throne upon which Milliardo sat now, Heero was an almost uncanny image of his dead mother; Milliardo had endured the audience on complete edge, panicked that someone else would call Heero's likeness to the former queen to attention. It was with the greatest of relief that he admitted Heero into his secret guild of rogues without incident, glad that he was able to bury the potential problem before it even became an issue. At least, that had been his feeling until Heero had failed to return from his mission to retrieve the sigil from the dirty hands of the Horde. With any luck, he's been long since killed, he thought with a rather dark frown; For the good of the Alliance.

He was jarred from his musing when a herald suddenly entered the rotunda, his face a little twitchy from some unidentifiable nervousness. He was so discomforted that he didn't even wait for Milliardo to grant him permission to speak, instead launching into a rather rambling discourse that would have left the king annoyed has his announcement not been of such a serious nature.

"M-Milord Milliardo Wrynn," he began with a tremble in his voice; "Announcing H-His Highness, T-Trowa Sunbender, Prince of Silverm-moon, and L-Lord of Quel-thalas." He then dropped a most awkward bow and quickly backed away from the dais upon which Milliardo's throne stood to clear the way for the entering guest.

Milliardo rose from the throne, and all the soldiers in the room immediately stood at attention as another pair of footmen appeared in the doorway, flanking none other than the blood elf prince that had been announced moments before. Milliardo was severely discomforted by this unexpected arrival, especially now that he was face to face with one who had shunned the Alliance. He had no idea why Trowa was there or how he had arrived without anyone even noticing, but he kept a cool disposition despite his concerns. "Welcome to Stormwind, good prince," he greeted the elf genially, though he remained locked in his stiff posture. "How might I serve you this day?"

Trowa's posture was lackadaisical as he stroked his pet lion's mane. He wore that smug face that spoke nothing but disdain for Milliardo and his kingdom. "You might find me a chair and something to eat," he said casually. "My journey has been long and my feet, light as they are, still require rest."

Despite his wont to deny this request, Milliardo snapped his fingers and sent a pair of lurking servants scurrying to accommodate Trowa. His displeasure was beginning to show in the shape of his mouth, but he worked to keep himself poised. "Why have you come to Stormwind this day, Prince Sunbender?" he asked directly, knowing that they could dance around with formalities all day and get nowhere.

A dark shadow suddenly cast itself across Trowa's face, though the smirk remained. "Did you think you could steal from me and go unchecked for it?" he asked, taking on a more serious tone.

Milliardo balked, but still managed to smoothly reply, "I am not sure I follow...."

Trowa allowed Milliardo no quarter, snapping impatiently, "A fragment of a dangerous relic was entrusted to me and snatched from my care in the night. Don't think I'm so ignorant that I don't know of your plot to steal that very sigil for your own selfish purposes."

Lifting his hands to show that they were empty, Milliardo said, "You will find no such treasure here."

"I am aware of it," said Trowa with a casual shrug. Before Milliardo had a chance to ask, Trowa intercepted the question: "And I know this because I stumbled upon your plot just as it was starting to come to fruition, taking your wayward rogue thief as my prisoner."

Milliardo's eyes narrowed, unsure how much Trowa actually knew and worried he might be in the midst of some kind of verbal trap. At the same time, it concerned him that Trowa had specifically labeled his captive as a rogue: it would account for Heero's mysterious disappearance, though the fact it had taken him this long to realize such a thing was disconcerting. To be honest, he would have rather heard that Heero was, indeed, dead. That had been his hope from the moment he'd sent Heero out on such a foolhardy quest in the first place.

Quickly clearing his throat to accommodate for his delay in their banter, Milliardo quickly asked, "And what does bringing this to my attention win you, Prince Sunbender?"

"Vengeance," answered Trowa, hardly able to cull the excitement of owning the upper hand. "You found any excuse you could to prolong the exile of my people and turned your back on them, so now I have returned with machinations to make your own schemes crumble under their own weight." He took an ambitious step forward, swinging his arm to the side as his speech grew more impassioned: "I know where the rogue is and what he's done - what you commanded him to do. And if you do not come forward to help the high elves of Azeroth survive, I will betray your intentions to those who would see the Alliance crushed into dust."

Realizing that his ruse of ignorance wasn't fooling the elfin prince, Milliardo sat down on his throne and assumed a strong position of authority as he answered sharply. "Have you come here just to insult me?" he said, not about to let Trowa dictate things in his own court. "Unless you have some kind of proof that such a crime could be attributed to me, I suggest you leave, Trowa Sunbender."

"I think you have more pressing matters to deal with than me," Trowa said, buffing his nails on his tabard before scrutinizing them with narrowed eyes. As he was speaking, one of the rotunda's side doorways burst open to reveal a pair of soldiers that looked as though they had just escaped a skirmish. Glancing over at the interrupting men and then back at Milliardo, Trowa said slyly, "Ah, what lovely timing."

"Y-Your Highness," one of the soldiers panted, leaning heavily on the doorframe for support. "The city has somehow been... been breached."

His concerns spiking to outright alarm, Milliardo curtly demanded to know, "By whom - or what?"

The other footman, who was perhaps even more worn than his companion, managed only a single, definitive word: "Orcs."

Whirling a most fearsome glare on Trowa, who was completely unbothered by the whole situation, Milliardo started making some automatic assumptions and then laid into Trowa with his accusations. "This is your idea of negotiating?"

Trowa shrugged again: "You threatened me and my kind in the past; I do not see why it is any different that I do the same to you now."

"That was different. You had allied yourself with naga," Milliardo snapped, impatiently tapping his foot as he tried to deal with Trowa and simultaneously figure out how to deal with an assault he knew very little about. He wondered just how many orcs there were and how dire a threat they actually were since the bloodlust they once possessed was a thing of the past.

"We had a common enemy in forest trolls then," Trowa countered, allowing his resentment towards the Alliance to flare for the first time since he'd arrived. "Just as we, the Sin'dorei and the dead you forsook at the hand of the Scourge have the same common enemy as the orcs, trolls and Tauren of the Horde - an enemy we all have found in you and all you represent." A derisive snort escaped Trowa as he glared up at the king he felt was leading Azeroth along the path of ruin: "You had best tread carefully, Milliardo Wrynn, for even those you consider your unquestioning servants may soon turn on you - or perhaps even already have."

A sudden chain of realizations clicked in Miliardo's head as he heard these words. There were too many coincidences that seemed to have occurred all at once, beginning with Trowa's unannounced arrival in Stormwind. That, coupled with the orc that was apparently running amok through the streets and the mention of the previously-thought-dead Heero Yuy caused Milliardo to question what the link between all three things was, but it was only at Trowa's last utterance that he stumbled upon a realization as to what was actually going on.

A diversion.

Without wasting another moment, Milliardo found himself in his element, jumping into action with gusto. Leaping to his feet, he ordered the nearest guards to seize Trowa and hold him and his lion fast, a command that was executed before Trowa even had a chance to react. Trotting down the dais steps and striding right up to the elfin prince, Milliardo grabbed Trowa fiercely by the chin and glared straight into his icy, green eyes. "Heero Yuy is here, isn't he," Milliardo growled as Trowa struggled against the soldiers that held him captive; "Tell me where."

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When Heero had suddenly collapsed, Duo quickly squirreled away the flask so that he might rush to the fallen prince's aid. Honestly, he hadn't expected Heero to be so overwhelmed by the revelation that he was actually the orphaned prince of Stormwind and its rightful king, but he supposed he couldn't blame the poor youth nevertheless. He just hoped that telling Heero about it wouldn't prove to be a mistake, even if it was something that had to be done for the sake of returning himself to life. Unable to do much more than slap Heero's cheeks in hopes it would rouse him, Duo hunched over Heero's body and did just that until a low groan emanated from Heero's parted lips.

Coming to, Heero groggily sat up next to Duo, holding his head as he readjusted to his opulent surroundings. It didn't take him long to recall what had happened right before he'd blacked out, but it only gave him a headache when he tried to make sense of it. Frustrated, he turned to Duo, who was squatting next to him with his macabre arms laid over his knees, and tried to clarify, "Were you being truthful when you said that?"

Duo arched his eyebrows, a crooked smile on his torn lips. "Do you mean when I told you that you are a prince in more eyes than just mine?" he teased before answering seriously. "Yes, it's true. Surely you must have suspected that there was a reason behind the uncanny luck that seems to have haunted you all your life."

Heero had no idea how to reply, though he supposed Duo brought up a valid point. He thought back to the night Duo had related his memories of Dalaran to him and how he and his big brother had borne baby Heero from the arms of his dying mother to those of his adoptive mother, Helen. No wonder a mage of the Kirin Tor had been so eager to make sure he was raised properly instead of sending him on to the orphanage as Duo and Solo had been. Frankly, the more he thought about it, and the more he reevaluated some of the finer coincidences in his life, the more he thought himself idiotic for not realizing it sooner. At the end of the day, the most he could think to say about any of it was, "So now what?"

Duo's grin only intensified as he reproduced the flask containing the elixir. It was a dark green colour that absorbed the light that hit the glass bottle, and seemed rather viscous as Duo twirled it between his fingers. "To begin with, you can help me with this," he said, holding it back out to Heero for inspection. "A princely sacrifice - it must be something of yours you willingly give. You know, to breed life within in the drink."

Heero pursed his lips and took the bottle, only to stare at it with empty eyes as he tried to figure out what he could possibly own that would grant such a powerful aspect to a mere potion. He wanted more than anything in the world to help Duo, but there was so much running through his head at the moment, it was hard to focus on the problem at hand. Surely a sacrifice was something grandiose and difficult to part with, he thought as he looked around the vault, which was stacked with all the princely treasures a man could ever want. He had a feeling that the answer wouldn't be found in gold coins or gemstones, though.

"Heero," said Duo, his voice sounding distant to Heero's wandering mind. He reached out his skeletal hand and waved it in front of Heero's aimlessly staring eyes. "My prince, does something ail you?"

Jarring, Heero returned to his body, though a new thought had returned with him, and, just as Duo suspected, it was one that needled at him unrelentingly. Gripping the flask tightly and pulling it against his breast, Heero met Duo's flickering eye sockets with a solemn expression and asked, "Duo, does all of this only matter to you because of who I am? Because you knew I was... a king?"

Duo's jaw unhinged a little, actually a bit stung by the question. He supposed Heero had every right to ask and figured that his doubt was at least reasonable, but that didn't change the fact that the words hurt him. Nevertheless, he knew that his answer for Heero was genuine, and he hoped that offering them to the shell-shocked rogue would be enough to prove his intentions. Curling his hands over his knees, he began: "My love is no lie. I swore my heart to you before I swore my fealty - before I was even old enough to understand what such things even meant. You were my prince before I knew you were royalty, and so you shall remain even when you become king." Unable to resist much longer, he reached out to lay one of his hands atop Heero's, which were still lying protectively across his sternum. "By the Light, I wish we could have lived out our ignorant Dalaran days forever, but the world is a dark and crippling place, and even in the city of magic, we couldn't hope to hide...."

He watched Heero carefully, hoping for some kind of hint as to what the rogue prince was thinking about what he'd said, but Heero's face remained grim, and it greatly disheartened Duo. "What's done is done, Heero," Duo continued to entreat, his fingertips scraping the skin of Heero's knuckles. "But you know, had we stayed the way we were, we would have never found ourselves here and this much closer to one another. It's as though...." Duo trailed off, shaking his head a little and glancing away as a small frown tempted his features. Murmuring now, he said almost too softly to hear, "I had to lose everything just to find you."

"Duo."

At the sound of his name, Duo's attention snapped back to Heero, whose serious stare was now diluted by a softer aura. It was a subtle tweak in the set of his eyebrows and the shape of his lips, but Duo could see the change in his demeanor as clearly as he could night from day. The thrill of it threatened a beat in his heart.

"Duo," Heero repeated, his voice even quieter this time. "Could you... tell me how you died?"

To anyone else, the question might have seemed abrupt or even rude, but Duo knew that it was Heero's way of accepting the things that Duo had said. He wanted to understand what had driven Duo to leave Dalaran that night Lordaeron had fallen to the Lich King, and what had happened to him to bring him to the place where they now huddled.

And so, with a nostalgic disposition, Duo drew back and settled more comfortably on the floor as he began to speak.

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