He'd gone looking.
It was his right, in the end. Peacecraft was elsewhere, dead or possible just missing. Marquise or Peacecraft, it didn't matter. Wufei didn't think he was truly dead, and wouldn't until they showed him the body.
He wouldn't believe Khushrenada was dead until he saw the body, either. Couldn't believe it. Couldn't believe Treize had...
There were so many parts. Mobile dolls, floating in space, bits and pieces, and there would no doubt be scavengers coming soon to harvest the remains. Every scrap would be put to use again, and that was the reason for his own search, the reason that he had to remain there, in space. Une had ordered the functional machines, even the nonfunctional ones, destroyed, but no one had the manpower to do it. Not before the scrappers arrived and took advantage of the free-floating chunks. It was even possible, Wufei supposed, that there were men alive in those machines, men still breathing. His own oxygen supply was safe, still functional, Altron's converters working to be sure that it would continue to be so.
If there was anyone still in those scraps, they probably weren't in such good shape.
Explosion or no explosion, Wufei intended to find Tallgeese II. He was determined not to believe until he saw it for himself.
He needed to know, needed to see the body with his own eyes or the torn wreckage. It was something he needed to verify, rather than assume that Khushrenada was truly dead even if Une had announced it.
Some things, a man had to touch, see, taste before he could be certain of it. In so many ways, the death of Khushrenada was one of those, the reasons behind his need too numerous to count, Wufei supposed. Most of the soldiers in that last battle would assume that it was a need to verify the death of his enemy. The handful who had known anything about what the battle actually meant would assume that it was for an honorable burial. Wufei didn't doubt that Une's beliefs would differ from Dorothy Catalonia's would differ from Barton's or Winner's.
The only one who might understand that necessity was considered dead in the final explosion, by everyone else, at least.
It was just as well. If it was the last battle, and it was likely to be, there would be no place for them in the world. There would be nothing for the colonies to fight, nothing for which he needed to go to honorable combat anymore.
So he searched, guiding Altron through the pieces of wreckage, looking for the ruins of Tallgeese II.
It was a slow, pleasant drift, in its way, a morbid ballet through the black of space and dismembered dolls, legs and arms and weapons floating lazily past, vaguely human-shaped heads, chests where pilots had once rested spilling out grotesquely into the vacuum. These things didn't bother him, because this was what he had become.
This was what Treize Khushrenada had made of him.
Of him, of them all, but Wufei himself most of all, even if Khushrenada had probed into all of their lives, as lightly as someone toyed with animals. All for a higher cause, all so he could die like that, at Wufei's hand, when...
There. There was the Tallgeese's body, mostly intact. It was funny, really.
Wufei could have sworn the damage had been worse, had been so much more comprehensive than what he was seeing. Still.
Still.
He could have been mistaken. He could have... Wufei didn't know.
One way or the other, though, he had to make an attempt. He had to go and see, and there was only one way to do that.
Carefully, he turned and opened one of the chambers on the right. He'd never really liked drifting in the open of the black.
For this, though, he'd make the effort.
It was more work than he'd expected it to be. A body was a body was a body, but pace lacked the gravity that Wufei knew how to handle best. There was no weight dragging him down, just the laws of physics, and every motion Wufei made to get back to Altron with the half-suited Khushrenada was carried through with the weight of Khushrenada's body.
Khushrenada's living body.
He'd managed to get him suited enough that the cold of space wouldn't freeze him, the exposure to hard vacuum finishing what Wufei himself had started. It had involved some minor cannibalization of his own suit, of parts lingering in Tallgeese II, but he had managed that. He'd done enough by way of field medicine to make him comfortable. Maybe not more than that, but there were better drugs, synthesized opiates, back in Altron.
How it was going to fit both of them, Wufei could only guess.
It was going to be a tight fit, easier once he was back in the cockpit, decompressed, and both of them out of the pieces of suit. It was hard guiding him in, harder still to get in behind him, but at least it wasn't a coherent person complaining about the sharp angles of his limbs.
Lack of consciousness was, in Wufei's august opinion, overrated for other people at the moment. Particularly Treize.
"Uu....fff..."
The hope he held in regards to the continuation of that particular state was obviously dashed. "Be quiet." Authoritative, yes. That tended to be helpful in these situations, or so he'd always thought.
He needed to be in control, needed to be commanding. He needed to keep Khushrenada still long enough to treat what he could, prolong his life. Take him back to Earth, where he would... Face reality like a man, not a coward.
Not like a man who had used Wufei to commit his act of suicide.
He wasn't sure about that. He thought perhaps that suicide was the single most cowardly act in existence, and yet also disturbingly brave. Wufei had never had that ability, the desire to commit that act, and he never truly thought Treize would.
He should have known better. He should have expected that if anyone were willing to die for and with their perfect ideal, it would be him. Well, he wasn't gong to get that chance. He was going to have to be brave in new ways, because there was still a place in the world for men like Khushrenada, even if there was not a place for men like Wufei.
"Hhhn?"
"Be still," he encouraged again, and turned off the communicator, making sure everything was in place before he allowed the oxygen to flood Altron's cockpit.
It hissed audibly as he shifted Khushrenada into position and began to pull the jury-rigged suit away from his body. "Be still," he said again as Treize moaned. "I have medications."
"Why... 'm I not dead?" It was such an adrift, hopeful question. Because he was unlucky, Wufei decided. Because he did not want Khushrenada to take the easy way out.
"Fortune frowned upon you." For being such a coward, Wufei didn't say, because perhaps it was bravery. Who could say? "Now, do as I say."
It really would have been better if the man had remained unconscious. Wufei could have shifted him, moved him, and not felt too badly about the pain caused by necessity. As it was, the faint sounds made him twitch with guilt for causing them, despite everything.
"Fortune who?" His voice was a bare thread in Wufei's ear, barely louder than Wufei's breathing in his own ears.
"If fortune smiles, who doesn't? If fortune doesn't, who does?" It was an old saying, one he'd heard most of his life. Meiran's grandmother had murmured it to him after the death of his wife, her ancient, papery fingers stroking the back of his neck.
Making a decision, he moved, got enough of the suit off to make his next tasks simpler. The morphine wasn't difficult to find, or to draw up. More difficult was the struggle to find a vein, dehydration and lack of good oxygen making it an arduous process.
"Let me be dead." Treize drew in slow breaths, air rattling into his lungs with quiet sounds that told Wufei he'd injured Treize. It was his fault, somehow, that the job was not complete. "There is... a new era."
"You quit before you could see it." While he was still ahead, and perhaps drugging him wasn't a good idea with those sounds, but there was little choice about it. It was a necessity, and once done, Wufei began to strip off the rest of the suit.
It was easier to undress him without those motions that proved he was still sensitive to pain. Not so far gone, except with the morphine in his veins, bubbling through with air and shrapnel. "Taint it."
"Perhaps." But then, they all would, wouldn't they? They were warriors. Wufei was a warrior, skilled, trained, ruthless, where once he'd been a scholar. "But there are worse things, I suppose. You engineered it. It's only right to live until you see the final light of it."
"The... figurehead needs to die. My men will..." He tipped his head back, wildly ragged strands of hair brushing close to Wufei's skin. He smelled of burnt hair, burned flesh, although the immediately visible damage didn't seem so bad as the transmissions had implied it would be. "Rally."
Wufei had been certain that he had lost one of those brilliant eyes before the other mech had fallen into pieces, exploding, although not so fantastically as all that, obviously. "With only your mad Lady in waiting?" Not so mad now, Wufei supposed. Perhaps.
Perhaps they were all mad, in their way.
"Be still again," he said, and finished stripping the man, then moved to get out of his own suit. Wufei had never been so grateful for his flexibility training, and more grateful to lay the suits aside, to shove the pieces back into the small compartment that barely held shut when it wasn't placed just so. But Treize was still, eyes shuttered and breathing slightly labored.
"Sorry." The apology slipped out before he could stop it. He knew it had to hurt; there was little he could do for it, though, and it would take all Altron had to get them back to civilization. Even then, it wouldn't be in any hurry -- the fuel reserves would allow them to drift slowly for a longer period of time. They would return and have enough to manage a landing without falling to pieces. He trusted Altron to that, and only had to decide how they were going to manage the trip together.
"Why?"
"Because that had to hurt." He'd never liked hurting people. Never wanted to hurt anyone, in fact, but what he liked and wanted rarely had anything to do with the necessity of what he had to do. "I'm going to sit in your lap now." He couldn't direct Altron straddling the man as he was.
Straddling Treize, something he hadn't.... something he....
The thought was hard to shake off, but he did. Treize gave a bare laugh, a quiet, rough noise. "One must."
"It's the nature of the beast." Of Altron, because he had to be in the proper position to reach the right controls, to set them on the path. It was still a tight movement that got him in place, balanced on Treize's thighs, hands reaching for the controls. They'd make it, indignity and all.
He wasn't going to think about anything else.
Not the things he'd wanted.
Not the things he still wanted.
It wasn't the right time, or the right place.
It probably never would be.
He'd fallen asleep.
Not so much fallen asleep as dozed reluctantly, the faint whistle of breath behind him a strange comfort to hear. They were still hours from assistance, and calling attention to their position when scavengers were undoubtedly so close couldn't be anything except dangerous.
He allowed them to continue in that controlled drift, turning his head to look at Treize.
Wufei hadn't expected for the man to be awake, or for him to tilt his head, lips parting and touching Wufei's briefly.
He tasted of electricity, of burns and sickness, sour with sleep, and it was sweet. So sweet, because it was what he had wanted, and what he couldn't have.
He opened his mouth for it, tongue darting out for a moment, almost savage, unable to stop himself from that moment of shattering need. Treize was giving it to him, what he wanted, whatever it was he wanted, and that was... no, it wasn't right, but it was something. It was... He didn't know.
"Let me have this. When we reach Earth, they'll entomb me." In a cell, somewhere out of the way and hard to penetrate, because everyone knew what Khushrenada could do when he was under house arrest. Everyone knew the maneuvers, the impossible machinations that he could pull off with the finesse of a master.
So easy.
So easy to say it, because he had wanted it all along.
"Yes," Wufei breathed, and he turned, careful, slow, legs bending, entire body folding to get him into the space that would make everything, him, both of them, more easily accessible.
Close like that, he could see Treize's injuries for what they were and what they weren't. Bruising, fractured ribs, it was all very likely. Air between layers of skin from the trauma of the blow, scalp wounds, simple things that would heal with a good doctor and would not kill in the time it took them to get back to Earth.
"Good. Help me..." Treize's hands moved, slid down to Wufei's hips.
Yes, help him, and Wufei could do that. He could do that, hands gentle and steady on Treize. He was careful to avoid the areas of major damage, but the kissing, the kissing was good. He was uncertain as to whether he'd ever been kissed so well, so sweetly. There hadn't been a great deal of time for kissing. Not really.
"Yes," he said again, moved so that those clever fingers could undo the belt holding his trousers together. "Yes."
As long as no scavengers drifted past, there would be no interruptions, no chance of being stopped. Treize looked at him, blue eyes determined and brighter than Wufei remembered, before he pushed down Wufei's pants.
He didn't have anything on underneath; just the pants, the belt. Even those were filthy, twice-drenched in sweat, dried and soaked again, sticking to him. He couldn't taste any more pleasant than Treize did, and it didn't matter. Didn't matter, because there was a hand touching him, cupping him there, and no one had ever done that, no fingers there save his own. "Ngh."
"I have wanted this..." He had such deft fingers. He'd probably had a stream of men, any man he wanted in bed. But in a cockpit, after his defeat, Wufei could not imagine that having happened before.
Perhaps it was the opportunity of a lifetime. Perhaps it was just one last chance before they returned to Earth. He didn't know, didn't care, because it was good. It was so good, the way those fingers stroked, easy, lazy touches that made Wufei's hands shake.
"I thought..." What he had thought didn't matter. It didn't matter, and it was good, and he had thought this lay between them for a long time, ten months or more. It was what he had seen in the man's eyes, held at the end of his sword, and perhaps the imagery itself had something to do with that. "Nnn." Yes, yes. So good, just like that, and he wondered how they would manage.
What they could manage.
Khushrenada was planted firmly in the chair, legs spread in a lax slouch to frame Wufei's hips. Changing position after the trouble Wufei had gone to to get him into that spot was not an option.
"I had thought it, too. This is one chance in a lifetime."
One they would take, Wufei knew, although how they were going to get Khushrenada out of those pants....
Well.
They were mostly a loss anyway, so Wufei could cut them off and find no particular regret in doing so. If anyone asked, he'd excuse it as injury treatment, and he probably should have looked beneath them sooner, the way he had that blue uniform top, the thin shirt beneath it.
"You're willing," he said, and reached for the box of meds again. There were scissors in there, surgical lubricant, a few other odds and ends. Things that they would need.
"Endorphins and you." His mouth cocked at an angle, a twist of lip that gave hint that perhaps Khushrenada's personality hadn't been muted with defeat after all.
He hadn't really thought that it could be. Not if he was truthful about it.
"I've wanted..." Wanted, and he was cutting away the pants. Less damage there, not so bad, so perhaps it would be pleasant for both of them. The heavy erection that listed gently to the side once Wufei had managed to ply the scissors past it certainly implied that the desire was returned. "But I didn't think... and then you tried to die, while you were still ahead."
"Best way to go. Wanted... someone worthy of the act to do it."
Someone worthy, and the fact that it had been him was an overwhelming honor. Wufei hadn't thought he was worthy of anything much at all for a very long time.
"Thank you," he said finally, cutting away the material slowly. He paused, one hand stroking up Khushrenada's inner thigh. The skin was pale, the hair there light. Wufei didn't stop himself from leaning down and lightly kissing just above his fingertips. There was no need.
The muscles flexed, shifted under his lips and fingers, and one of Treize's hands moved, settling heavily on the back of Wufei's neck. "Yes, I had imagined this..."
"Wanted it?" Because Wufei wanted it. Had wanted it, for a long time, most of a year. Khushrenada was many things -- charismatic, ruthless, beautiful, powerful. All things that Wufei was sure he would never be.
Never.
Never, and he opened his mouth and pressed his lips to turgid flesh, taking Treize between his lips.
He tasted sour, the same as Wufei undoubtedly did. Dried sweat, milky, maybe, off. Sick, but it was to be expected.
They were neither one of them soft men, men who could be fastidious when there were things to be done, battle to fight in hot, constricting Mobile suits. If he had expected that, he never would have done it, never would have wrapped his lips around Treize for the sound of his breath gasping in through his lips, the feel of his fingers tightening at the back of Wufei's neck.
"Hmmm." He couldn't help the noise, the murmur of pleasure that came up into the back of his throat. It didn't taste good, no, but it felt good, cock heavy, weighty on his tongue, rubbing against the top of his mouth. God, he'd wanted to do this, and he hadn't been able to admit it, but now, now... Yes.
He admitted and was doing, and enjoying, taste or no taste. Treize's legs spread, welcoming him, and he didn't force Wufei to hurry it along. He let him do as he liked, let him learn. Let him wash the taste of the battle off of Treize's flesh.
Wufei settled his hands on Treize's thighs, thumbs rubbing slowly over the inside of them. They felt different than his own, hair crisp underneath his fingers, and he loved that. One slide higher, and he cupped the heavy balls with his shaking palm.
There was crisp hair there as well, but touching them made Treize sigh, made him brace one knee against the edge of the control chair. He was looking down at Wufei, and somehow wounded and stripped nearly entirely bare, he still sat like a commander. "I want you to fuck me."
Fuck him.
Wufei had thought about it. He'd thought that far, wondered how to do it, if he'd need to move, balance his knees on the arms of the control chair, try not to jar any of the controls while he sank down. He'd never done it before, either way, not even with Meiran. They'd been young, younger than he was now, and it hadn't happened.
"Tell me. Tell me how."
"Do you have something... slick?" Treize sat up a little, shifting his posture as if it would help matters in that tight space.
"In the box." With the morphine. He'd thought about it earlier, before he'd dozed off to drowse for a bit in the open space of the black. "I'll..." Reach for it, grab it, still stroking even though his mouth was gone from that hot flesh.
Treize was hard in his fingers, eager for it. He knew what he was doing, his air was confident, so Wufei would trust him to guide their duel. "Good. Give it to me."
There, Wufei assumed, and he still didn't know how. Not precisely. "Tell me," he said again, because he needed to know. Needed to do it right.
They wouldn't have a second chance, or a third.
Treize clutched it in hand, medical lubricant for sliding arms out of casts and anything else Wufei could use it for. Yuy used it more than anyone, likely for all the labeled reasons. But Treize was opening it, and slouching down, hips to the edge of the chair. "Between my legs."
Between them, and there, Wufei thought, there, and the tube was open, Khushrenada sliding it thick onto his fingers. He fumbled, swallowed hard. This wasn't something a man could learn by reading, or by being told, he thought. It was something he had to do, something Wufei hadn't thought he would ever do, and so when he brought his hands back between pale cheeks, his fingers were tentative at best. "Tell me," he said again, and stroked slowly deeper, delving between them.
"Push them in. You don't have to go easy, I've done it before. It isn't clean." Nothing was. Not death, so why would sex be any different? His fingers were slick, and Treize slouched more for him, made it easier for Wufei to find a pucker of skin. In there, then.
In there, and the noise that drew out of the man, tall, long, stretched out in Wufei's small space, it was startling. It made his own breath catch, an audible hiccough of sound, and then he pushed the fingers in again, two of them, hard.
There was a grunt of noise, and then Treize moved his hips down to Wufei's fingers. "Yes. Just like that. It won't take long. Just a little more. It's... been a while."
A while, which could mean anything. Could mean, but probably meant Marquise, because Wufei wasn't stupid. He had told the man he'd be waiting for him, waiting on the other side. Waiting for him, waiting for this, probably. Probably.
It was soft inside, warm, clenching around his fingers, and Wufei wondered if it hurt. It probably did, but Khushrenada seemed to like it, seemed to think it was good, and he could accept that. "Like this?" His fingers twisted, and the man's breath rasped loose.
Treize exhaled, and there was only a little of the rattling distress to the sound. "Just like that. Just... yes. Hn, fuck me. The morphine you gave me makes everything numb."
Numb. That didn't sound good, but he wanted, and Khushrenada... "Are you sure?" It was right to ask, honorable. Wufei was going to be certain.
"Yes. I want to feel you." And Treize was reaching for him again, fingers clutching at Wufei's upper arm loosely, laxly. It was enough.
It was enough and he shifted, moved, got on his knees. He was hard, it was undeniable, and when he pushed his way closer, the tip of his slim cock slid along the crack slowly. He missed the hole altogether, but he tried again, missed again, tried once more and... there! There it was, and a little pressure let him slide in.
Khushrenada was tight, tight and slicked and hot, hotter than he'd felt to Wufei's fingertips. There was the scrape of hair against his thighs, and Treize's unsteady motion to get closer, to stroke his hands over Wufei's shoulders. "Hn, beautiful."
Beautiful.
Wufei didn't know what that word was meant to represent -- him, what he was doing, what the other man was feeling. All he knew was that his breath was harsh, frantic, and he wasn't going to last. Couldn't last, because it was too good, nothing like he'd imagined it to be, and it was so hard to be still, to just push in and stay.
It was going to be fast and harsh in the dark of space, a frantic rutting, and Khushrenada breathed that word between them, before he moved back to Wufei. "Yes. Don't hold back."
Don't hold back, and those were magic words because Wufei shifted, moved, and oh. Oh, thrusting was even better than holding still, and he was shaking with the pleasure of it, back jamming against one of the control panels when he moved backwards. "Fuck," he breathed, filthy word, filthy act, but so good. So very good, and he scrabbled, hand moving to shape and stroke the cock that had been in his mouth so recently.
Treize's head tilted back, hands sliding down to Wufei's waist, steadying them both when Wufei moved, or perhaps he was pulling and pushing him and it didn't matter because all Wufei could feel was pleasure.
All he could feel was the tug, the squeeze, and he was going to come. He was going to finish, much too soon for the man sprawled so exquisitely in the space where Wufei himself belonged. It was going to be over, and he tried to warn him, tried to say so.
It didn't seem to matter, though, because Treize already looked loose and sated, and Wufei wasn't sure if it was the morphine sliding through his veins of the snap of his own hips, but --
Oh, God, he was, yes, he was, yes, and then it was done, a hard, stuttering shove of his hips, once, twice. He cried out despite himself, tumbling forward slightly on the wide, pale chest as he came and came and came, endless, boundless joy.
The confines of the mobile suit was not kind to one's nose the longer one was in it. Wufei knew he was usually immune to it, but the sharpness of scent burned his nostrils enough to stir him out of his post-coital haze. It was a bitter smell, old iron and antiseptic, or perhaps just septic.
"Treize?" Soft word, blurred, still in that pleasurable state. He reached a hand up, twined it in the fingers that now lay on the console arm of his chair, smiled. "Hmmm."
And then he looked up.
In that handsome face that had been serenely smiling at him just, not moments before, not hours before, there was dried blood and the burst, oozing fluid, dried, of one eye. It did not compare to the rest of his body, the ragged chest wound, the blood that had soaked and crisped his clothes from where his arm had been torn off.
The tracing of burned flesh, smelling faintly like processed meat in an old diner and a small animal that had been too long dead, none of it, none of it could be hidden, and he'd....
He'd....
He vomited, gagging on bile as it spilled up from his stomach, spilling into the open wound that split Treize Khushrenada from breast to belly. His cock was still inside the body.
In the black, screams have always gone unheard.