Disclaimer: Even though he's cuter than most of the bishies, Pagan is still not mine. *le sigh* (sorry I just had to say that)
Pair: Pagan, King Peacecraft, mini Zechs, mini Relena, Darlian...
Rated: R
Warning: angst, strong violence, brutality, murder, arson, detailed descriptions of gore, death, rape and other nasty things. Some bad words.
Note: For Pagan Month at gw_ozzies... the obvious sequel to Pagan For Hire 1 and 2, but it can be read as a stand alone if you don't mind certain references to Pagan being an ex-assassin. *grin* The idea of smoke blindness was taken from an old convo with the brilliant Admiral Chowder, who has some of the best grip of Zechs on the net. Please excuse whatever things I get wrong about burns and fire and said smoke blindness--my phobia for anything stronger than a cigarette lighter makes me a little dumb to such things. And please keep in mind of the warnings, especially the bit about the gore...
Summary: During the attack on the Sanq Kingdom, a dying King Peacecraft demands a last request of Pagan concerning his son.
The fire was so hot that the entire palace was crumbling in on itself, and Pagan dodged falling debris, mopping away the sweat from his brow as he combed soaked peppered gray bangs from his eyes, irritated red from the smoke. He knew that this day would come, it had only been a matter of time--he'd just wished that he'd managed to at least give some semblance of warning first. The King had hired him for protection, and Pagan had failed them all miserably.
But he would not leave without the children. And he would not--
There was so much blood that Pagan gagged from the raw iron stench of it, even beyond the smoke, and his stomach threatened to turn inside out at the sheer gore coating the fire-bitten walls. Bloody hand prints, clumps of silver hair, and a... finger?
These were the royal bed chambers.
Warily, Pagan entered, despite the warning bells blaring off in his head, handgun marking point to every shadow with one hand while he filtered his breath through wet cloth with the other. He knelt down, examining the abandoned finger with the toe of his boot. There was a golden ring around it, with the crest of the Peacecraft family--only one man wore that ring, and Pagan did not wish to imagine him succumbed to such mutilation.
Swallowing the nausea, he lifted the finger and removed the ring. He put it in his pocket.
Breathing slowly, shallowly. Closing his eyes, searching for his center.
He crossed the room to a door that lead to the actual bed chambers, and the children's room beyond that. He could see bright orange flames licking like maddened tongues under the crack of the door, and he kicked it open, knowing better than to touch the knob. The door exploded inward in a mass of splinters, and a wave of acrid death crashed over him.
He ran through the flames quickly. And stared.
The severed head of a beautiful woman lay lopsided on the royal bed, still caught in an expression of sick surprise. Her body, slumped on the floor, blood still draining at the artery of her neck. Her clothes, shredded, the lower half of her gown ripped completely from her bodice to expose rape and humiliation. Her husband, lying on the bed beside that head, a large, commanding hand with a missing ring finger still grasped into her thick blonde locks. His eyes open and staring at nothing.
Pagan nearly jumped out of his own skin when he realized that the man was still alive.
He ran for the King, but the King hardly noticed him at all.
His entire right arm had been severed, the appendage lain down diligently on the other side of the bed away from the door. His left leg was caught in an awkward position, clearly broken in several places, and... judging from the black blood coagulated around the King's once perfectly silver-white hair, his left ear had been torn off.
Pagan trembled with both rage and sickness. It wasn't an assassination, and it wasn't murder. It was sick fucking godplay.
Pagan stepped over the severed arm and gingerly slipped shaken fingers through the King's hair, trying to coax him back to life. The man was still breathing, and if he was still breathing, there was hope.
At the contact, the King flinched just slightly. His eyes never ceased their blind stare, but over the growing roar of the fire, his lips moved and words whispered.
Pagan didn't catch it the first time, so he bent his head to listen.
A bloodied royal tongue wet dry lips with red saliva.
"M-my... s-s... s-son..."
Pagan drew back to look at him, but the eyes held nothing but death. A breathing corpse. Pagan bit his lip in apprehension.
"Milliardo? Was he h--"
The King grabbed for Pagan's shirt with the four digit hand once clutching his wife's severed head, glaring like the red flames dancing around them, hating, as if all of the pacifist's kindness had been severed away with his ring finger and right arm. Pagan struggled, but the King's grip was surprisingly strong--a dead man's grip, he knew--and the royal pulled his would-be protector down to that marred, hating face.
Red stained teeth bared into a snarl, silver-blue eyes suddenly focused hard on Pagan's face, echoing clarity akin to madness. "Kushrenada," the King spat, choking, body trembling violently. "Take him to Kushrenada... take him to Kush... K-Kushr-re-nn-ada..." Swallow, cough, inhale. Blood. "Kushren..." Another swallow, another cough. The grip weakened, eyes fading back to death. Blood. Blood spattered lips, slurring tongue."...Kushrenada."
And the four-fingered hand fell. Breath still, face slack.
The King was dead.
Despite the urgency of the fire, Pagan stared for a long moment, overcome with emotion. He had done this. He felt that he should have known sooner, should have seen it coming, should have found the King before it was too late and killed the bastards that had done this to the royal family. Pagan could hardly imagine that less than a year ago, he'd been assigned to assassinate this man, but now he wished that he had done it when he had the chance. If he had followed that order to kill, this death would have been far more humane, and perhaps the royal family wouldn't have suffered so terribly. No one had ever told Pagan to massacre the man's wife, or destroy his children. No one had ever mentioned anything about a fire.
Thirteen months ago, he'd had the barrel of a sniper on this man's skull, and instead of assassination, he'd resolved to protect. It was this King--this madman who spoke of peace and harmony and goodwill to all--that saved Pagan a life of imprisonment and desecration. Protect the royal family from the inevitable. It was such a simple task, for such a great failure.
Pagan slipped the King's eyes closed, swallowing hard to hide his revulsion. He didn't understand, but he knew the orders. And he would fulfill that last request, when he found the man's son--it was the very least he could do to absolve himself.
Pagan stood with firm resolve and pushed open yet another door that lead into the children's room. He noticed small bloody footprints walking away from the mutilations on the bed and into that room, where they ran into a closet and back out into another hallway. Pagan followed them until the footprints dried and faded, but there was no sign of either prince or princess.
For a long time, it was only the crispy dead to greet him, and the fire continued to intensify, loudly reminding Pagan of his own wounds. Earlier, he'd been hit on the back of the head and knocked unconscious. The bump still throbbed, but it was the burns that killed him. Second to third degree rode up one hand and down his left leg that had literally fused his pants to his skin--the pain was excruciating, but Pagan and kept on moving, begging the children's names beyond the cloth that barely filtered his lungs, wheezing, eyes blurred from the toxins in the air.
He could not say how long he'd searched before his old, tired body had given out on him in the stress, and he'd collapsed, gun clattering to the floor, the edges of his vision whited to oblivion when he finally felt a small hand touch his face. It was burned gruesomely, skin melted in vicious third degree burns, but it was a hand, and it was small, and as Pagan dared to sit up again to look, he realized that it belonged to the prince.
A six-year-old prince with a stolen handgun in his other fist, his baby sister curled up under his arm.
Pagan stared at the gun, at the burns on the boy's hands, and the... the blood. Milliard was covered in it, so much so that it was hard to tell if it was even his at all, and it if was, where it all came from. Of course, Milliard would have been dead a long time ago if that was his... there was far too much of it, on his clothes, on his face, in his hair, in his eyes...
The thing that disturbed Pagan the most was the boy's eyes. They were swollen and teared up, violently red rimmed from the smoke. It was obvious that he couldn't see as he stared over Pagan's shoulder, but the expression on his face made it obvious that he didn't care. He was angry and in bloodlust, wanting revenge for what Pagan knew he had witnessed in his parent's bed chambers. In a way, it intrigued him--if it had been any other boy, he would have broken at the sight of his own mother's beheading. Pagan wasn't so sure that was a good thing.
The gun was aimed at him, Milliard knowing where to point because of his hand on Pagan's face. He tried to speak, to demand identity in the blindness, but failed to utter even the slightest sound. He seemed quite frustrated by this, and confused. The fear was swallowed, and digested into rage.
Relena, sniffling, curled tighter into Milliard's side, the arm of a fuzzy brown teddy bear gripped white-knuckled in her little right hand. When she saw Pagan, she squealed in what could only be called baby-like relief. "Pay!"
Milliard relaxed just the slightest, knowing the nickname for what it was. He made to speak again, but nothing came from his mouth.
"Yes," Pagan said, eying the prince as if unsure where to start for sympathy. "It's me." He reached to pry the gun away from the boy before he killed someone, but Milliard flinched violently and backed out of his grasp. Pagan sighed and crawled to his knees, groaning at the pull of the burn on his leg in the process. "Where did you get that gun?"
No answer. Pagan stared at him, and Milliard glared blindly in his general direction. Relena giggled from under her brother's arm and said, still clutching her teddy, "Millie boom! Hurt bad man!"
Had the boy already shed blood?
Guilt, and sick fascination. He was hardly six.
For some reason, the two year old's giggling made that knowledge even worse. Pagan crossed the room and gently laid his shaken, burnt hand on Milliard's shoulder, coaxing. "Let me carry you out of here."
Milliard shook his head, stubbornness warring against the tears of irritation already sliding down his face. He hefted Relena up on his hip and pointed the gun at the floor. His expression clearly spoke of false bravado.
Pagan didn't have the time. He grabbed the gun from the blind boy and hefted a struggling Milliard in one arm, Relena giggling again in his other while she waved her teddy at him. Strength renewed as adrenaline flowed, he shook himself and marched down the stairs and out of the palace, dodging cave-ins and floors opening up from under their feet. When he finally met the sweet, smoke-free breath of air in the courtyard, he collapsed again, and adult hands took the children away.
Darlian's wife was there, and she was thanking him for saving the children's lives.
Her husband was there too, of course, lifting up Pagan again, coaxing him to walk just a bit more and wait for the paramedics. Pagan could hear sirens screaming in the distance, coming closer every second, and he watched as Darlian's wife lifted Milliard's chin to get a closer look at his swollen eyes, and the utter death that had fallen on him when he silently pulled away from her. His sister held on furiously to the boy's arm, teddy upside down in the grass behind her, forgotten. Pagan could see the blood on the thing, mostly likely rubbed off of the mess on Milliard, and the little black singes still smoking from the fire. The teddy stared at him with it's black, beady eyes, flames echoed like a mirror in their depths, and it spoke of horror to him, of nightmares never forgotten. From the way the young Relena was turned away from her toy, so focused on her brother, eyes teared up with childlike worry, he knew that none of them would forget this. Not for as long as he lived.
Relena gazed up at him with adorably trusting eyes, and asked, "Millie hurt. Millie okay?"
Darlian's wife brushed a hand through her hair and smiled in that motherly way only women ever did. "Your brother will be fine, dear."
But Relena was looking at Pagan, and she wanted Pagan's answer. She pointed at him with a small, demanding finger. "Millie better?"
He frowned at her.
She glared at him.
"Make Millie better?"
He had to smile, but it was grim. He couldn't bring himself to lie to her, so he said, "I'll try my best."
She bobbed her head and poked her brother. "Pay make you better," she said soothingly, patting his blood-soaked chest. "Okay?"
Milliard smiled for the first time that night. He nodded at her general direction and she smiled back even though she knew he couldn't see her face.
And she nodded at Pagan, her little arm waving as if for dismissal. "Okay."
Mrs. Darlian laughed.
**
Milliard was diagnosed with smoke blindness, and after removing his offending mess of clothes, it was discovered that the blood really hadn't been his at all--there was not a cut on his body, in spite of his other injuries. Pagan had been nervous of that news... there was a growing, sickening feeling that the blood belonged to Milliard's mother, or what had been left of her.
There was no explanation for the loss of his voice. The paramedic put it down as shock, and gave the prince a cool bottle of water to drink. Relena sat relatively untouched in her brother's lap hugging her teddy while Pagan sat at their side, calmly letting the medics treat his burns and cut his pants from his leg without too much complaining. One of them, trying to be cheerful, accused Pagan of being a tough old bear, but he had said nothing in response. It hadn't to do with toughness, it was about what you were willing to survive.
Later, Darlian approached the ambulance truck and glanced meaningfully at Pagan, but as Pagan stood up to take the hint and follow, Relena cried out and caught his arm. Milliard grabbed his sister, and picked at the bandage covering his eyes. He mouthed something to her that Pagan couldn't catch, but Relena kept tugging, forcing Pagan back in his seat.
"Doc say stay, Pay. Stay!"
Pagan smiled at her nervously, lost with this little girl somehow attached to his arm. He had never been good with children, but for some reason, Relena liked him an awful lot. "I must talk with Darl--"
"Pay stay!" Commanding in the way only a two year old could be, small finger pointed at him angrily. "Stay. Hurt!"
Darlian smiled weakly at him, and sighed. He jumped into the truck and pulled Pagan to the side, out of hearing range from the children. Relena continued to glare at them, but quieted when Milliard pressed a finger to her mouth. Her brother, despite everything, seemed amused by her antics.
"Sonya said you were taking him to Kushrenada." Sonya was Darlian's wife. Pagan had confessed to her of the King's final words when she announced that she would be taking the children home with her, and had seemed quite displeased by the fact. Darlian was no better.
Pagan nodded.
The man fumed, his whispers hoarse. "Kushrenada is a general in the Alliance! His people murdered my best friend, the sovereign of this nation, those children's parents! You can't be--"
"I am quite," Pagan said, utterly serious. "The King demanded that I take his son to Kushrenada, and I plan to follow that request."
"Milliardo was a stubborn man, Romonov, but even he wouldn't send his first born son to be raised in the home of a general--"
Pagan lifted a hand, frustrated. "I do not care what you think of this Kushrenada. Alliance or not, the King requested it. I will send him."
"We cannot separate the children!" Darlian was looking at him with full emotion, and he tilted his head toward Relena, who was still glaring at them both as she sat comfortably in her brother's lap, the teddy positioned carefully in her own. Milliard was combing his fingers through her hair, face pointed at the floor as though staring at nothing.
"I know," Pagan said, and meant it. "I know. But it must be done. The people that did this will come back for the children--this fire was meant to kill them, and when--if--they discover that they failed... they cannot afford to have the heirs of this kingdom escape alive, no matter how young. That point was made clear when they ignited the palace."
"I will hide them together. Adopt them," Darlian offered.
Pagan shook his head. "You can adopt one daughter safely, perhaps, but how will you explain the existence of two new Darlians if you take her brother as well? It will be the first place they look. If you wish for them to live, they must be hidden away. To hide them, they must be separated. The King wanted his son to be given to Kushrenada. I will do as my King wishes."
"He wasn't your King a year ago." A challenge.
Pagan did not back down. "He is now, Darlian."
Bitter resentment. Hatred. Pagan couldn't blame him--Darlian had been much closer to the King than the ex-assassin ever was. When put together with what Pagan was asking, and the fact that he had been the only one to hear of the King's last words, it was perfectly understandable.
"You cannot," Darlian stressed, gritting his teeth, "...take him to Kushrenada."
"Why not?" Pagan did not know Kushrenada. He knew that the general and his son were often visitors to the palace, but beyond his face and name, he knew nothing of the man's personality.
Darlian glanced at the young prince on the other side of the van. Milliard twitched, as if feeling their eyes on him, and turned away. Relena seemed confused by this as she clutched her teddy and curled up further in her brother's lap. She looked at Pagan and asked, "Okay, Pay?"
He couldn't lie to her. "No," he said.
She frowned, and looked at her teddy. Then hesitantly, she looked up again and asked sadly, "Make Millie better?"
Pagan bit his lip. He'd never felt more guilty in his life.
Milliard twitched again, then sighed raggedly. He bent his lips to her ear, and Pagan just barely heard the soft, whispered words.
"Pagan is going to take me to Treize," he said. "Treize will make me better."
She smiled and turned around, patting her bother's chest. "I stay, then. Make Pay better too."
Milliard just nodded blankly, and continued to comb her hair with his fingers. Relena glanced at Pagan and smiled even wider than before. "I make you better," she said. Then, after a thought, "Treize nice. Treize make Millie better. Okay?"
Darlian looked at Pagan, the utmost lost expression on his face.
The children had a better grip on reality than the adults did.
"Okay," Pagan said, looking even older than he actually was. "Okay."
Relena sighed happily and bounced her teddy. "Okay!"