Friends is the result of writing for the Bishi Pile mailing list's challenge. It is an ongoing project at the moment. Hope you enjoy.

As a note to Dumbledork who suggested I post this up, hope you enjoy and others do too.

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Bishi Pile Challenge: Major challenge response to Wind and minor to Cobwebs and Bad Night. Word count: 1640

Series: Friends

Author: Karina

Pairings: 2+6

Ratings: M 15[In Australia Rated in the event of bad language and violence.

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing or the characters. That's the way it is.

Warnings: Not a death fic despite how it starts. Aussie spelling and unbetaed.

Chapter 1

Wind howled beyond the walls, moaning through the trees in an eerie, wailing moan. He could feel the cold caress of the draught entering through the cracks in the ramshackle old structure. The icy chill crept into his bones relentlessly, and he was afraid.

Was it the chill of the wind or the cold breath of death approaching him?

How long could a human body bleed? How long before he bled out?

How long had it been since the harsh hissed voice cursed him? What measure of time had passed since the world went dark and all sense of time and place had been taken from him?

He must have been unconscious for hours, drugged and helpless, unable to act. Helpless as a new born baby.

"I want this to be slow, Peacecraft. I want you to suffer. It's snowing out there and the wind is rising. The cold might get you before you bleed out."

//Cold.//

He could still think but it was becoming harder. It would be the cold that finished him. He would sleep soon and never wake. A pleasant thought. In sleep he would not be aware of the dull ache throughout his body and the strange numb pain in his wrist.

//If it should stop bleeding the cold will finish you. Just the one wrist and not too deep. You need to bleed slowly. I've waited too long for revenge to make this quick or easy. I want you to have time to think about why you are dying. I'd sit here and watch but I have places to go. People to see."

How long had it been since his tormentor left him to die? The end had to be close now.

His captor had taken pains to assure him no one knew he was missing. Not that there were many who would have cause to miss him. He purposefully led a quiet life, keeping to himself; doing his job quietly and efficiently.

He tried to keep himself out of sight and out of mind, performing his missions with efficiency and fading into the background until the next time he was called on. He had thought it was not so bad a life.

There were few he might consider calling a friend. Noin, of course, but she had been cold to him since he had disabused her of the notion he would marry her. He could not forget the past and move on and it had become more than a test of patience between them. She wanted to live in the future, to move on and forget what once had needed to be done. He, being the villain of the world, could not.

She deserved better than to be saddled with a man who incited hatred and madness in the ordinary man. She deserved better and it had taken years to get her to accept his disinterest in playing happy families and to look for someone else.

In the end he had lied to force her away from him. He had made her believe he was not interested in women in general, not just her. It was a lie. He was interested in men that much was truth, but he was just as much aware of the female sex. Bisexual. He had had to convince Noin he was homosexual before she would look elsewhere, and then she had lambasted him with every curse known to man for keeping her hanging for so many years.

He had tried to get her to look elsewhere. He had been honest for years and told her why he would not marry her but she had never listened, preferring to believe in her vision of how things should be. The world would never forget his part played in bringing about peace and he refused to involve her in his living nightmare.

The horrible truth was he did love her. He loved her enough to let her go. He loved her too much to ruin her life, though she would never see it that way.

Now she hated him, as she should. It was for the best and at least hers was one life he need not carry on his bloodied hands.

She had been a soldier, one of the best, but she had never been a killer. She had never had the instinct to kill. He was a killer. Born a pacifist, turned killer, now about to be killed.

Cold and blood loss would do the job while his killer no doubt sat before a warm fire and toasted his success with whisky or wine. Hell, he could be a beer man for all he knew.

//I should have died on a battlefield. It would have been a better fate than this.//

It was not the death he would have chosen for himself. Freezing and bleeding out in a ramshackle old hut, tied hand and foot like a trussed up pig.

It could not be long now.

He was dizzy, which would be blood loss, and tired, which would be the cold. He had stopped shivering some time ago and there was no light seeping through the cracks in the old boards. At one stage there had been a soft bluish light, enough to show him a bare room filled with cobwebs and icicles hanging from the ceiling, but now it was dark. It was too much of an effort to open his eyes if all he would see was darkness.

It could be worse. He wanted to frown at the thought, but frowning required effort and he had no energy for that.

//How could it be worse?//

He was making no sense and he knew it, but that was alright. No one was here to hear him and he was not actually speaking anyway. The sanctity of his thoughts had been his own since Treize had died.

Treize had always been able to read him like a book. It was disturbing to remember how Treize had always known what he would do before he himself had made a conscious decision. The man had been eerie. He could hold an entire conversation with you and you would not need to say a single word… and Treize had always been right.

He had even known what would happen to end the war. They had discussed so many possible scenarios as they had grown up; Treize returning time and again to see him no matter where he was living.

//Returning… to use me.//

Ah, he was feeling a little bitter. How unfortunate, he should not take bitterness to the grave with him. Not that he would have an actual grave. He had no idea where he was, but he could not believe his murderer would leave him in an area where he might chance to be found. He could lie here for years and not be discovered.

A lonely death in a lonely place, fitting that mankind should forget their bane, so long as they did not forget the peace he had sold his soul to bring about. Company might have been nice, but he had died before and always alone. This time there would be no resurrection.

No one had sought him out when he had died before, why should this time be any different? Not that there were many who would feel inclined to search for him.

Relena would wonder what had become of her brother, not that they were close. They barely spoke and only when circumstances demanded they do so for politeness sake. She would wonder what had caught his interest and caused him to vanish yet again. She would probably worry he might appear at the helm of some terrorist cell and threaten her peace.

Her peace.

It sickened him she was given the credit for bringing about peace. It was not her and her words, but the lives of men and women who fought for their ideals. That was what had given the world this peace it enjoyed today. Planetary born and colony bred cooperating together, though not exactly bosom buddies.

If all was paradise there would have been no need for Preventers.

To hear politicians talk, to see them slapping each other on the back and smiling their false smiles… Did they think people fools?

The wind must be rising; he could hear it wailing through the gaps in the walls. Where was this ramshackle old hut? Where was he to spend his last moments of life? A mountain, perhaps? A hunter's cabin, long abandoned to wind and spiders. If he could not have died in honourable battle he might have liked to die in Sanc.

Was there any chance he was in Sanc? It was deep winter in the northern hemisphere, and unless he was on a perpetually snow capped peak he had to be in the winter zone of the planet. That was his only clue as to his location.

He could accept dying in Sanc where once Peacecrafts had been warriors and understood to effect change one must, on occasion, be brutal. The people of six or seven hundred years ago would have understood, but not these modern generations. Did no one study history any more?

Treize certainly had.

Ah, the building was shaking, vibrating to the force of the wind. If there had been a window in his line of sight he might have tried to move, just to see if he could see anything of the outside world. One last glimpse of sky perhaps.

Was that light? Were his eyes open? The building was shuddering violently about him and there was a noise that suggested the old structure would fall down around his ears. Perhaps he should hope it would, at least the waiting would be done.

Still, it could not be long now.

He was tired. So tired.

End

Karina Robertson 2007