All For One But Your Ass Is Mine (Part II)
All For One But Your Ass Is Mine
The Davenport promised to get them to Wakeview by mid afternoon the next day so they made their way to the port and their things were happily stowed in time for the midnight departure. The Davenport was a cruise ship with more than 600 passengers and 50 crew members. With the time difference from one planet to the next, it meant there were planned activities at all hours of the day and people awake to participate in them.
Jensen went to his quarters as soon as they were on the ship. As the Captain of the Queen’s Guard he was the most likely to be spotted by anyone in on the Vice Minister’s plan. He argued that they were all too visible, especially after the events of the Hall, but Jeff pointed out they were just part of the Guard while people looked up to Jensen. In the end, they won out because Jensen had to see the sense in keeping his face hidden but they needed to be on the look out for anyone that might be involved with the Vice Minister.
Misha took off on his own, wandering the ship’s interior, leaving Jeff and Jared to meander through the deck and see what they could find. They walked together a few minutes, then one of them would branch off, find someone to talk to, before they continued on their way together again.
Jared didn’t know much about the King’s Guard but he’d learned a lot about the Vice Minister. He’d always thought him to be trustworthy, though his mother had other opinions. He hated that she was right. He hated that while he couldn’t look for familiar faces, he could still take his mother’s training and learn about the people around them, see if anything seemed out of place as he made his way across the deck.
It took them a few hours to cover the deck and head back around, but Jared managed to get some useful information for just a few minutes of heavy flirting. When he’d gone back to Jeff, the older man had raised an eyebrow but hadn’t said anything. Jared wasn’t about to explain himself, or his methods, to Jeff.
When the ship finally set off from the port they were all free to relax a little. As Jared walked into the bar he was surprised to see Jeff and Misha already at a table to one side of the room, while Jensen was nursing a bottle of something in a booth at the back. Jared smiled and flirted his way around the room, ignoring Jensen and the heavy weight of his eyes, as he came over to join Jeff and Misha. He remembered Jensen’s previous admonishment at the Hall about drinking alone.
Jeff smiled affectionately at him as he got to the table. “What?”
“Your mom taught you all that then?” he asked, waving his hand at the way Jared had been moving through the crowd. Misha was watching Jeff closely, the seriousness that he’d held in the arena long gone since his reunion with Jensen and Jeff at the dock.
“Yeah,” Jared said with a half laugh. “She said people don’t know half of what they actually know and all you have to do is know how to listen.”
“Who the hell was your mother?” Misha asked softly.
“Sharondra, the Queen’s Handmaiden,” Jeff answered in admiration. “And the head of her dea’kin.”
Misha’s eyes widened and the chair he’d been leaning back on plopped heavily to all four legs as he stared at Jared.
“She took the name of her husband when she left the Queen’s service. She is simply Sharon Padalecki now.” Jared looked down at the reverence they spoke her name, and while he knew his history, it was one thing to know and another to be confronted by men who would have worked with her kind first hand.
The Queen’s Guard might be the Queen’s protection from the enemies of the Empire, but there were lots of enemies, foreign and domestic. Known to only a few, the Queen had another level of protection; the dea’kin, those sworn to protect with body and mind and soul. His mother had been one of them, a beautiful child picked from a poor household to become the most honored dea’kin in their history. She was the only one to have even been given leave of her position to take on a husband and family of her own.
While the Guard was honor and duty, a show of truth and honest and complete adoration for the Queen, the dea’kin was the underside. They were a small group of men and women who were trained in the arts of espionage, seduction, and assassination. Jared had no misunderstanding about who his mother was and what she was capable of. She had groomed him in her own fashion, training him in her own arts when he had been too young to understand. As he’d grown he’d continued with her lessons but his love for the Guard became his focus and she laughed on more than one occasion that her own love for his father had tainted his heart and turned him into a Queen’s man instead of the dea’kin he was to become.
To the world though, Sharondra had been a simple handmaiden, one of the Queen’s personal confidants and childhood friends. No one knew about the existence of the Queen’s assassins, except the head of the Queen’s Guard. And apparently his friends.
“Well that explains why you said I should run him over,” Misha said with a grin.
“Wait. You did that on purpose?”
“Your mom didn’t teach you about coincidence?”
“My mom and dad taught me to trust the Queen’s Guard,” Jared said with a shake of his head.
Jeff winked. “I did learn a thing or two from your mother.”
“So that puts you in the trust you as far as I can throw you category?” Jared asked as he took a sip of his drink, relaxing as Misha got up for another. He needed a distraction from the current topic. It wasn’t that the world at large didn’t know about assassins or the different types of training they received, but he didn’t want the men he was with to dwell on his own training too much.
“What’s his story anyway?” he asked, using Misha’s exit to change the subject. Besides, he needed to know more about the men he was with and while there were subtle ways of digging for the information, he didn’t want the others to think he’d go behind their backs for that. He would if he needed to and he was fairly certain he could manage it, but he didn’t want to.
“What do you mean?”
“He was so serious in the arena and as he was leaving the Hall.”
Jeff nodded. “He’s Ardacian.”
“The only Ardacians who leave the planet are missionaries,” Jared said, thinking aloud, something his mother discouraged except when you wanted the people with you to comment on your thoughts. Jared did it more than he should, he supposed, but then he trusted more readily than his mother would like as well. She never understood that his biggest asset in gaining information was his ability to put information out there, to put his emotions out there, and see where it led. He was trained well by her, but that didn’t mean they shared the same style of trust building. “What happened to make him leave behind the religious collar? It’s unheard of.”
“Misha was head of an Ardacian mission that was protesting the use of violence in politics. They were staging a sit in at the Port Authority to get as much visibility as they could. Now no one knows where the orders came from but someone decided the best way to keep Ardacians out of the Empire was by showing them they wouldn’t be tolerated. The King’s Guard was sent in with orders to use extreme prejudice. You know how the Ardacians hate violence so they didn’t even try to stop them. When the Queen found out she sent us in, but they were already done for. A few of the Ardacians died of shock in the prison cells they’d been taken. A few never woke again and those that did have never spoken. They returned to their home world and never left. The Queen spent two years trying to right that wrong, working with the Ardacian council until they trusted her again.”
“And Misha?”
“Like I said, he was the head of the Ardacian mission so the Guard took a special interest in him. When we found him they had been using electric blades on him, numbing parts of his body, electrifying some, and just bleeding the hell out of him. They had him in a cell and he was pressed to the corner, almost animalistic in the way he watched the men in there. We got him out, took care of the men that were hurting him, but Misha got a knife and he attacked one of the men. Jensen stopped him from killing anyone but it was a close thing. He got him out of there and got him to the hospital. He took to meditation as soon as he was healed enough and when we went back to visit two months later he was working sword forms with a dedication I’ve rarely seen.”
“Ardacians are known for their absolute devotion.”
Jeff nodded. “And Misha re-devoted his life. The only thing that means anything to him now is his life debt.”
Jared gasped at that and Jeff nodded again. “He’ll kill if he has to, but it’s to protect and serve, not because he wants to hurt someone. Jensen saved him from that in that cell and Misha bound himself to protect Jensen from that day on. Jensen hates it, sends him away as often as he can.”
“That’s what Jensen meant when he asked if Misha gave you to him.”
“Yeah. He was in my keeping. Thing is, if anything ever happened to Jensen on my watch, Misha would kill me and I know it. No matter that we’ve fought side by side for ten years now. It would only matter that I let Jensen die. So if you ever get handed Jensen, know what it means to accept it.”
Jared looked over at the corner table where Jensen sat drinking. He wasn’t alone anymore; a beautiful girl sat at his side and a tall young man was leaning over to whisper in his ear. He realized Jensen was watching him, licking his lips at whatever the young man was saying.
Jared knew he could stop it. He saw the invitation in Jensen’s eyes but he couldn’t make that leap with the Queen’s man. It was tempting and he had to suppress a shudder at the though of the other man pressed up against him, but he knew he had to be careful. He already felt a strong connection to Jensen. He, of all people, had to think this sort of thing through carefully. He dropped his eyes, just a fraction and then Jensen was moving away from the tables and back to his room, the girl wrapped under his arm and the young man at his back. Jared groaned and Misha laughed as he sat a bottle in front of Jared.
“No worries lad,” he said softly. “Jensen drinks alone. He also sleeps alone. They’ll be gone long before we have to deal with it in the morning.”
They drank hard then, a strong bond forming between the three as they laughed and joked, talked about where they were going, the world they’d seen, and the gossip Jared picked up as part of his trade.
When he went to bed that night, alone by choice, he couldn’t help but think of Jensen. He was in the room next door and as he looked at the wall, Jared cursed his mother’s training. Because of it, he knew exactly where Jensen was in relation to Jared, he also knew all the different ways Jensen could be touched, the ways that his two lovers could be moving with him. He pressed his eyes closed and pressed his hand down on his growing erection. He needed to think about this, to understand where his heart was leading him, if it was his heart at all. It could just be blatant hero worship for the head of the Queen’s Guard, but then the image appeared of Jensen’s lips as he licked them, the way his eyes had called to Jared from across the room. Jared slid his hand under the sheets and wrapped his fingers around himself, stroking slowly. He came with Jensen’s name on his lips and the indelible knowledge that he was royally screwed. Yeah, pun fucking well intended.
The next morning Jared made his way back to the main cabin to get something to eat. Misha and Jeff were both at a table already. Jeff had a full plate in front of him, eating like he had no choice while Misha sat beside him, smiling at Jeff’s pain as if he hadn’t tried to drink the both of them under the table last night. Jared let his own worries go as he realized Jensen wasn’t with them yet and he smiled at them. “Morning.”
Jeff groaned and Misha frowned. “You look unusually bright this morning,” Misha commented.
Jared smiled. “Never try to out drink the dea’kin. You’ll never win. ”
“And they never drink half as much as they let you think they did.” Jensen said as he leaned between them, setting a full plate in front of Jared.
Jared scowled slightly at the intrusion but decided against commenting. Jensen had his own plate that he set down and tucked into, and Jared did the same, deciding discretion was the better part of valor in his attempt to keep Jensen Ackles from getting any further under his skin.
Jeff smirked into his food as though he could see the retreat Jared was making and Misha just scowled for a second before letting it go. “So we should be docking in another seven hours,” Misha finally commented.
Jared paused in his eggs and bacon, watching as Jeff pushed his plate away and Jensen wiped at too plump lips. Jared ignored the need to look harder, to clearly see the mark that could be a shadow against the cloth at his neck - except that it didn’t move with the fabric at all.
“We need to find out when the DreamWalker is leaving.”
“It can only be from the Shangtu main port. They’re the only port that has free passage to Buenota.” Jeff offered up.
“DreamWeaver is captained by Gordon Walker. He’s as superstitious as they come, and thinks its bad luck to fly into the galactic winds with a full moon at his back,” Jared offered quietly. “With the three moons of Shangtu, it means he can only fly out between four and eight in the morning planet side and Walker is known for leaving as soon as he can set his sails.”
Jeff smirked and Misha looked downright impressed. Jensen looked him up and down, as if assessing him again. He stood, not liking the way Jensen was taking him in one bit. Or maybe liking it too much for comfort. He grabbed his plate and looked at the three of them. “I do know more productive ways to spend my time than wenching and drinking in the evenings,” he chided as he walked away.
He dropped his plate in the bin, no longer hungry, but remembered to smile at the pretty little cook’s assistant. She came over to take the bin and he grabbed it up for her, following her back into the kitchen to help. Jensen was too damn far under his skin and she was just what he needed to forget about him. When she pulled him back into one of the small cupboards and closed the door he let her. “So you gonna be traveling with me on Gordon’s ship, right?” she asked as her strong fingers began to pull at the fastenings of his pants.
He dropped his head back against the wall. This hadn’t been the plan when he came down for breakfast, but there was only so much he could take. Jensen sitting beside him, skin bruised from the night before, was just too much. He needed to get Jensen out of his mind and she was more than willing to help. “Maybe, sounds like he could be headed where I need to go next. Just,” he let out a deep breath as he grabbed her thighs, lifting her tiny weight like it was nothing. With his back against the wall she pulled her skirts out of the way and he was sinking into her magnificent heat. “Stars, yeah.”
She grinned and then there were no more words spoken. When he finally backed them out of the cupboard, she stretched up to kiss his cheek lightly, her skirts dropping back down her thighs. He let a blush tinge his cheeks, no longer cursing his mother’s careful training as the assistant sashayed away from him, none the wiser of his true intentions.
He avoided the others off and on for the rest of the morning, taking time to speak with the other passengers. He felt them out for the state of affairs of the kingdom, of their home planets, and talked to them about their travels. He let them talk about whatever crossed their minds and in the end he knew he was fairly safe on the ship.
He joined the others for lunch and felt himself ready to burst with impatience.
“Do you have a plan yet, Jensen, before the young one blows himself up?” Jeff asked with a wink at Jared.
Jared ignored it in favor of focusing on Jensen. Jensen shrugged. “We need to get to the port and scope out the area. Unless you happen to know the layout of the spaceport off the top of your head?” Jensen asked.
Jared gave a sharp shake of his head and Jensen continued. “Then we get to the port as quick as we can and scope out the situation. We need to find a way to keep the Princess off that ship, or to get her off once she’s on. Ideas?”
“The cook’s assistant is transferring to the DreamWalker. I could get into the kitchens easy enough and put something in the food or drink of the crew.”
“Only works if everyone eats at the same time.” Misha commented.
Jared scowled. Like he wouldn’t have his bases covered. “The captain starts every journey with a toast to the crew before he lets anyone on board.”
“How the hell do you know all this?” Misha finally asked.
“Cook’s assistant.”
“She knows a lot for a cook.”
Jared smiled. “Most do, but she’s also Trained. Mund’da I would say,” he offered as the others stared at him. “All sex and little subtlety. She doesn’t know that I’m dea’kin and won’t until it’s too late.”
Jeff’s eyes hardened. “What do you plan on doing to her?”
Jared shook his head as he took a long drink of his water. It was amazing what people could think of you once they knew what you were trained for. No, not just knowing, but actually seeing him use it. Of all the disciplines a spy could take, rumor said the dea’kin were the most extreme, the most willing to use violence at the end of the day, and the least likely to leave a trace of themselves behind. It was true because no other discipline was studied for the sole practice of protection. The other disciplines of the Trained did it for their own end, their own goals, but the dea’kin chose their own numbers and they were dedicated to doing whatever it took to protect.
“Nothing,” he answered evenly. “Either she’s very poorly trained or she has no interest in the Queen’s Guard. I got what I needed from her. Getting caught in whatever we do to the crew of the ship will be more than enough punishment for her. Is that a problem, Jeff?”
Jeff’s eyes softened then and Jared took a deep breath. He knew how hard it was for people to trust the Trained, to understand the lines that they had to draw. Jared hadn’t made any kind of declaration to the men with him, hadn’t explained his own beliefs or how his training played into his need to become a Queen’s Guard. He gave them no reason to trust him and yet they were. Jeff trusted because of his mother, though it was obvious that was beginning to lose its value in the face of Jared’s skill. Misha was following Jensen, but the other man was holding true to taking Jared along with them, for no reason Jared could understand. He tried not to think that just maybe he was getting under Jensen’s skin too.
Jeff nodded. “No.” He took a deep breath, glancing Jensen’s way before looking back at Jared. “Look kid, I’ve got no issues with the Trained. Just like to know which side of the sword I’m looking at.”
Jared nodded, holding his hand out to Jeff. Seduction was something he could do as easy as breathing but this was something else. Offering his hand in friendship wasn’t telling them everything, but it was something he could give Jeff. If he’d worked with the Trained before it would calm his misgivings and give them both back a measure of the comfort that they’d developed the night before. Jeff held his hand out and Jared curled his fingers slightly into the other man’s, a sign of friendship that his kind only shared in truth, never deceit. “I’m here to join the Queen’s Guard. I heard those men talking about Princess Danneel just as I told you and I followed you to help put her on the throne. Whatever else I am, whatever else I may do, those things are true and nothing else comes before that.”
The relief in Jeff’s eyes was instantaneous and he wondered briefly if he’d worked with other Trained before or just had a strong knowledge of them.
“So then, we scope out the port and see if we can stop them before they ship out. If not, we let Jared drug the crew and take it from there. Any questions?” Jeff asked with a smile.
Jensen and Misha were looking between the two of them and Jared just smiled. “Yeah, where’s the beer?”
The port was as chaotic as all space ports were and after repeat viewing they were in agreement that the best bet was to let the abductors take the Princess on board. Jared’s use of a sleeping agent worked perfectly and the crew was knocked out and hidden in the bows of a derelict ship next to it. They would be long gone before the sleeping crew woke and no one was likely to go looking for them aboard the other ship. Misha managed to get a hold of the passenger list and found out that the entire vessel had been rented out for the Princess which just made their job easier.
“So, we’re stealing the Princess back and the ship with her?” Jared asked as they settled in for the wait. They’d gotten rid of their uniforms and were dressed in shipmen’s clothes. Jensen moved across the deck and sat next to Jared as he tried to ignore how damn good he looked dressed in regular street clothes.
“You do know how to sail, right?” Jensen asked.
Jared smirked at the notion of that, being unable to captain a ship out of port with his training. “Wake me up when it’s time,” were the words he chose to address the issue though. Jensen laughed at his side and something in Jared warmed a little at the sound of it. He squirmed with the knowledge of how irrefutable it was all becoming but he closed his eyes instead. He’d denied destiny his whole life, became the man he wanted to be, and blood and training couldn’t make him anything else. It wasn’t true but he’d hoped, damn it, a part of him had still held out the hope that it could. With Jensen sitting beside him, the bond between them settling as easy as could be, wrapping around bone and sinew and pulling tight, he could only close his eyes and pray to the Stars that they got out of all this before Jensen realized what was happening and just who Jared really was.
He didn’t try to sleep though and he was sure the others knew he wasn’t as well. He should immerse himself in the plan to save the Princess, to devote himself to the impressions and experiences of the past two days but he couldn’t. He’d failed the night before and it was no better sitting on the deck.
He was having trouble finding the calm of reflection and he knew it was because of Jensen, sitting close enough that their shoulders brushed together every few minutes. He thought about getting up but the other two had watched as Jensen moved to his side and sat with him, as if making it obvious that even without his pledge of friendship, he still trusted Jared. It was a touching gesture and one Jared wouldn’t refute just to give himself the semblance of peace. Not when he was sure Jensen Ackles being on the boat was just as distracting as him being within reach.
Since Jared was too caught up in his mind to get any semblance of order he tuned his senses into the other man. It wasn’t the best choice to make, he knew, but since he couldn’t think of anything else he might as well use the time to figure that out.
Not that Jared didn’t know what ‘that’ was. He’d been only a boy of ten when his mother had taken him aside and explained why she had been chosen to walk away from the life she’d once known to raise him. He knew who he was and what his place in life was supposed to be, but it was that same conversation that had led him to see the love that Sharondra dea’kin had for her husband and how the Queen’s Guard had given her a life she’d never hoped to have before that. He’d vowed to himself then to become more like that man, to someday live the life he’d had. At least until duty made him take the other role.
Now he was faced with both and he didn’t know what to do with it. He let out a deep sigh and felt Jensen shift beside him, their shoulders pressing together lightly in an unconscious giving of comfort that Jared knew Jensen didn’t understand. He felt the small chuckle beside him and shook his head, grinning without meaning too. Alright, so he did know. Jensen was no dea’kin, but he could read Jared as if he was.
“You’re about as subtle as a supernova sometimes,” Jensen said softly. “Doesn’t take the Trained to know when something’s eating away at you. That thing between you and Jeff was just part of it.”
“And the thing with you last night?”
Jensen sighed but didn’t lean away. “Just an invitation you apparently didn’t want to accept. Don’t make more out of it than that, boy. We’re here to do a job and get the Princess to safety, hopefully not get injured, and have a little fun in the meantime. That’s what we do.”
Jared let out a sigh of relief. If it was nothing more than that he could handle it. He could take Jensen’s heated looks and the trust and the building need and find a way to push it all back into a corner. Just so long as the growing connection on Jared’s part remained one-sided.
“Captain Walker?” The voice rang across the deck with an echoing boom. The four am departure time guaranteed them a deserted pier and the darkness took the voice and warped it until it was gone.
No one answered the call, each of the Queen’s Guard hidden at his post, waiting for the right moment to spring into action. The party came further aboard, six men, none of whom Jared recognized and a pretty little princess complete with a fan covering her face where the veil of her hat didn’t. It allowed her to give her smile away, to acknowledge deeds and to reprimand with the down turn of her lips. It was a subtle way to rule interactions by hiding away the full effect of her features.
He watched the way her face moved slightly and she knew something was wrong. He could see her lean backwards slightly, as if to run when the time came.
“You said eight men and one woman. The fee doesn’t change. I had hoped for eight though. It’s more fun that way,” Jeff said as he stepped into the open deck of the ship. He had a hat pulled down low so no one could really see his face but just a glimpse of him was enough to know he didn’t have the right skin tone for the captain they’d contracted for the journey.
“Who are you?” the man at point asked.
Jeff tipped his hat up and smiled charmingly. “Just your local delivery man here to make sure the Princess gets where she needs to be.”
“Queen’s Guard,” one of the men hissed and Jared watched as the Princess took a step closer to her kidnappers, like she wanted out of their hands, just so long as it wasn’t back into the hands of her own personal guard. Jared filed the information away for later because swords were being drawn and Jared was being asked to draw against the King’s Guard in a serious confrontation. There would be no modified blades or hard hitting shocks. This was for blood.
“One against six?” the men laughed softly and Jeff laughed with them.
“Yes it does seem unfair. Even more so when I tell you it’s actually four against six.”
They stepped out of their positions then, Misha and Jared on either side of the deck and Jensen coming up the plank behind them. The King’s Guard surged forward with one man moving towards the Princess before Jensen was intercepting him, moving the Princess out of danger and past the men that were facing off. Jensen got her to the ship and Jared grabbed her, pushing her behind him. They were facing six men with the Princess at their backs.
It really wasn’t much of a fight and though Jared managed to down one of the King’s men, the others were handled before he had his one man down. He put his sword back in his hip holster and turned just as she was about to make a run for the boarding plank.
He grabbed her quickly and pulled her back. “Where exactly are you going my Princess?” he asked with a smile.
She glared, jerking out of his hands. “How dare you touch me!”
“How dare you try to run away!”
“Princess,” Jensen stepped between them and Jared knew he was trying to save him from getting in more trouble with the Princess. He took the moment to back up, watching Misha’s wide eyes before he turned back to the Princess and Jensen. “You are safe with us now. The journey to your coronation will take four days. Please know that we will do everything in our power to keep you safe. The accommodations are not up to a Princess’s standards but I’m sure you understand that getting you safely back to your people is far more important than mere convenience.”
She flipped her fan open and glared from behind the veil but Jensen simply smiled at her as he continued. “My name is Jensen Ackles, the head of your Guard. With me is Jeff Morgan, Misha Collins, and you have already spoken words with our young friend Jared Padalecki.”
The fan snapped closed at Jared’s name and the Princess nodded to Jensen. “I would like to see my quarters now. It has been a long few days and I need to rest before I can think anymore on it.”
Jensen bowed but it was Jeff who stepped up to lead her. She walked with him but stepped closer to Jared as they were moving past him. Before the others knew what was happening, she smacked Jared across the face with her fan. The fan was edged with blades and he moved with it, to keep the cuts small but she was fast and well trained. He knocked the fan from her hand then and blocked when a fist came his way. He grabbed her wrist and pinned it behind her back before grabbing the other one.
When he had her secured she started screaming. “Let me go you ignorant oaf of a boy! Don’t you get it? I don’t want it. I don’t want it and you can’t make me go back there.” He let her loose and she spun in his arms, eyes wide and desperate. “You don’t want me to go back,” she pleaded. “I know you don’t. I know what you want and you don’t want this. If I don’t go back we’re both free.” She brought a hand up to his face and he breathed deeply, his anger turning soft at the calming touch of her skin on his. “Jared, if I don’t go, you don’t have that duty either.”
Jared pulled back quickly and his eyes turned hard as he pushed her back against the cabin wall. She gasped and his towering presence made the anger in her reappear. “You will go back and do your duty little Princess,” he said softly, “just as I will do mine.”
Her eyes moved to the blood trickling down his cheek and her face flushed. She dropped her eyes then, her manner downcast and frightened, but there was nothing of either in the rest of her demeanor.
“I wondered if the name Padalecki would mean something to you.” He walked away then, needing to stop the bleeding from her blades. He grabbed the damn fan from the floor, tossing it back her way. “You’re well trained,” he said without looking back.
“By the best,” was her answer. He didn’t say anything else. He knew where she had her training. No one else worked a steel bladed fan like Sharondra dea’kin.
On to Part III