A slight metal crash.
Her heart jumped and her feet followed. She flew to the window and looked over to see him climbing up the ladder to her.
His head popped up and stared at her uncertainly.
The two shared a smileless, nervous gaze for an awkwardly long moment as he continued to climb.
He felt an obligation to smile reassuringly.
His strangely comforting smile still did nothing to cool her nerves. The muscles in her body seemed to be shaking as his hands reached her window-sill.
One would expect them to speak; but they just stared intensely and almost hungrily.
But the uneasiness in Relena's stomach moved her to say, "Is this right, Heero?"
He admitted, still staring at her fiercely, "I don't know." He wanted to say something more, something of the insanity-driving thoughts dripping like venom out of his mind, but all that came out was another "I don't know..."
A need to touch her took control of his arm and he moved it to her face. He never touched her like that before. He only touched her when he had to move her or for some other necessary
purpose. But then he just touched her... just to touch her. Still staring in his dark, deep eyes, she moved her hand to hold his against her face. A feeling like queasiness grew in her stomach and started to eat at the veins running through her body. "This is crazy," she muttered.
An easier, more confident smile appeared on Heero's face. He leaned over the window-sill, just inches from her face. "I know."
There was no need to move any closer. They could be standing five miles apart and their spirits were embracing. And it was true then; their lips were only a foot separated, but their gaze shared something better than a kiss could ever attempt.
She placed his hand back on the window-sill and went back to get her things, remaining staring at him as she walked backwards.
If his mind would allow him any conscious thought, it would have been protesting that he just met her two days ago... he'd held her hair back as she puked her guts out at a kegger after having too much to drink. She looked up at him, a smile expressing gratitude and security and hope and every pure emotion available in the world, then her head dropped and she passed out. Heero's two completely stoned friends with him that night were completely dumbstruck that Heero gave a flying fuck about this annoyingly bossy girl, much less give a shit about her to take care of the bitch while she puked. But, completely hammered himself, he passed out instantly on her shoulder also. In his last few conscious moments, he remembered himself whispering, I'll take you away from all this, I promise..." and she replied, equally unconscious,"Heero..." His high friends laughed, "What the fuck, dude's trippin...! Ha, ha, we gotta give him hell bout this tomorrow..."
But he thought nothing about it. She returned to the window, the moonlight shining softly on her face angelically. A bag of her things over her shoulder, she stared silently at him.
What they were waiting for, neither knew. Running away was no light event.
Finally Heero's dark yet hopeful smile returned and Relena breathed easier, but still not effortlessly. He took her soft hand and helped her out and over the window-sill.
He watched her make her way down the ladder slowly. He felt like he had to watch her, for fear that she might slip and fall. He was so protective of her...
She hopped the last foot off it and turned to see him staring at her concernedly. She felt the need to allay his fears and swiped his long hair out of his heavy eyes.
No words were needed.
This was the reason he felt he needed her, the strength and reassuring, calming comfort she gave him were completely unknown to him until then. He resolutely grabbed her hand and together they ran to his motorcycle.
He hopped on and she followed. Taking one last sadly unsure look at her comfortable and familiar house, Heero's motor roared to life and the two tore off out of her yard and toward their uncertain future.
She'd wanted to stop to look at the stars before they left.
Left for where, neither knew...
But she wanted to see the stars from her home-town one last time before she never saw them that way again. She was leaving her life of security and comfort... and for what... her mind was swirling with thoughts of love and warmth and her conscious minds couldn't answer her questions.
She dropped her head onto his shoulder in front of her. Again, he felt his hand
unconsciously and unsurely move to her head. He stroked her head and the feelings of comfort flooded over him again. Yet he was still so nervous. But her sweet, flower-like breath was raising the hairs on his neck and soothing him all at once.
He got up slowly and faced her. She looked up at him, expressionless, as the star-light glittered her face divinely. He licked his lips unsurely and his fists clenched nervously.
She took a deep breath and Heero watched the elegant rise and fall of her chest. His mind was protesting slightly, but his heart was bound to her by golden harp-strings.
Knowing it was ridiculously cliche at the time, Heero picked her up off of the motorcycle seat and carried her a few feet to a grassy area. Laying her down, he never took his eyes off her gloriously glowing face.
She stroked his face, not smiling and almost shaking she was so nervous. She wanted to ask, what are we doing, but instead all she said was, "What can I do for you... tell me..."
His all of the sudden sad eyes pierced hers. His thumb traced her bottom lip and he shook his head, "I want to make you happy... as happy as you make me..."
Her eyes suddenly filled with tears and Heero's own soon did, also. If he had any of his wits about him at that point, he would have been shocked. But his mind was injected with the instinct-killing anesthesia of deep love, and he could think nothing. He said, voice cracking,
"Nothing I ever do will be enough..."
A tear streamed down her face as he said this. She smiled and pulled him closer to him, acknowledging what he said.
His fingers awkwardly and numbly intertwined with hers. The burning but tragic urge inside him grew. He wanted to pull her closer, but felt that it would never be close enough.
Her eyes were tear-filled and beautiful... but sad. Her fingers slid out of his and she moved them up his back and to his shoulders.
He narrowed his eyes and an unrecognizable tear dripped out. The need inside him was ravenous and infinitely sorrowful. He squeezed his eyes shut mournfully and wrapped his strong arms around her waist.
He pulled her closely to him, his mind objecting but his heart taking control of his actions.
This isn't right, he thought, what are you doing...
But her sad, touching eyes were staring at his, begging him unsurely to be closer.
He closed his eyes tightly shut and took her.
6:00 A.M.
Cold leather on just-woke-up skin.
Heero's truck labored to life and Relena stared out its frost-covered windows.
He hated talking. "Anyone see you leave."
She wrapped her arms around her stomach, slightly hurt by the tone in which he asked her that. She was suddenly grateful for the warm sweater her brother had given her for Christmas last night. It was the only thing to warm her in Heero"s un-heated truck.
"No."
she said simply and sadly.
His narrow gaze continued as he shifted the truck into gear. He resentfully remembered his motorcycle, and was angered at having to sell it to get money... all for nothing...
She scratched some frost of his window and stared out of it at her disappearing house. She remembered leaving it only five months earlier... though it felt like the longest five months of her life. Indeed the other 17 years of her life felt like a week compared to the five arduous months of struggle they spent together. In those five months she missed too much school to pass her senior year and could no longer graduate. She had also missed her prom. Neither wanted to give up. Both wanted to make it work. But they sold everything they had and still didn't have money to eat.
"As long as we have love, we need nothing else," Relena promised him one night in a rain-leaking motel room.
The slowly growing-frustrated Heero responded quietly and tightly, "As long as we have love, we're still cold and hungry."
The sharpness in his voice stung her. She knew it was true. The only reason she'd even said it was to convince herself. Nonetheless, he still lifted her chin sadly to look her in the eyes.
His eyes were hard-set and determined. "I never wanted this for you."
They both gave up and returned home the next day, only four months after they'd left.
Relena's memory ceased and she was returned to the cold leather stinging her skin and the freezing, brittle air piercing her lungs. The empty sadness she felt was beyond tears. She didn't want it to end up that way.
He couldn't stand the waiting.
The oppressive, sterile, puke-mint-green of the waiting room depressed him even more than he already was... if that was possible. But his ever-present emotionlessness had returned to him.
He tired of pacing over the dingy tile with his hands stuck in his pockets and his eyes closed. An empty obligation in his heart moved him to a family-run flower shop across the street. He needed to occupy his mind with something while he waited, and an old urge inside him showed him there.
It was better than that hospital waiting room, he thought. His breath fogged the dirty glass doors that held the flower arrangements behind them. He dug his hands into his ragged jeans to pull out whatever money he still had.
He expected so much more. The sight of his small pile of change depressed him ever
further. He counted it sadly, not believing he could get anything with it. Anything that was enough, he thought, but nothing would ever be enough...
A small, sad collection of aging white daisies was all he could afford.
She didn't even notice them when she walked, trembling, out of the hospital room accompanied by a hospital attendant. Her whole body was shaking and she held her hand to her forehead. He could see the red rawness of tears that had been staining her face during the operation.
She leaned up against the threshold of the door and Heero moved her arm over his shoulder and helped her out to his truck. She didn't say a word. She didn't even thank him for the flowers because she couldn't even look at them. She just sat against the door, crouched up in a ball, arms wrapped tightly around her, her head buried in her knees while the few wilting flowers rested on the dashboard.
Occasionally Heero would see her, out of the corner of his eye, take a longing look out the window and a tear would drip from her eye. At that point, there was nothing more Heero could do.
He realized no comfort he could give her would be enough. He could do nothing for her then.
And he never felt more alone in his life.
Even before he met her he'd never known such loneliness.
But then, to have the one he loved so close, but be utterly incapable of consoling her...
That killed the last string of hope holding his paper heart together.
Weeks went by.
It showed she wasn't okay.
She kept throwing up, even after the surgery. The bulge in her belly had disappeared but she kept getting sick and even started throwing up blood.
There was nothing he could do. He'd spent all of the last of every dollar he'd saved for that surgery. He began thinking resentfully that she would get them caught if she didn't get better. He looked for her at raves and parties but she never showed up. He couldn't visit her; her family made that very clear when he had brought her home a month before Christmas.
Some days he stood outside her window, being tortured by the sound of her continuing sickness. He remembered the first night he held her hair back, and strangely wished he could be two stories up to help her again...
But as quickly as that desire would slide into his brain, his hopeless heart would let it slip out again, and he would leave.
One day he heard she was in the hospital. He couldn't see her during visiting hours, so he slipped in unnoticed in the middle of the night.
This hospital wasn't quite as depressing as the previous one he'd been in with her.
However, that previous one was less of a hospital and more a butchering clinic, he decided.
He entered her room to see her angelic face lit by harsh fluorescent lights. Its previous golden beauty was replaced by wilted, wrinkled sickness. The sight of it was even more torturous to Heero.
He took her frail hand. It had become so brittle. He realized she probably hadn't been able to hold anything down. She was so thin, he noticed depressingly. That only pressed upon his heart more.
She had been asleep, but as soon as he touched her, her lead eyes opened with great effort. It took her a while, but slowly her eyes focused and she recognized the stressed, saddened face in front of her.
"Heero?"
The frail tenderness in her voice was too much. He'd held all the pain inside of him for so long, their ruined love, her continuing pain...
He broke down.
Tears rolled from his eyes like blades and as they poured they seemed to hurt him equally as bad. He squeezed her hand, ignoring its weakness, and continued to sob.
"God, Relena, what have I done to you..."
His eyes were closed and his head was hung. His salty, heavy tears landed on her skin, which looked like that of a seventy-year-old's instead of a seventeen-year-old's. The depressing pain inside him was unbearable, he was worthless... she was his heart...
Slowly, he felt her grip tightening. She was squeezing his hand back. He lifted his angrily tear-filled eyes to meet hers.
She was smiling the same innocent smile of security and hope that she had the first night she met him.
Heero instantly ceased. The remaining tears hung in his eyes and streamed down very slowly over the next few moments. They just remained staring at each other.
Just stared.
Nothing else mattered in the world but her eyes.
Nothing else was needed.
He didn't feel so worthless anymore.
Then she whispered, "This, Heero - this is enough..."
A strangely peaceful smile spread across her face. It soothed Heero's tortured mind at once.
A cold, merciless beep sang through the air.
Heero looked at the life-monitors behind her and saw one unfeeling green line streaming angrily across the screen.
Time seemed to stop.
He could hear the hurried foot-steps of the doctors rushing to her room.
But he felt he had all the time in the world.
His love, his Relena, for whom he could never do enough...
This was it.
He pulled the gun from his heavy coat and kissed her forehead.
"Thank you, Relena," he said and put the gun to his chin.
All sounds were swallowed in one blunt shot.