Directly after Endless Waltz:

He woke with a start. Jerking slightly he was instantly aware of her presence in the room. Heero turned to look at the girl next to him, who was now sleeping against the edge of the hospital bed. His expression softened as he ran a long finger down her smooth cheek.

‘Relena.’ Reluctantly he pulled away. He rose and prowled around the room silently, looking for clothes to put on instead of the revealing hospital gown. He was not disappointed. With quick jerky motions, he pulled on his standard tank top and jeans. After one last long look at Relena, he made for the door.

"Heero." Her voice whispered from the bedside. He froze in his tracks. "Where are you going?"

Heero turned slowly to face Relena, now looking at him intently.

"Away Relena…I’m going away for a little while." Relena didn’t show any obvious outside signs of emotion, but Heero caught on to the slight tremble of her chin and her eyes squinting to hold back a few tears. He swallowed hard. This was going to be difficult.

"Please, don’t run away again." She whispered, one hand clenched above her heart as if it could protect it from breaking. Doubt sliced through Heero. Was he doing the right thing?

"I’ll come back, Relena. I just need to…find myself. I need to learn to exist in this peace." He broke off. The hand over her heart released and clenched again. She closed her eyes slowly as an unguarded tear traced its way down her cheek.

"I know Heero, I’m just so afraid you won’t be able to find your way back to me." She said, her voice wobbling a bit. She got up from her chair and walked over to him. "What happens if, in finding yourself, you lose me?" She asked a little desperately, eyes beseeching him to stay.

Time froze for Heero. He could literally see two paths of his life calling to him. Her eyes pressed into his, calling to him. Stay here with Relena. But was that enough? Could Heero live with her, knowing that he never tried to find himself? Would that be O.K for him?

"Impossible." Heero assured her. With a last half smile in her direction, he walked out of the hospital door, and out of her life.

**********

~9 years later~

"Mr. Yuy!"

"Mr. Yuy!"

"Mr. Yuy, sir!"

Heero growled and rubbed his temples. All the voices surged around him, crowding him in. Heero’s patience was beginning to slip. One menacing glare was sufficient enough to silence the majority of them.

"May I remind you WHY I called this meeting?" He said irritably "I realize it’s Christmas, but frankly, I don’t care. As long as people are still buying, we are still here, going over statistics and sales marketing. Is that clear?"

He leveled the people gathered around the polished table with his "this means business" look. Everyone nodded impercievably.

"Good. Now, it has come to my attention that our computers are not the number one pick among consumers. I believe that, Mr. Osmond has the report on that. Mr. Osmond if you will?" Heero nodded towards the middle-aged man across from him. Looking slightly flustered he stood and addressed the room.

"When this company first started out, in the days where Mr. Yuy and his partner Mr. Barton still programmed all the software, our computers were number one in the market. Over the past few years, this status has fallen. In recent consumer polls and surveys the number one thing people look for in a - I'm sorry Mr. Yuy, but shouldn't we be home? It's Christmas after all!" Mr. Osmond protested in a rare outburst.

Heero narrowed his eyes. He didn't fault Mr. Osmond, but Heero would not tolerate his authority being questioned. It undermined the employees trust in his judgement and in this cutthroat business, he could NOT have people second guessing him.

"Mr. Osmond, OBVOIUSLY you weren't listening before, but I said Christmas or no, we're here. We have to be three steps ahead of the competition in this market, and right now, we need to go over all this BEFORE our huge shipment to 'Computers N' Things.'"

Mr. Osmond had gone very pale as he swallowed hard. His wide green eyes were even wider as he nodded quickly. Heero mentally sighed. How was it that every time he was just trying to reason everyone reacted as if he'd issued a death threat? Mr. Osmond continued the report in a very tiny voice as Heero sank back into his cushioned chair.

Nobody in the conference noticed as the artificial weather generators malfunctioned and for the first time in 10 years, it snowed on the L1 colony.

***********

Heero stormed past the secretary’s desk, grabbing his coat off the rack next to it. The meeting had been long, stressful and in the end, had accomplished nothing.

"Mr. Yuy." The secretary said as he stalked by her, pulling on his coat.

"What is it Mrs. Finch? As you can see I am NOT in the mood to be reminded about how many appointments I have tomorrow. If you tell me I’ll be forced to take drastic measures against you." Heero threatened forcefully, shoving papers and documents into his briefcase.

His secretary, however, was not impressed with the hissy fit her employer was throwing.

"You have a message, sir."

"Is that so?" Heero replied brusquely, as he jammed more into his briefcase, crinkling and crumbling the fragile paper in the process. "That’s almost interesting."

"From a Ms. Relena Darlian." She pressed on.

Heero froze for a fraction of a second before resuming the task of packing up for the night.

"Really?" He said unconcernedly.

"Sir, are you and Miss Darlian personal acquaintances?" Mrs. Finch asked hesitantly.

"I was a long time ago." Heero said abruptly "and it’s in the past now, like so many other things."

A smart woman like Mrs. Finch knew a dismissal when she heard one. Quietly, she walked out of the room shutting the door behind her. As soon as he heard the doorknob click Heero immediately stopped struggling with his briefcase. Turning slowly to the windows directly behind his desk, he pressed one hand to the cool glass.

"Relena."

He sighed with disgust. Things between him and her were over. Remembering them wasn't going to accomplish anything.

'Maybe a walk would get things off my mind.' He thought.

Finishing packing all the reports and documents he had to go over in his briefcase he took the elevator to the ground floor and began to walk home. The streetlights were on and lights in the windows glowed cheerily against the dark as he shuffled down the powder-covered sidewalk. He let his mind drift. It kept coming back to Relena. Why had she called him? After all this time?

9 years since he had walked out of that hospital room. He wanted to find himself. Really get know who he could be in times of peace. When Trowa approached him with this business venture, he couldn't say no. And the more he built this new life for himself, the less he thought of Relena. He didn't even record her speeches anymore…ok, well, maybe once or twice, but that was it!

Sighing he plowed a hand through his still unruly bangs and turned down an alley that would give him a short cut to his building. He stopped abruptly when he saw a snow- coated figure huddled in the shadows. Immediately on alert, Heero tensed his every muscle as he approached the body. The haggard face of a young man looked up at him, a bit of wry humor twinkling in his clear blue eyes.

"Hey bud. Think you could spare some change for a guy down on his luck?" He asked amicably. A smile spread over his handsome, dirty features. Suddenly Heero couldn't see the dim alley with it's dingy brick walls and the lightly falling snow. No, suddenly he was back in the war, with the sharp tang of blood in the air, and the repetative barks of machine guns spitting out bullets all around him.

He wasn't in ZERO. He was holding someone. He looked down into the face of an impossibly young soldier. Younger even, than himself. The soldier smiled and his blue eyes glowed, as if they held an inner light.

"Hey bud. You're not such a bad fighter." Slowly the boys head lolled as his eyes stared unseeing at Heero.

Heero quickly dropped the body as if has burned him. He looked, horrified, at the machine gun he had used to shoot the boy right through the heart. The commanders' yells echoed in his ears. "RED ONE!? DO YOU READ RED ONE? FALL BACK WE'LL ATTACK WITH THE LEO'S!"

"You alright?" The voice of the bum in the alley jerked Heero from his flashback of the war. He blinked and looked down at the man, who was now looking at him with concern. "Hey, you don't look so good…"

"I'm sorry…Do I… know you?" Heero asked quietly, meditating on the man’s features. It was difficult to see in the dark, but the streetlights cast a slight glow on his face. The skin was dark and tanned, stretched over the angular planes of his face. Premature wrinkles bore testament to a short and strenuous life. Snowflakes caught in the man's stubble, as he shivered a few times.

"I don’t think so. So how about it. A few dollars so’s I can get a cup of joe?" He persisted.

Heero was about to turn away, but something compelled him not to. Silently he considered the man. Frostbitten fingers stuck out of cut off gloves. A thin scratchy blanket was clutched around the sturdy, but starved figure. His eyes held life, but there was a weariness there that Heero could relate with. He made his decision.

"I’ll give you more than a couple of bucks. Come with me."

"Hey pal, I don’t swing that way." The man protested suddenly. Heero looked at him confused. Realization suddenly dawned on him, and to his surprise he laughed.

"No, no, that’s not what I was talking about. Just trust me." He said, holding out his clean manicured hand to the man’s grubby, broad one. Slowly weighing his choices, the man took Heero’s hand and hefted himself up.

"I’m Charlie." He said, looking down from the slight height advantage he had over Heero.

"Heero Yuy." Heero replied with a nod of his head, dislodging a few snowflakes clinging desperately to his hair in the process. Together they made their way through the darkened, snow-covered alley, to Heero's penthouse apartment.

************

Charlie walked into Heero’s living room, and sat on one of the sleek patent leather couches, that, save for a table, and a TV, were the only pieces of furniture in the stark room. A clean sweater and a fresh pair of jeans rested on his now well-fed frame. His clean hair hung damply against his face and his chin was now free of all stubble. Heero looked up from the newspaper he had been reading.

"Feel better?" He asked, crossing one of his pajama pant clad legs.

"Yeah. I do. Thanks a lot. Y’know there’s not a lot of guys out there that would help a fellow like me." He said looking at Heero with the same weariness he had detected before.

"To be honest, I wasn’t going to at first. But then you reminded me of someone…" Heero said, his voice dropping off quietly.

"Who’s that?" Charlie asked, reclining comfortably in one of the seats.

"No one I knew personally…just a soldier…I killed him. But he was so young. Younger even, than I was at that time. He would’ve looked like you if he had lived long enough to grow up." Heero said, not a hint of emotion creeping into his voice. "So how did you end up in that alley?" he added, changing the subject.

"I was a soldier in the war." Charlie said, his gaze now distant as if he wasn’t really there. "I was kinda young when I joined. When I got back home, everything was gone. I don’t know if my parents are dead, or moved somewhere else. The colony government had seized my house. I tried to get work, but no one was much interested in an uneducated ex-soldier. Worked construction sites for a while, but there hasn’t been much in the way of jobs lately. Couldn’t pay for my apartment, so I was evicted a month ago." He smiled tiredly. "I’d do it differently if I could go back."

"Wouldn’t we all." Heero said as a side comment. Immediately Charlie’s attention was on Heero.

"What would YOU have done differently?" He said, looking hard at Heero, as if he could see right through him.

Heero stiffened suddenly. He weighed the consequences of his actions, and coming to the conclusion that telling the ex-soldier wouldn’t be objectionable, decided to answer.

"To tell you the truth I’m not sure. I'm content with my life. I have everything I need. Every now and then, though, I wonder what it would have been like if I took a different path."

Charlie got up and prowled around the room, looking at each thing in turn. He waited a while before he answered Heero.

"And what would that path have been?" Charlie asked, his voice different somehow. Heero looked up sharply.

"You should get some sleep." He said quietly, indicating that he was NOT going to answer that question. He stood up from the chair he had been sitting in."The couch is yours if you want, but I don’t mind giving up my bed if that-"

"No, mac, the couch is great. Really, thanks for housing a bum like me. I’ll be outta your hair by tomorrow." He said with a wink. Heero began to walk up the stairs to his room. "By the way, you got a thing for Vice Foreign Minister Darlian?"

"What!?" Heero almost screeched twirling around suddenly.

"Well I mean, you got a lot of her speeches recorded. They're on the T.V." He put on an infuriating grin, not unlike Duo's. "I think somebody's gotta crush."

"That's ridiculous. Just because I admire what a woman has to say, that automatically means I'm interested in her?" Heero exclaimed, feeling incredibly vunerable, for some un-named reason.

"Hey you said it I didn't." Charlie said, that wry humor back in his eyes.

"Shut up! Shut up! Now it's REALLY time for you to go to bed." He said darkly, stalking off. Before he climbed the stairs though he paused.

"I’m glad I did decide to have you over." Heero said in a rare moment of confession, looking back at Charlie. "It was good to talk to someone." With a nod, he made his way to his room.

Climbing slowly into his large, empty bed, Heero’s mind strayed once more to Relena, wondering what it’d be like if she was sleeping next to him.

"Probably warmer." Heero growled to himself, pulling the blankets closer. As he drifted off, he thought of Charlie, and wondered, why exactly he had felt compelled to open up to him. And then he slipped into sleep.