Relena, Terrese and Manny stood alone in the dining room.  The guards had all followed Damion, and had taken the bodies of Clara and Farnworth with them.   All was quiet now, too quiet.

Relena bit her lip and wrung her hands as she remembered how Heero strode out of the room with a fluid grace and dark light in his eyes, despite the blood-stained hand pressed to his side.  She had seen him knifed, saw his face go white as a sheet and his eyes clench shut as he stifled a cry of pain.  It had taken everything in her not to rush to him, regardless of how many enemies blocked her path.  It wouldn't have been the first time she ahd run into a battle with clear purpose, and Heero had that effect on her.  He made her feel strong, capable of doing things that should have frightened her, insane things.  She would have gone to him, if Manny hadn't grasped her arm at the last second and Terrese hadn't violently shaken her head, black hair wild about her face.  So she stood and watched breathlessly as the scene unfolded.

Then Damion's life was threatened and she lost her head and cried out, but Heero had stayed true to the mission, over his own pain, over her, over anything, as she had known he would.  He was so dedicated.

And now that dedication might get him killed... again.

It wasn't that she hated for Heero to fight.  She knew he was good and she believed in him, and in fighting for peace, but mostly in him.  If only this wasn't another needless battle.  There had been so many of those, so many times she had interfered to save him when he thought his life expendable.  She had tried so hard to convince him how important he was, how much he meant to everyone, and especially to her.  But he didn't understand, or didn't believe.  He thought his life was worthless, except on the battlefield, and a death in battle a desirable end, even though he was still young.  But then peace had come, and he had survived, and she had thought him changed.

But oh, the ice in his eyes now.  Like pools of frost they observed everything without really seeing anything.  She searched him desperately for the kind soldier she knew he was, what she had seen in him even on threat of death, but she had glimpsed it only briefly, and saw it swallowed in chill darkness.  He was a machine now, a living weapon, save when she had almost touched him.  In that instant she saw a flash fire of desire in his eyes, and love, gushing up like water from a flooded well, conflicting with hurt and pain and an impenetrable darkness.  It had frightened and confused her, all of it, but now she felt him, in her heart, taking up residence, flooding her mind with his presence. There was something terribly wrong with him, but beneath it, he loved her.  She had looked into his eyes and seen it.

She was still trembling.

Biting her lip, she fought back the urge to smile foolishly, to pace, or huddle on the ground or think too much of him.  She wanted more than anything now to hold him, to soothe his hurts, to see that look in his eyes that made her dizzy even now.  And she wanted to return that look tenfold.  If he did not believe her when she said how much he meant to her, maybe she could show him.  And then other ideas took form in her mind, ideas that made her blush and shift in discomfort and embarrassment, more so because they were not just fancies.  They were wishes she wanted to come true, and with her, wishes had a way of turning into plans.

If he did not die today.  She forced down the hot, sudden tears that wanted to flow from her eyes.

"I hope they are all right," Terrese said quietly.  "I feel so helpless in here.  The palace is overflowing with guards.  Can't we help Damion at all?"

Relena's head snapped up, her thoughts centering on the present, a vision of pale morning-colored eyes filling her head.  Damion!  What of Damion?   But no!  Her feelings would have to wait.  There were more important things to be done.  "We can clear out the palace!"  she said, rising in seriousness.  "Trowa said most of the guards were on Damion's side.  He's not one to make mistakes like that.  We can rally support for Damion here while he goes to the gates!  We can provide a back-up team, a base!"

Terrese's eyes widened.  "Are you insane?" she demanded.  "You want to run around in the middle of a revolution and form teams?"

"Yes!" Relena urged.

"No, that's not safe!" Manny warned hastily, waving both hands.  "Master Damion wants me to look out for you.  You could get killed by mistake."

"I don't care about getting killed!"  Relena said with passion, fire in her heart.  "Protect Terrese.  She is frightened.  I am not.  I promised Damion when I insisted on coming here that I could do some good."  She straightened, raising her head proudly.  "I am Relena Peacecraft, ex-Queen of the World," she reminded them.  "I will make them listen to me!"

"Listen to yourself!"  Terrese cried.  "That's suicide!"

"No," Relena said calmly.  "I know what I'm doing."  It would work.  It had before.  People saw her as a symbol of impenetrable power, a guiding light to peace with the strength to back it.  She gathered her energy and headed for the door.

"Stop!"  Manny shouted in quick, aggravated tones.  "I have to protect you!  Damion will kill me if anything happens to you!"

"Then you'll have to come with me," Relena called over her shoulder, but she waited at the door.  "Don't worry.  I'll be fine."

"Ohhhh!"  Terrese whined, hands clenched into fists as she batted at the air.  "All right.  I'm coming."  She grabbed Manny's arm and yanked him down the hall, oblivious to his widening eyes. "Come on, Manny!" she said forcefully, dragging him along.
"Relena's made up her mind and there's no changing it!"

Manny muttered under his breath, but he swung a startled Terrese around and deposited her behind him.  Running forward, he bowed with a grin as he opened the doors for the girls and followed them out into the hallway.  Three guards saw them emerge and shouted, drawing weapons.

"Hold your fire!"  Relena cried.  "Are you friends or foes of Ravineere?"

The guards slowed to a stop and exchanged confused looks.  "We serve the prince," one said slowly and wearily.

"Do you want peace in this city?" Relena demanded.  "If you do, come with us.  Clara Veron and Captain Farnworth are dead, but the city is in peril.  We must gather everyone willing and the rest will yield or follow!"

"Who are you?" another of the guards asked.

"I am Relena Peacecraft," she said with steel in her voice, standing proudly.

The guards stared at her and at one another.  But they saw who they thought they saw, and wonder overcame them. "Our arms are yours," the first who had spoken said, and bowed.  "Take us to the prince."

Relena nodded.

"You mean to follow him out to the gates?" Manny hissed to her in low tones.  "He'll have me beheaded!"

"Everything's all right," Relena said soothingly.

Except that Heero might die.  She had to get to him, and Damion too.  Somehow, she had to conquer resistance in the palace, bring peace to the city, save two warriors in the midst of battle and sort out her tangled emotions for two beautiful princes who loved her, one from the beloved earth and the other from the sky.

And then it came to her.  Someone had to lose...

Damion and Trowa hurried down the hall, boots pounding against the tiles, moving as quick as they could without running.  They had to be careful.

Heero had already outpaced them, seemingly trying to get out of site, his face a sheen of sweat, his hand clutching his side in pain.  Damion worried about him, enough that he considered commanding him to stop and stay out of it, but the thought never made it passed the initial stages.  Heero wouldn't take orders from him, and he had no desire to command him anyway.  He was beginning to see the hero of the war, Heero Yuy; kind, but cold, not vicious, but stay out of his way.   Whatever evil had possessed him on that hill that one stormy night, and the days before, might have belonged to another man, but the dark coldness that frosted his soul now was scarier.  Damion preferred the mad passion.  At least it was human.

But he was gone now.  Trowa and Damion had seen no sight of him for some time.

"Trowa, right?"  Damion asked his companion as they ate up the floor in long strides.

"That's what they call me," Trowa replied in small, quiet tones.  "You have a question?"

"Heero," Damion said, "and Relena.  What can you tell me?"

Trowa frowned at him.  "Are you sure you want to know?"

Damion blinked.  It was not the answer he had expected.  "Yes," he said seriously.  "Why?"

Trowa nodded to himself.  "I see.  You deserve all the information.  As I understand it, Heero came to earth in much the same state as you see him now.  The first person he met was Relena.  She came upon him when he crashed to Earth and saw his face.  He enrolled in her school and promised to destroy her."

"I've heard this part," Damion said, but he lowered his brows in contemplation.  There was nothing halting or confused about Trowa's interpretation; he laid out facts, cleanly and concisely.  "Go on."

"I didn't meet Heero until later, but as I understand it, Heero was unable to kill Relena as he promised.  I'm sure you can see how that is not like him."

"I can," Damion agreed.

Trowa shrugged.  "Heero tried to self-detonate later," he said, his eyes blank as he remembered the past, "and succeeded in the act, but did not die." He shook his head, a softness in his eyes. "I thought it was commendable, but women who care for you, they disagree."

Damion frowned in puzzlement.

"I tried it," Trowa supplied in explanation.  "But Catherine, my sister, stopped me.  I never knew before then how much I mattered to anybody."

"Oh."  He felt peculiar and out of place among all this sadness, but he wanted to hear it all.

Trowa blinked slowly.  "It is amazing how much power a woman's care can have.  Relena influenced Heero.  Except for the time I told you about, she attempted to prevent Heero from dying every time he tried, and some way or another, Heero did not die."

Damion stared in shock.  "He's suicidal?"

"Not exactly," Trowa clarified. "He's the perfect soldier, though.  He will exchange his life for the mission, do anything to succeed, and he always succeeds.  I think he kept expecting to die and felt thwarted.  So he started trying harder to do both.  But Relena would call him back, and back he came, until the end, when he finally wanted to survive for himself.  I heard he gave her a gift for her birthday."

Damion said nothing.  He could feel nothing but sorrow in his gut, and his throat felt choked.  To be so dedicated... the man must have no sense of self at all. "How?" he whispered.  "How did she prevent him?"

"She threw herself in the middle of a battle in Antarctica once," Trowa said slowly.  "The fight was meaningless and everyone knew it, but it was a perilous move.  I hear she did a lot of that, though.  She always dared Heero to destroy her, but whether she really wanted him to, I can not say.  Perhaps she was testing him, perhaps she just really wanted to see him, perhaps she was testing her own strength and resolve; I don't know."

Damion stared at him in total incomprehension.  She threw herself into battles and demanded to be killed?  Amazing...Crazy- weird, but amazing.

"I can't tell you the particulars," Trowa continued.  "I don't think anyone but Heero and Relena knows the whole story and I doubt either of them will share, but I know Heero went to rescue Relena when she was at Libra, and he brought her back safely to Peace Million.  She was anxious that Heero was out on a suicide mission and no one allowed her to prevent it.  But as I said, he survived.   After the war, Heero told us he would protect Relena from the shadows, that because of her he no longer lived to fight, but he would not go to her directly.  Quatre thought he would, but they stayed apart except when business brought them together.  They were together for a short time later with that incident in the colonies, but I can't tell you much about it."

"He kissed her," Damion said, remembering his conversation with Relena so long ago... right before the fight on the hill.  "They never talked about it."

"Did he?" Trowa said, sounding slightly surprised.  "I never would have guessed that of him.  All I know is that when Mariemaia came, Heero fired at the building Relena was in and then collapsed in her arms.  That's the rumor anyway.  After that... I don't know; he just left."

Damion's thoughts were empty.  He just left?  Perhaps Clara was right.  There really was no such thing as love in the world, only lust and confusion and the blindness of fools.  What was his own love for Relena really?  Did he really understand himself or the world enough to really know anything about love, or was he blinded too?  What was Heero's love, if he just left?  Was the man merely jealous that what he had discarded another had picked up?  And now that he has shed himself of those feelings he was simply cold again?  Damion felt darkness in his heart, but it was clarifying.  Love was a preoccupation of idealists and Heero was merely a man passing between places of pain and icy cold.  But there was still a warmness in Damion's heart for Relena, and he didn't know what to do or what to believe.

"There!"  Damion cried as the two of them burst through the lobby toward the gates.   They ran right through a group of guards without stopping.  Damion wished he could take back the palace, but there was no time, not when people might be dying in the streets!

The guards at the gates saw them coming and saluted.  The civilians that had swarmed before the gate before and prevented his entrance were gone, but there were wounded being tended everywhere.  Damion swallowed.  It had come to fighting after all.

"My Lord Prince, you're alive!"  Oswold shouted.  He was second in command under Farnworth, first in command now.  Damion hesitated in reply.

"He's on your side," Trowa assured him.

Damion nodded.  He must trust the gundam pilot's judgment.  Time was too short to play guessing games.  "Oswold," he said formally in greeting.  "What's happening?"

"Chaos is the city, my Lord!"  The man said breathlessly, saluting.  "The people tried to break down the gates.  We had to open fire, but we did so into the air at first.  Most broke and fled as you can see, but the more persistent pushed forward.  We were forced to kill a few," he lamented in grave tones.

Damion's breath came heavily, but he knew there was more.  "That is not the worst," he prompted.

Oswold shook his head.  "The people have heavy weaponry, blast cannons, capable of destroying entire buildings.  The city would be in shambles by now if the gundams hadn't showed up almost immediately after you went in."

"Those weapons can't destroy a gundam," Trowa said,  "but they do have an effect.  Enough carefully aimed shots could seriously damage the suit or kill the pilot.   How goes the battle?"

"Gundam 04 has cleared out the airfield," Oswold said.  The other two are out in the city.  02 cleared out the remaining rabble by the gates."

"Did you see someone come through here?" Damion asked.  "Wounded?"

"Yes," Oswold said.  "He came when 02 did and hitched a ride.  He was wounded?  He didn't look it."

"He wouldn't,"  Trowa said.

"Oswold," Damion commanded.  "I assume those loyal to me have compromised those who are not?"  Oswold nodded.  "Good.  I need the prisoners locked up and guarded.  Send the rest of the remaining troops to bring order to the city where the Gundams have finished their work.  The people will be terrified, but they need to know that I am still in command, that Clara and the rebellion is dead or dying, and that the battle will be won in my favor today.   I wish I could lead you, but you are a more capable Captain, and there is something else I must do."

Oswold beamed as Damion pronounced him Captain.  "We are short on people, my Lord, but everything that can be done, will be done." He saluted before turning and barking orders.

Trowa turned to Damion.  "Your people know their work.  There's not a whole lot left for you to do now but watch and wait.  You can not go after Heero."

Damion clenched his teeth.  "He'll be killed if he's not careful."

Trowa shrugged.  "He's made his decision.  There's no stopping him now.  He will head for the airfield and Wing Zero.  There's nothing more we can do."

Heero leaped off the hand of the Deathscythe to the airstrip and almost collapsed on the ground in a flare of dizzying pain.  He breathed heavily, straightening and making for the Wing Zero as well as he could, body coated in a sheen of sweat.  The blood in his side had stopped flowing.  It was clogged and matted with his shirt and skin now, and his skin tore whenever he twisted, but he ignored the pain and the swimming feeling in his head.

It was all over.  He would end it as he should have years ago, in battle.  And then it would not matter if Relena hated him, or that she was Damion's, or that Damion deserved her.  Nothing would matter.  She would be happy and he would be free to leave the world with a claim to honor.

Why did she have to look at him like that back there?  The concern in her eyes was maddening!  Didn't she understand that he could not stand to be around her, that her presence made his blood boil, that it was distracting and pointless?  She hated him for what he had done in his madness and said she never wanted to see him again.  If fate brought them together one last time, the least she could do would be to ignore him.  That would be merciful.

"I am a weapon," he reminded himself as he climbed into the cockpit of the Wing Zero.   His side throbbed.  It almost overwhelmed his senses, but it made him smile.  If Damion could ride a horse with a wound like this, he could fight.   He activated the mechanism that turned Wing from a plane to a gundam.

"Heero," Duo said, and the vidscreen in the corner flickered.  "Are you all right, man?"

"I'm fine," Heero said coldly.

"Shit, you're bleeding.  I'm sorry I brought you.  Why don't you sit this one out? We can handle it."

"No!" Heero said, and then more quietly,  "Quatre fought with a wound like this.  So can I."

"I think yours is worse and this is a ground battle.  There's a lot of gravity and you're all hunched over...  why don't you just take a break?"

"Stay out of it!"  Heero cried.  "If I die, let me.  It's none of your concern!"

"Heero," Duo said lowly, voice coated in worry.

"Stay out of it," Heero repeated in a whisper through clenched teeth as a lance of pain shot through him.   He shuddered and fought for control.  When he recovered, he made Wing stand, drew his beam saber, and started forward.  There were battles to fight.

In an hour, Relena and her growing army tore through the halls of the palace, their feet pounding on the floor.  At every turn they picked up more people, and hauled away a few others known to be traitors.  Relena brushed blonde hair from her eyes as she burst through to the foyer with Manny and Terrese on her heels.

"Full circle," Terrese said, staring in amazement at the hundred, maybe more, guards that clogged the hallway behind them.  "The whole palace is clean."

Relena nodded, her face flushed with excitement and anxiety.  "To the gates then," she said with the air that remained in her lungs.

They followed her, all of them, and Manny opened the door for her hastily as she strode from the palace to the sunlight outside.  It was such a beautiful place, Taravren, small and quiet and peaceful without this fray, but her eyes sought out Damion by the gates, and she ran to him.

He turned at her approach, astonishment plain on his face, but he came toward her and lifted her up into a hug, spinning her about before setting her back on her feet.  He looked over her shoulder at his soldiers as they knelt one by one at the entrance.  "You did this?" he said in amazement.

"I tried to stop her, sir," Manny said with a grin,  "but she wouldn't have it.  As brave as any queen, my Lord."

Damion smiled at him and at her, but when he looked back toward the city, his face was grave.

"How is Heero?" Relena stammered, looking up into his eyes, her own shimmering in her concern.

Damion shook his head.  "Fighting," he said.  "For some time now."

At that moment, Deathscythe and Altron appeared, thudding through the roads and around the buildings.  Relena disengaged herself from Damion, overwhelmed with worry, her heart racing with anxiety.  "Duo!" she shouted up at the Deathscythe.  The wind created by the gundam's movements whipped her hair about her face and shoulders. "Where is Heero?" she yelled.

Silence met her, but then the cockpit to the Deathscythe opened and she could see Duo's face, worn and solemn.

Cold fear stabbed her heart and she trembled. "Where is he?" she yelled again, panicking.  "Answer me, Duo!"

"He's down," Duo said quietly.  "Just now, about a mile into the city.  All we've been able to get from him is static.  He's not responding.  We came to find you."

The world seemed to stop.  Relena swallowed and began breathing hard and quickly.  "I must go to him," she said to no one in particular.  "Now!"  She made as if to run, but Damion grabbed her arm.

"Wait!  I'll get horses. They're close and it will save time.  Please wait."

She nodded, but her whole body was shuddering and would not stop.

Damion took off toward the stables at a dead run.  Trowa followed him, bounding after him like a cat, and whether he was noticed or not was probably irrelevant.  Manny hesitated, but stayed with Relena and Terrese, looking after Damion worriedly.

Relena walked as one dazed, nearly falling over.  Terrese came to her side, whispering words of encouragement, but Relena could not hear them.  She felt a dreadful urgency, an all-consuming terror as waves of darkness crashed over her heart.

Please be alive, Heero, her heart cried in its torment.
 
 
 
 

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