Because I just had to write it…. All characters are as they were following Endless Waltz. I even imagined them in variations of the same clothes with the same voices… am I the only one who does that? *crazy.* Oh yeah, all official manga (especially Blind Target, though the kiss doesn’t actually happen here) are valid in this fic.

Last Goodbye

By zapenstap

With hands tired from holding a pen, Relena delicately placed her potted plant out on the windowsill, hoping the poor struggling thing would soak up the rays of the midmorning summer sun more easily in such a position in her office. As sunlight warmed the skin on the back of her hands, she couldn’t avoid lifting her eyes to look out the window over the city and the countryside beyond. The view was so lovely this time of year. Green hills, red-painted rooftops and sparkling sea water dazzled her eyes. The city seemed lazy this morning, the people moving about their Saturday sluggishly, but the view was gorgeous and soothing.

Thoughts of anything peaceful or particularly lovely made her wonder idly about Heero and where he had gone since the end of her tour following the Mariemaia rebellion, but even as the thought occurred to her, she tucked it carefully away. Hoping and wishing would do no good, but she could simply not be realistic with herself.

As she lifted the pot to reposition it slightly, water from the tray dripped onto her pants, soaking through the cream-colored material just above her knee. Sighing, she left the plant in the sun and turned from the window. Moving to stand in front of the stand mirror, she regarded her clothes with an objective eye. The water spot was not that noticeable and would dry with a little time. Other than the small mar, her outfit was perfectly clean and crisply ironed, from the lapels of her cream coat to the pale blue scarf knotted around her collarbone. Her hair, long again, was pulled off her face and clasped behind her head. She didn’t look like she imagined herself. Even without an outfit that (though classy and lovely) would have been more appropriate on a woman ten years her senior, she looked too mature to her own eyes. Experimentally, she smiled at her reflection and watched her face come to life for a shining moment. Laughing lightly, she shook her head at herself and made a few more funny faces just for good measure. She wasn’t unhappy at all, but sometimes she felt a little too severe for her a girl barely over twenty years old.

Turning away from the mirror with another smile, she leaned over her desk to grab hold of a stack of papers when there came a knock at her door.

“Vice Foreign Minister?”

“Please come in, Noin,” Relena replied, straightening. Noin opened the door and entered quietly in a business suit and heeled shoes, pearls in her ears and her hair combed to one side. “Noin,” Relena said with an answering smile, folding her hands in front of her, “you don’t have to address me by any title. We’ve known each other too long for that sort of thing.”

“My apologies, Relena,” Noin said with a slight accent more pronounced of late. “I wasn’t sure you’d recognize my voice, though.”

“Of course I do,” Relena said with a smile as she turned, her hair whipping around behind her. “Is there something I can do for you?” she asked politely, though it would be nice to hear that her brother’s fiancé and one of her closer friends merely wanted to chat for a change.

“I’m afraid so,” Nojn replied, but her gravity almost sounded in jest. “I come bearing a message.” Noin’s lips were quirked in a strange sort of smile. Still, her eyebrows were lowered in something akin to worry or anxiety, as if whatever news excited her also made her apprehensive.

Noin was not a message carrier for her. Someone she knew must have stopped her and asked this favor. “What is it, Noin?”

“There’s somebody here to see you. In the gardens.”

Relena frowned in consternation. She made a mental checklist of all the people with whom she might be asked to interview today that were also acquainted with Noin, but she could only come with a minimal handful. “Mariemaia?” she guessed at last. “I already know Une is bringing her here today, but I thought they had planned on some time after lunch.”

“No,” Noin said softly, and gave Relena such a pointed look that Relena immediately understood. She always knew.

“Heero,” she breathed almost inaudibly, and almost forgot Noin was in the room.

Her heart had almost stopped beating. Upon arriving at the conclusion she felt as if she had been cheated, but she couldn’t explain why. All she knew was that she suddenly felt different.

It had been more that a year since she had seen him.

She still remembered those fateful days just after Christmas, after she had caught him in his sudden exhaustion, falling forward into her arms. She had never felt so wonderful as she did that moment, holding him and knowing that it was all over, that it was finished for him. All the confliction with the kindness in his heart and the deeds he must perform would stop being a torture to him.

It was one of the only times in all her life she had seen him vulnerable. When he had first appeared in the wreckage of Mariemaia’s underground castle she had almost thought he was a ghost or a vision, speaking the way he did, so obviously exhausted. When he fallen forward something had jump-started her system and the wires in her mind told her he was really there, and that he was in need. She still remembered the way his hair felt under her hand and his head leaning heavily against her chest.

He didn’t speak of it afterwards. She wasn’t sure he remembered it at all. He might have been unconscious when she caught him; it was hard to tell. But he had stayed for awhile, guarding her as she toured the world to speak about the value of peace and advocating her plan to reform the face of Mars to make it habitable. During those days she had seen some of him, though he always seemed a little stand-offish. She had hoped he would stay around, but she wasn’t really surprised when he disappeared not long after her last speech.

“Relena?”

She realized she had been staring at the ground with her fist clenched over her breast and looked up, feeling somewhat like a fool. “You said he’s in the gardens?”

Noin smiled at her. “That’s right.”

She nodded. Gathering herself, she moved past Noin and out of her office. There didn’t seem to be any need to explain that she had to go speak with him, or to say anything at all really. Noin understood. She had loved her brother in silent patience long enough to understand.

When she reached the gardens her chest felt tight. Noin had not actually said it was Heero, but if it was, she wondered why he had come. There were, of course, important political things being done, but there always were. She feared some new terror he had come to warn her about, but she would almost accept anything that brought him close, just so she could see how he was doing.

Her thick-heeled shoes clicked along the cobblestone walkways as she passed through the gardens. Visions of gorgeous flowerbeds, climbing vines and shaped trees danced in and out of her mind’s sight, but she hardly paid them much attention. Surrounded by a thousands sights that should distract her eyes and intoxicate her soul, she had eyes for only thing.

It half startled her to see him. She stopped, swaying in her surprise. He was waiting by a fence, standing straight up and down with his arms at his sides, wearing that dark blue jacket that made his eyes seem to blaze in his face. She had stopped at the corner, a stone clattering out from underneath her foot. He raised his head at the sound and for a moment or an hour neither of them moved or said anything. At length, his eyes glanced off her and he beckoned her to join him with a gesture that was almost jerky. Ducking her head, she acquiesced and moved beside him. Being so close after so long felt so strange and she couldn’t manage to look at him directly once she was by his side.

They walked side-by-side through the gardens in silence, both looking straight ahead. As the strangeness of his being there faded, Relena regained her composure and began to cycle through her mind possible ideas for what it was he wanted to say to her. She waited patiently, stepping in time with him. When after several minutes he still didn’t say anything, she gathered her courage and opened her mouth, turning to look at him.

The sight of his profile stopped her tongue. For a moment she couldn’t do anything but trace the lines of his face and hair. “Heero,” she said at last, and though it came out smoothly, she felt the gasp in her chest as the air in the lungs forced out the sound. “What was it you wanted to talk to me about? I haven’t seen you in so long.”

His eyes flickered and he gestured to one of the stone benches that dotted the walkway every few hundred meters. Obeying his request, she sat down, drawing her legs to one side, ankles and knees pressed together. He sat beside her, his hands pressing against the stone on either side of him. She watched him silently, wondering how he was doing, trying to gage if there were shadows under his eyes like she had seen during the war, but he seemed fine. After a moment, he turned to her.

“I’ve been trying to live in this peaceful world you…we’ve…created,” he said in those low, caressing tones, staring straight ahead. “It’s not easy.”

She dropped her eyes, knowing that neither of them could really think of him as a soldier anymore. And she understood his confusion. If he wasn’t that, what was he? For awhile there had been things to do, investigations to make, weapons to destroy, but things were settling; they had been pretty settled for awhile. “What have you been doing, Heero?”

“Odd jobs for the most part,” he said, still hardly seeming to blink. “I went to school for awhile, but I didn’t come to talk about that.” He paused, his words seeming to fall into an empty space. “I had to convince Wufei that the war we fought was with this goal in mind, but now I find myself more lost than I ever was, and I felt pretty lost before.”

She understood. She wanted to say something to comfort him, but she couldn’t think of anything meaningful to say that he had not heard already, that she had probably told him at some point. She wondered if he had come to her looking for a job, but the truth was she didn’t need to be protected anymore. The peace would last at least through her lifetime if she worked hard, and no one was interested in killing her any longer.

He seemed to be able to read her thoughts in her face. Nor did he look at all surprised. Of course he would know how things were around her.

“It’s not something you have to worry about,” he added when she didn’t answer.

“Why did you come to see me?”

He stared straight ahead again. “I left kind of abruptly last time. I guess I just wanted to see how you were doing.”

“I’m doing well,” she said, and wanted to say that she wished he was doing better, but she could not say that. “I wish you hadn’t gone,” she said instead, “without saying goodbye.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I owe you a lot. It was rude of me.”

She looked down at her hands, not sure what to make of that. “You owe me?” she said in some confusion. Smiling, she looked back into his face. “Heero, you don’t owe me anything.”

“I owe you thanks,” he said persistently. “I just wanted to tell you that.”

“Thanks?”

“Yeah. For caring about me. For worrying, like you said before.”

Her tongue clove in her mouth. It had been a long time ago when she said that, years ago, and it didn’t help that it was even more true today. She had asked him to let her care about him, to let her worry. He had let her sleep on his shoulder. Later, had he meant to kiss her? He had caught her hand and pulled her close. There had seemed some sort of resolution in his eyes before he closed them and leaned forward, but the kiss never came. She didn’t remember what happened, except that one moment he was there and the next he was gone and it was back to business as usual.

“Heero, I will always care about you, and I don’t need thanks for it,” she said as expressively as she could. Deliberately, she put one hand on the bench between them, half reaching out to him. She didn’t touch him, though. “I always have.”

“I know,” he said, and directed his eyes away from her. There seemed to be a tenseness about the way he was sitting, staring straight ahead again. “I just wanted to thank you for it. It’s meant a lot more to me than I thought it could.”

She fumbled, looking for something to say, to change the topic or somehow abate the nervousness that seemed to be in his face, however sternly it was set. It looked like a mask most of the time, but she could read his feelings sometimes, if she paid attention to the little things, especially his eyes. “Heero,” she said, and her words tripped out of her mouth. “Have you been…” she didn’t know how to put it. Was he being social, making friends, seeing girls? She had heard rumors that he had been seen in the company of girls on occasion, at bars or clubs or other late-night hangouts. Duo said he spent a lot of time going to social places alone. Strangely, it did not make her jealous. She wanted him to be whole; that was all. And if she had feelings for him, well, what did that really matter in the long run, if all of this was for his sake? “Have you been doing okay? I know you said you’ve been working and it’s been hard to adjust to the times, but have you been hanging out with the others, meeting people...girls? ”

His expression looked like winter, lonely and chill and desolate. “Love is a strange thing,” he said as if it was a discovery he had just made in reaction to her words. She felt herself become very and stiff and cold as he said it, almost leaden. Something like betrayal or envy or anger stirred in the lowest resources of her gut, but it dwindled into nothing in less than a moment. He lifted his head to the sky. “I never thought about it much when I was training, girls I mean. I never thought I would live long enough for it to matter.”

Why did he have to tell her this? Still, she listened, her heart beating for him. She wanted him to be whole.

He turned to look at her. “I think something is wrong with me,” he said. “I’ve been looking for alternative distractions to what I feel, something less confusing. It is…” he shook his head. “Is it love? I don’t really know anything about it. I’ve tried other things, but I can’t make it go away and I can’t make sense of it. I’ve never felt like this before. I don’t know what to do. Relena…”

His eyes seeming to be drinking her in and abruptly she realized he was talking about her, not some other girl he had met at some late-night hangout. Her heart froze and then fluttered to life, beating erratically. She couldn’t have kept the repressed feelings from her eyes if she wanted to. Neither could she speak.

He must have seen something in her face, because his eyes changed. He ceased to look through her and seemed to be really looking at her, seeking some sort of entrance or receptacle in her face. “I can’t stop thinking about you,” he said in those same solid tones. From his voice, she would not have been able to make sense of his words, but with his eyes… “I don’t know what it is,” he said. “It’s not like it was with any of the other girls. I don’t think about them the way I think about you. It’s so simple the way I think about you, so simple and so complicated. I don’t think of you the way I think about them either. I don’t desire you in any way other than to go on thinking about you.” He paused, suddenly hesitant. “Do you think about me?”

“Everyday,” she said before she could wonder if it was wise.

“What is it I’m feeling?” he asked her, as if he really expected she knew the answer. “Is it what they talk about when they talk about love? Or is it something else? Those other girls…” he shook his head as if dispelling some useless memory. “It was different with them. They taught me things, but it’s you that I… I didn’t even know most of their names.”

What had he done with those girls? Again, she wasn’t jealous. She didn’t have the left-over emotional capacity to incorporate jealousy. “I love you, Heero,” she said, and it didn’t feel at all strange to say it.

He didn’t react in any way that she could tell. “I was never made for this,” he said. “I don’t think…”

She was almost angry. “Yes you are, Heero,” she said, almost pleading with him to believe it. “If you feel…”

His eyes caught hers and suddenly he was leaning into her. She felt his hand cover her hand on the bench, his fingers overlapping her fingers. As his face neared hers, she closed her eyes, a little scared by his proximity. Then his lips brushed hers. When they did, she felt as if a stream of energy flowed from him to her, pouring into her mouth. His lips were soft, softer than she expected, and gentle like a butterfly’s wings. Behind them there was heat, from the breath in his mouth and possibly the blood in his heart. And there was moisture, a sweet taste of him that once tasting she wanted to taste again. He seemed very close to her, his body leaning into her space, his hand perfectly still on her hand.

After the briefest touch he pulled away and met her in the eyes for a brief moment. They stared at one another in silence and she couldn’t halt the floodgate of emotion that must be drowning her eyes. Slowly, he came back, as if he were attached to a string that she had pulled, and his lips claimed hers again. All three sensations, flesh and heat and moisture collided into her at once and she accepted them all greedily. Her body was trembling as he continued to kiss her, her chest shaking. She wanted him to lift a hand to her face, pull her close, touch her body, wrap his arms around her, but he didn’t move.

She didn’t know when he pulled away, but it couldn’t have been that long. Maybe a few seconds only, though it might have been hours in her memory.

“Stay awhile,” she asked.

He stood up before the words were out of her mouth and her head turned to follow him. He clenched his hands into fists and stared beyond her for a moment. “I can’t,” he said. “There’s so much I don’t understand. I’m just trying to get through it, life I mean.”

“Let me help you.”

He didn’t answer, but he looked over his shoulder, away from her.

She sat up, straightening her back in one motion without bending her spine. “Are you going then?”

“Yeah,” he said, turning back to look her in the face one last time. “I just…wanted to know.” When she opened her mouth her overrode her hastily. “Goodbye, Relena.”

He walked away from her like something out of dream and she was powerless to stand or speak or do anything except watch him go. He wanted to know what? If he loved her? Did he? Everything in her being screamed yes, cried it, but he was leaving, and she wasn’t sure she would ever see him again.

Please review. I’d really appreciate it! ^_^