So Different (prequel to Ying and Yang)

[perfectpeach]

So Different?

Some of you who read Ying and Yang asked me about how Trowa and Relena happened before Heero and Relena. Well, here?s your answer ^^

Unintentionally, people find themselves making decisions on the spot of the moment. You are not always conscious of these decisions, but you do make them. You make the unconscious decision to head the way you are used to when you go to the supermarket, even though there are many different ways to go, some shorter than others and much more practical. When somebody says ?hi? to you, even if you do not know them, you say ?hi? back, because you have already made the unconscious decision to do so.

But no matter how deeply I go into psychological theory, in my own mind I cannot seem to justify my affair with Trowa. It wasn?t an affair as such. It was more of?well, I don?t know what to call it. But I swear it wasn?t intended to hurt Heero or any trust that he may have had for me. Even today, in our happiest times, he always seems to show some contempt for the fact that he wasn?t the first. Not consciously, mind you. Going back to the psychology, I?m sure that his decision to hold contempt is very much unconscious.

He never shows it explicitly. It?s always implicit, like an insult buried beneath layers and layers of sentiment. One day, I remember, Duo had told us that he and his lady friend were going to?you know. Make it ?official?. The look on Heero?s face that point just screamed, ?well, woo-hoo for you, asshole?. I could have cried there and then. The guilt?it felt like?like you?ve eaten too much chocolate icing and you?d just been on a very high roller coaster. My fingers shook, my entire body seemed to slow down, I could hear my head throbbing and a dull ache formed under my eyes. I never want to feel that way again, yet I do so simply thinking bout Trowa. Just being in the same room as they guy makes my stomach do flips, and not in the good way. Because I know he feels the same way. If Heero hadn?t survived his mission, would we have gone further?

I?m less conscious of these things now. Heero and I have spent so much time together now, everything else seems to just slowly slip away. It?s the power of love, in a non-cheesy way. People look upon the ?we are one? approach to a relationship as clich?d and old fashioned, but what they don?t realise is that it is so very much real. But, somehow, I believe that you can only ever feel that way once you have experienced the hardships and the pains of NOT having the ?one?. Once you have had it, and lost it you really want it back again. It?s like a drug. A drug I was too weak to go without for two days?

Heero had gone on a mission. We had only really started to get deep into a relationship. We had both started to change things around to make room for each other. He had some of my clothes at his place; I had some of his at mine. Just in case. A mission, to Heero, was his way of filling a deep void left when he stopped fighting. Think nicotine gum in replacement of a good cigarette.

I understood that. But what I could never understand, and I don?t expect Heero to understand, is that I had the same problem. I was very much getting used to Heero being by me most hours of the day, buying me coffee, telling me that I look pretty with my hair up in a bun, warning me that if my skirt gets any shorter it?ll be mistaken for a belt. Him going away on a three-week mission?it was something that was hard to deal with, but I was willing to put up with it one hundred percent if it meant Heero had his void filled. So, I went on with life.

However, it didn?t take me long before I was buying coffee for two instead of one, and putting my hair up even though he wasn?t there. It was lonely. At this point, you must be thinking that that was why I slept with Trowa. Not at all. Loneliness I knew was something that would go away as soon as Heero came back, and there was a date on that.

Three weeks were almost up. As you could probably guess, I had regained the bounce in my step just thinking about it. All my energy seemed to just magically surface again. I even put little heart on the days I had left till Heero came home, with a smiley face on the day itself. How pathetic, I know.

Upon walking into the general?s office upon request, I was so pathetically buoyant I immediately assumed it was a good thing. I was wrong.

?Miss Relena. I am sorry to bring this to your attention but I feel that since he is your bodyguard you should know. Heero Yuy has been reported MIA. We think he may have failed to escape when he initiated the destruction of the rebellion base. His gun and utility were found under the rubble. We would like your consent to stop the search, and declare him.?

Even as I watched colonies going up in a flash of light, as I saw my father pass before me, no pain could have brought me to my knees as easily and as hard as that. Those words turned in my mind again and again until it was like some horrible prayer to me. I spent that entire day retching in the bathroom. I didn?t once pick up the pen. It felt like the breath had been knocked out of me and yet something somewhere was cruel enough to keep me alive.

That same day, Trowa came to me. He had been heading the search. When I saw him, I was furious. How could he keep something like that from me and at the same time watch me go into work everyday with a smile on my face? How? He didn?t try to condole me. He knew it would be pointless, as one does after having seen so much death in their own lives.

He invited me out for coffee. I didn?t realise the symmetry at first, but when I did my stomach took another turn, and my tears with it. He bought me coffee. Heero bought me coffee. He at his cake flat side first. Heero at it like that?

All those little things?things that I always thought were particular to Heero. I soon started seeing Trowa as an extension of what I had lost. With some part of me still begging me to refuse all knowledge that Heero was dead, I started believing that I could regain what was lost. Myabe it wasn?t Heero that was lost but maybe the concept of being with someone like Heero who made me feel so wonderful every minute of the day. The man who brought spring to my step.

I saw in Trowa a similarity that was so sickeningly like Heero. I saw him as a mirror of Heero. I was weak, and in my weakness, I let that thought lead me to coffee, to his apartment and finally to his bed.

When I woke, expecting to see Heero lying beside me, no amount of sweet talk would stop the searing pain when I saw emerald in place of blue. After having been awake for a few minutes, I realised that the small things I associated with Heero?s apartment were missing. The scent was of pine, not of decaying sweat socks. The sounds of cars down below were not there and Mrs. Evans was not screaming at her husband to get a job. He was so different?

When Heero one day appeared at my doorstep, it seemed at first like I was being punished. My mind was punishing me for moving so easily into another?s bed. When his small but sound smile touched his lips, and those lips touched mine, I cried. It would have been easy for some to deny to themselves and to anyone else that anything ever happened. To me, if I had kept it from him, I would eventually decay form the madness of guilt. He didn?t deserve that, to be fooled his whole life.

I don?t know how he survived. He told me once, that he would have been better off dead in the heat of the moment. A lot of bad words were exchanged that night. What scared me is that some of them, I knew he meant. Seeing his expression every time he hears Trowa?s name reminds me of that.

So, you see, I truly cannot justify any decision I had made. I may use Freud, Krantz, Becker and whoever else to justify myself but in the end it was a very conscious decision. He says he has forgiven me, that it was an exploit of human weakness that got the best of me. I was, after all, human. But he always seems so half-hearted when he says it. He doubts me less and less as time goes by. Things are slowly mending themselves, and the process is painful. Just like mending a broken bone. But like all fractures in body, fractures in life heal back to perfection.

[Morrighan]

Awww....... Poor Relena. From this, I can totally understand how that happened. At least Heero is slowly (but surely) forgiving her....or I would have to smack him. ^_~

Well done!

[lildragonfly]

really liked it

great job!!

[Caliborn]

Awww....

That was so sad! But, at least, it ends on a slightly happy note... things are mending; things may be healed in time. Poor, poor Heero... and I have to wonder what Trowa's been feeling after all of this...

Anyway, *GLOMP* I'm so glad you posted this! ^_^ Wonderful side fic to your other story. ^_^

[perfectpeach]

Cali, you're going to have to figure it out for yourself ^^;; i just used all will power to write on this. I'll be hibernating for months now.

[dragonlady9]

Holy Monly!!! VERY GOOD peachy, I just LUV that Chinese Symbolism...