Fire Rose Part 2

[Amanda Dale]

Author's notes: The weirdness continues! Thanks to all the people who let me know they liked this fic...when I first started writing it I was afraid everyone would just say "What the heck IS this nonsense?" The kind words really mean a lot!

Disclaimer: I don't own GW, and I hope the people who do aren't insecure enough to feel threatened by the outpourings of a fanfic writer with too much time on her hands.

Fire Rose
Chapter 2

She stepped out into brilliant, disorienting sunlight. Relena shook her head in confusion. Just a moment before she had been falling into a void of stars, so why was she suddenly in a garden? Maybe she was just dreaming some mad mixture of A Christmas Carol and Alice in Wonderland. Nevertheless, she started forward.

The path under her feet was smooth white gravel. All around it were arbors of extravagant rose vines, intertwining like Celtic knotwork. Heavy sprays of blossoms hung down, scenting the air and shedding perfect petals along the path. They were lovely, but they obscured the view dreadfully. She couldn't see the way back clearly, and it was difficult to tell if there was anything beyond the endless vine-covered arches.

"I suppose there's no place to go but forward," she said aloud, needing to hear the sound of a voice, even if it was her own. As if in response, a shower of pink-and-white petals drifted down to land on her shoulders and hair. Their proximity emphasized the heavy scent hanging in the air. The roses seemed to be even thicker here; the sunlight was blotted out and the air curiously still. She increased her pace, brushing the clinging petals off. Somewhere in the back of her mind lurked the lingering fear that she was walking in circles. Relena began to look harder at the greenery incase it was hiding an exit of some kind.

Then, without warning, the glaring sunlight was back and she found herself at the entrance to a walled courtyard clinging to the side of a huge building. She didn't recognize the courtyard, but something about the architecture of the building itself rang a bell in her mind. She craned her head to scan the skyline for familiar features. They were there, alright; not exactly as she remembered them, but still unmistakable. "Sanq," she breathed. She was back at the palace.

While her mind tried to process this, a sudden movement caught her attention. Sitting on a bench was a girl in a white gown with the sun reflecting off her dark-blond hair. Her head had come up as Relena entered the courtyard. For a moment she was certain she was sun-blinded, but the image remained stubbornly fixed. She was looking at a mirror image of herself.

Eerily, her doppelganger didn't seem aware of the resemblance. She rose from her seat and said "Good morning." When Relena failed to reply, she asked kindly, "Are you lost? The gardens are so huge."

"Yes," Relena managed to say, swallowing her shock. "I think I am."

The other Relena smiled. "I can show you the way back, then. You must be one of our guests. I am Princess Relena Peacecraft." She swept a grave curtsey.

How did you introduce yourself to yourself? "I'm...Vice Foreign Minister Darlian."

"I'm pleased to make your acquaintance. Perhaps I can show you to the guest wing?"

"Actually, I'm here to look for something," Relena said hesitantly. "The problem is, I'm not sure what."

Her mirror image regarded her with calm blue-green eyes. "I know the palace better than anyone else. If what you're looking for is here, I'm sure the two of us can find it." She gestured towards a heavy wooden door leading into the palace, and Relena followed her, wondering what other ghosts she would encounter in this reflection of her homeland.


The snow was still falling in Brussels, covering the fresh tracks in the Vice Foreign Minister's yard. The feet that had left them made no more noise on the staircase than they had in the sound-deadening snowdrifts. They did leave faint wet marks on the boards, but they would be dry before anyone was awake to see them.

This was far too easy, Heero thought. This house's security was adequate, but insufficient to keep out someone with his skills. He would have to see that something was done about that later, but for now his mission objective was clear and simple: leave a small package and card for Relena to find and depart without being seen. It should be easy enough; the silence of the house suggested its occupants were all asleep, although a light still burned in one second-floor window. He frowned slightly. She shouldn't fall asleep with the lights still on, in front of that too-exposed window. Maybe he should go in to check on her...

Idiot! It was unwise to stray from the mission objective, particularly on a mission he could find no justification for and yet was determined to carry out anyway.

'Why am I here?' part of his mind wanted to know. He had no particular religious feelings, no family to give the holiday any meaning for him. There was no logical reason for him to be doing this. Moreover, he had decided long ago that it was best to clear off and leave Relena to carry on her work without the distraction and potential danger of his presence. But the part of his mind that wasn't troubled by logic yearned to catch a glimpse of her. Was she asleep, or sitting up with a book? Was she working on Christmas Eve? What would it be like to see her in the flesh after all this time?

The strange feeling began to overtake him as he reached the second-floor landing. He tried to dismiss it at first, but his instincts insisted there was something not right here. There was an uncanny stillness in the air, and his half-formed resolve to check on Relena solidified. He moved swiftly, but silently towards the door his mental map of the house told him should lead to the lighted room. There was still no sound, nor any indication that the room was occupied at all.

He opened the door cautiously, weapon at the ready. The room was empty, but had obviously been occupied not long ago. A crumpled afghan did not quite disguise the dent where a body had rested on the loveseat, and a cup of tea sat on the table, still steaming faintly. It looked for as if the room's inhabitant had just gotten up a moment ago, intending to return. There was only one little problem: he had heard no movement in the house, and there was only one door.

Heero glanced sharply at the window, but the snow on the ledge was undisturbed. It hadn't been opened. Then where?

"Two in one night...this is certainly a rarity"

The voice was low and clear and carried a faint ringing undertone, and it came from a person who had not been there during his initial sweep of the room. In a moment his gun was trained on the source of the sound. She stood against the mantel, her gown reflecting the lights on the Christmas tree, tall and pale and apparently amused by the abrupt appearance of a former Gundam pilot.

"Where is she?" he rapped out, eyes fixed on the intruder to catch the slightest movement.

The woman raised an eyebrow slightly. There was something strange about her eyes, but Heero wasn't particularly concerned with that right now. Her lips quirked mischievously. "Who are you looking for, I wonder? The Dove of Peace?" she asked him. "Or the Princess of Sanq?"

"I'm not here to play games. Where is she?" He cocked the gun, making it quite clear that the safety was off. How had this woman gotten in? Who and what was she? His mind was running through a catalog of groups who might want Relena to disappear and had the resources to make it happen.

"My, you certainly are single-minded." The sight of the gun didn't seem to concern her. "Where she went, she went of her own free will."

"That's not an answer." It was unexpectedly hard to maintain his aim; the air around her seemed to shimmer faintly.

Heero's finger tightened reflexively on the trigger as one hand rose in a graceful sweeping gesture, but there didn't seem to be any threat implied. She was pointing to a painting resting against the table before the loveseat. "The answer to your questions is in there."

And suddenly, impossibly, something was coming out of the painting, transferring itself seamlessly from canvas to reality. His mind wanted to call it a hallucination or a hologram, but deep in his bones he knew it wasn't. For the first time he met the woman's eyes and looked into a dark pool of endless time. Whatever her motives were, they were beyond the day-to-day human struggles for power that concerned him. Suddenly he felt terrifyingly uncertain; this was something completely beyond his experience.

However, some things still remained absolute. He tore his eyes away from that unnerving gaze and looked at the gateway into a void that had suddenly manifested in Relena's sitting room. "Relena went in there?"

"Yes."

"Then I can find her." The gun dropped to his side as he stepped towards the arch.

A ringing voice followed him as he walked into nothingness. "If your will is strong enough, you will find what you are looking for." And then he heard nothing.


The corridor Relena followed herself through was familiar and unfamiliar; the fabric of the building was the same, and she knew the layout, but something was different. At last it came to her: the faint traces of the scars left by the invasion of Sanq nearly twenty years ago were nonexistent. The ornamental plasterwork was shining and uncracked, the portraits of past dignitaries gazed serenely down from the spotless walls. This place had never known attack; everywhere she looked was an uncanny perfection she wasn't sure the real palace had possessed even before the wars. The people they passed in the halls looked content and unworried, making way for the white-gowned figure ahead of her with fond deference.

"Are there many guests here now?" Relena asked, trying to get a handle on this surreal situation.

"Oh yes, the entire guest wing is full since all the people came for the World Peace Conference," the Relena-who-wasn't-Relena assured her naively. "I helped with the arrangements, but Father and my brother Milliardo are handling the conference itself. Sometimes I wish they would let me help more, but they always say I don't need to worry about it."

Relena fell silent, wondering at the blithe expression that had replaced the brief flash of concern on her double's face. Had she ever been this untroubled by what went on around her? She remembered her fifteen-year-old self before the war, confident in the admiration of her friends and the support of her parents. Still, she didn't think so. At times she might have been too wrapped up in her own concerns to give much thought to the troubled times, but so were most teenagers. That particular vice she had most certainly grown out of.

"The throne room is just down this corridor," the princess continued. "All the kingdom's treasures are kept in a secret chamber behind it. I'm sure the thing you're looking for will be there."

They stepped into a vaulted, echoing room of white marble and red carpets. The throne was a surprisingly simple affair in contrast to its surroundings: a heavy wooden chair of ancient design, carved with oak trees. The princess guided Relena confidently towards a tapestry behind the throne, flipping aside a section of the heavy fabric and pressing a carving on the wall underneath. Relena felt vaguely disoriented. She was sure there had been no such thing in the Sanq she knew.

The treasure room was small and plain; the Peacecrafts had never been prone to accumulating riches. A few pedestals held huge old books, others carried objects whose value seemed to be more historical than monetary. But the thing that drew her eyes was housed in a niche carved into the back wall: resting on a simple stand was a crown, older than the one she had seen in portraits of her real father, probably older even than the throne behind them. It was a plain band of burnished gold, ornamented only with stylized leaves.

"This is the true crown of the Peacecrafts," said the voice of her guide softly. "It's been waiting here for centuries...for the right person to wear it. I wonder if it's been waiting for you?"

Relena tore her eyes from the soft gleam of the crown to look at her double. "What do you mean? I can't-" What could she say? She was a Peacecraft, even if she no longer used that name.

The princess came to stand in front of her, like a mirror reflection moving on its own. "Why not? You have the best right. The people of Sanq need a queen."

"I gave that title up," Relena insisted, but a flicker of doubt crossed her mind. This place was bringing back too many memories; she saw the people who had welcomed their princess back with such warmth, who had supported her almost unanimously even when her defiance of OZ looked suicidal.

"But you could easily reclaim it. Isn't that what you wanted? A place where you belong? Sanq will always accept you, and you could make it so beautiful." The voice so like her own was pleading now. "This place is a dream, but you could make it real. You could make it a place where your children could grow up without the weight of the world on their shoulders."

It sounded so good...she no longer quite fit the expectations people had of a Peacecraft, but if Sanq could accept her simply for who she was, would it be so bad to return? The old boundaries if nations were different now, but they still needed leadership. Sanq was a small country, with simpler needs than the vast, sprawling ESUN that was absorbing so much of her life. Wouldn't it be worthwhile to help restore it to what it was before the wars?

A few steps away, the crown seemed to beckon to her. It didn't look heavy...