A sharply dressed, clean cut young man stood before the Queen of the World. Relena frowned slightly, displeasure crossing her face briefly before her training in etiquette covered all of the traces.
"Where is Pargan?" she asked, carefully keeping the bite out of her voice.
"I'm sorry Relena sama, he's taken ill with exhaustion. I'm filling in for the day as the driver." She had a vague uneasy sense, but pushed it aside as foolish.
The driver opened the door to the passenger compartment of the limo. "Dozo," he said with a slight bow. She drew herself up and slipped into the back.
As the driver pulled away, her mind was already clicking over the summit she was to attend. This should be it, she thought. In the peace after the wars, slowly but surely her deft words and eye for the weak points and strengths of both her allies and opposition had forged a solid unity within the earth sphere.
Things were in the balance though. A new group had sprung out, living under the belief that only through chaos and conflict can humans survive, flourish, otherwise there is stagnation. People turn on each other and society falls apart in the face of a lack of a common enemy.
The Devolution, as the called themselves, had a powerful and large following.
Devolution was such an odd name as well, she thought to herself. Obviously a clever play on the word Revolution, but there seemed to be more to it. Did it signify a degeneration? A returning to old ideals? Neither sat well with Relena; the group stood against everything she was fighting for.
Still, her pressure was bearing sweet fruit. She was to meet with their leader, Karla Grey, and seal the peace once and for all.
"To finally have this all over," she whispered to herself. Her eyes slid shut with pleasure at the simple thought of being a normal girl again, to live the childhood she missed. Perhaps even find love. An image of bright and passionate cobalt eyes flash in her mind briefly.
"Did you say something Relena sama?"
Relena blushed slightly, pulled out of her thoughts. "Oh no, it was nothing."
"As you say."
She stared contemplatively out the window for a while before something began to register… pine trees. She'd been along this route tens of times, bounding from peace talk to peace talk. In her silent exhaustion on the way back, she'd had nearly every part of the scenery memorized.
She'd never seen pine trees.
"Driver, are you sure you're following the right road?"
"Yes ma'am, this is the map I was given."
Relena sat back into her seat, watching the scenery with increasing unease and displeasure.
"Driver, please stop the car."
"I'm sorry, Relena sama. I'm afraid I can't."
"What?" Relena's head shot up. The driver's tone had taken an ominous note.
"I can't." The driver looked at her through the rear view mirror. His eyes were brighter than they should have been, giving him an almost feverish cast. "I don't wish anything bad against you, personally. But this is for a greater cause. It needs to happen. You have to understand."
"You're a Devolutionist." She stated, more than asked, sounding a great deal more calm than she actually felt. The driver bobbed his head once in acknowledgment at her declaration.
The car was going to fast to jump out of, and the locking tabs on the doors had been ripped out. She berated herself mentally for being so foolish not to check for something so small. These little things she taken for granted, accustomed to Pargans vigilant protection. /I am a fool. To think Karla would sign so easily./
Relena saw the drop of the cliff long before they actually got there. Just a simple sinking in her stomach told her that, without a doubt, the driver wouldn't be following the next turn in the road. The fanatical gleam in his eyes told her that her precious time would be wasted reasoning with the man.
Twenty feet away... the tires squealed as the man suddenly accelerated, punishing the rubber against the asphalt.
Ten feet ... /I will not panic. I will face my destiny calmly./
Five feet ... /I will face my fate with courage and dignity./
Three feet ... /...I will.../
/...Heero.../
Duo handed Heero a tissue absently. "Damn that's twice in five minutes." Duo grinned at his partner. "You better not be getting sick on me again."
"Hn." Heero snorted, tossing aside the tissue carelessly. "Now, where were we?"
"Somewhere below the collarbone and heading south I believe." Duo replied.
"Sou ka." Heero smirked ever so slightly and returned his attention to Duo's shoulder, one of his many sensitive spots with precise determination. He thrummed with satisfaction as the American beneath him began to melt slowly. His fingers and mouth explored the dip of the collarbone and into the hollow of the neck, while teasing hands danced lower, promising but never giving.
Duo gave an impatient growl from the back of his throat. He reached up to snake his arms around Heero's neck and end the teasing. Heero deftly caught his wrists mid-gesture.
"There's no rush. We have plenty of tim..." BEEP! A pager, discarded somewhere on the floor in the tangle of clothes and furniture, whined insistently. It was almost, but not quite, drowned out by Duo's fluent cursing.
"You know," Duo began, shrugging his shirt back over his shoulders irritably. "If I believed in God, I'd seriously be wondering if He had a thing against me getting laid."
"Baka." Heero replied absently, trying to force down his own frustration. The code on the beeper was urgent to urgent to ignore. Quickly, he punched in the numbers, and was greeted by Wufei's face, drawn tightly with more severity than usual.
"Yuy. Maxwell." Wufei acknowledged, his eyes taking in both of their rumpled degrees of undress, but refrained from any greater comment than a wry quirk of his lips. After a brief, expectant pause, Wufei's face became serious and lidded again. "There's been an accident. Relena's in the hospital now. Internal sabotage is almost assured as the cause."
This time, Heero joined in with a few curses of his own. His fists clenched tightly. "Status?"
"Stable, but not good. She's in a coma. They suspect the driver was involved."
"Is he in custody now?" Duo, as usual, took over the conversation, his tone serious.
The wry smirk reappeared faintly. "No, he's in the morgue. We figure he died instantly in the crash."
"Any ID on the guy?"
"Not that we can find. We could hardly make out that he was male, much less human."
"Where is she?" Heero interjected. Duo's displeased expression was out of the line of Japanese man's sight, but painfully evident to the Preventer. Wufei did NOT want to get into the middle of this old bone of contention.
Resigned to his fate, he rattled off the address of the hospital and ward. Heero was out the door before Wufei was even done with room number.
Duo remained facing the screen, his cheek cupped in one palm, and looking for all the world like the tenuous prop of the elbow was the only thing keeping the braided American upright.
"Well, looks like ojo-san's got a bodyguard now." Duo drawled, grinning slightly. "He's really going to be beating himself up that he took the day off."
"I'm sorry." Wufei said simply, but honestly.
"Nah, daijoubu Wu-man." Duo smirked as Wufei's brow creased at the nickname. He was so easy to ruffle sometimes. Although, Duo sometimes suspected that it was more of a show for his benefit lately. "You are just following orders. Sides, I wanted to get him into a hospital anyway to get checked out. He's been sick on and off."
"Him?" The Asian man's tone was incredulous.
Duo shrugged. "It happens I guess."
"Aa. I'll meet you two at the hospital." Wufei paused leveling a glare at the too smug American. "Behave," he warned.
"Never!" Duo crowed naturally, closing down the link before giving chase to his partner.
Relena sat, somewhere above her body, simply wondering why she wasn't panicked. /I should be really. It's disconcerting to see myself like this./
At first she had strode boldly through the hospital, avoiding people, yet walking straight through walls as if they were nothing. The novelty had worn off fast, no one seemed to even acknowledge her presence.... something she had mixed feelings about.
There was an odd, but wonderful sense of freedom about the situation, which the young queen drank in greedily.
A familiar woman strode into the room, breaking Relena from her revere. Dorothy leaned over the side of her bed, smiling fondly at her still body.
"A pity." Dorothy said, smoothing Relena's hair with gentle, graceful strokes. "But this can be worked around I suppose. Although for your own health, it would be wiser never to wake up."
"Sleep well," Dorothy pressed her lips to Relena's tenderly, before straightening up. "My little martyr."
*Dorothy!* Relena's shade stood up in mid air, her ghostly face without color.
The long haired woman, went on oblivious, gliding out of the room as quickly as she came in, pausing only to greet and give entrance to a nurse and more guests.
"Yeah, it'll only be a week." A familiar voice called out. "Oh, hi Dorothy.... bye Dorothy.... sheeeeee, what's wrong with her?"
"She's probably worried about her friend." Two short men walked into the room, both familiar to Relena, but she was unable to truly place them. Duo, that was the name of the braided one... but the other Preventer she knew little more about than he had at one time sided with Mariemeia. "You two are lucky, you know."
"That's what I'm told. I suppose we have Relena to thank for it in an odd sort of way."
"Maxwell, can't you ever be serious?" The dark man gave an exasperated sigh.
"Not right now Wu-man. I'll be serious later in private." The braided one grinned, the smile not touching his eyes.
*Duo! I'm glad you're here. Take me to Heero, he has to know what's going on.* Relena frowned as neither men so much as glanced in her direction. This spirit thing was revealing some distinct disadvantages.
"There's not much you can do here." The Asian man said, a friendly hand on Duo's shoulder. "Go back to Heero, I'm sure he's frightened the daylights out of several poor nurses by now."
*Where's Heero? Is he sick?*
"Yeah, I know." Duo wandered over to the bedside, a serious look passing over his face. "The timing of this really sucks."
"Agreed, but the Preventers can handle anything until she wakes up."
"But with Heero out of commission." Duo added, frowning.
"And yourself at reduced efficiency."
/Why's he blushing?/
"Saa, am I that obvious?"
The other man smirked, but didn't elaborate, much to the dissatisfaction of Relena's curiosity. "Shouldn't you be immunized as well? You are without a doubt exposed to it."
"Che'. Don't worry about me. I have an immune system like you wouldn't believe. G was always fond of saying that if the wars ever turned biological, I'd have the one up on everyone."
"Again, you're lucky."
"Not as much as you'd think." Duo shoved his hand into his pockets. "Anyways, I'm going to check up on ol' stoneface."
"Offer him my regrets."
"You got it." The black clad boy turned to leave, Relena's ghost lunged forward, trying to stop him.
*Matte! Duo!* Her hand passed through his shoulder. Duo instantly jerked straight as if burned.
"Daijoubu?"
"Er? Huh? oh, yeah, I'm fine, just a nasty draft or something."
"Don't get sick huh?"
"I don't lie either." Duo grinned. "Don't worry. I'm sure it's nothing. Ja!"
/He felt me./ Relena stood stunned, not even noticing the Asian man folding himself into the seat next to her body. Her attention was solely focused on the partner of her love as his back retreated down the busy hallways of the ICU. /He felt me.... that means.../
*Duo wait!* She called out, chasing after him. Perhaps there was an opportunity here after all.
TBC
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