08-Feb-2001
Within the dark subtunnels of the rebuilt Holt Air Base, a single shot rang out. It was a sharp, whining sound in comparison to the deep throated reports of the weapons that still fired outside with less and less frequency.
The flashlight clattered to the ground a moment before its previous owner folded gently to the ground, and spun there, its beam making the shadows jump as it circled.
A pale, long-fingered hand curled around its base, halting the flashlight's sudden frenzy, and lifting it to train on the crumpled figure. Pale blond hair drifted in and out of the circle of light in lazy sweeps as the woman knelt and straightened out the body of a mousy looking woman who appeared twice Dorothy's age.
Satisfied with her task, she leaned forward and gently kissed each closed eyelid. "There is no greater joy than to give one's life for their cause, sweet Leah," she murmured. "Rest dear one, and know that your philosophies are now set in stone, and your work lays upon the center of the canvas for all to see."
Dorothy smiled sadly and rose to her feet, her odd blue eyes glittering in the flashlight's steady glow. Without another word, she turned and walked carefully out to her favorite overlook.
Outside, the mission was winding down, as one by one, each of the Preventers reported to the southern overlook. At Wufei and Zechs report that the lab was still intact, and the microbiologists were suiting up and preparing to enter in the wake of the operatives. The two they had brought out of the rubble, Yasmin ben Sallah and Sean O'Hara were, after many long, confused stares at the two Preventers who'd come back for them against all odds, taken into custody.
At the first fingers of dawn, Heero arrived with his burden, heavily favoring bruised ribs. The whir and rhythmic thump of a tan Preventers' helicopter above, for the media's benefit, distracted most of the activity for a moment, allowing Heero to hand over Maria to a Preventer manning an armored police car.
Tension wound up farther and farther beneath cobalt eyes, as he watched the proceedings slide into a more organized precision. The cleanup was beginning. They didn't need him. He needed to be elsewhere. He wasn't sure why or how he knew. He just did.
"I need to go," the silent boy had spoken up at last, his voice hoarse from the intensity of the declaration.
"Heero?" Quatre had asked. Wide blue eyed fixed on the Japanese boy. To the eyes of his friends, Heero's stance was practically screaming with need to move, to do anything. His pupils were dilated to that unsettling black again, and the muscles beneath his clothes were obviously tensed, as if ready and expecting to bolt at any instant.
"Don't ask," Heero requested, throwing Quatre a look. "I just need to."
"I hid a dirtbike by the far end." Trowa spoke up quietly. The look he leveled on Heero was nothing short of silent understanding. In Heero's place... "If it's fast enough."
"It will do." Heero nodded, and turned, nimbly sliding down the side of the steep overlook. "Arigatou."
Thirty miles, twenty minutes. A dirtbike probably shouldn't have been pushed that hard or that fast, but at the barest hints of dawn there were no cops to complain about it or the sheer recklessness the boy took to the roads. It was likely within record time that he arrived at Quatre's estate.
Very nearly out of breath and wearing the plaster dust of the collapsed base, Heero threw open the door to the impromptu hospital room.
Cobalt eyes fixed on the bed surrounded by undisturbed medical equipment. The monitors showed no change as the delicate figure entangled within the tubes and wires lay still and motionless. Unchanged. The burning intensity turned to a numbness. /How could there be no change?/
A flash of light bouncing off the surface of some bright metal caught Heero's attention, dragging him out of his dark reverie.
Across from the bed, and half hidden behind the open door, handcuffs spun a lazy circle around a raised index finger. Tearing his gaze from the twirling metal, he followed the tendons and lines of muscle and bone down the forearm and up to rolled sleeves, across the black expanse of shirt, and finally settling on a very familiar grin and impish set of violet eyes.
"Duo," he barely had time to breathe the realization of Relena's absence in those eyes, before the boy in question dropped the pretense and launched himself at Heero. The Japanese boy's feet went out from under him and both collapsed to the floor, each clutching the other to his own chest.
Surrounded by the clinical atmosphere and cold machinery, words were abandoned. They were forgotten, meaningless and forsaken in the simple, desperate comfort of contact.
~The next day~
"Lady Une!"
Another day, another swarm. Although this time the Director wasn't as reluctant nor as irritated as she appeared to be.
"Une, can you confirm the reports on the status of Relena Peacecraft?"
/Of course, that would be the first concern./ Une thought. Out loud she answered, "We are informed that she has made an incredibly speedy recovery, and is expected to break out of the coma at any time. Our best wishes are with her."
"Ms. Une! Do you have any comment on the Preventers' involvement in the alleged accident last night?"
Une gave the man a hard scowl, even while inwardly smiling with satisfaction. Just the issue she wanted to address. "The Preventers were dispatched to handle an emergency situation after an explosion was spotted coming from a base formerly thought to be abandoned within the Sanq Kingdom."
"Is it true that the base was a Devolutionist headquarters?"
"We have evidence that points to the fact."
"Lady Une! Is it true that the base was being used for military purposes?"
"I can only say that there were guns and explosives found on the perimeter. Further information is pending on a more thorough investigation of the ruins."
The crowd pressed in again as Une seemed to struggle for the double doors. "Ms. Director! How do you respond to the accusations that the Preventers had caused the explosion?"
"With a flat denial. Evidence as well as witnesses confirm that the explosion was itself instigated by the Devolution." Une paused as if in thought. "It might have been a cult phenomenon."
That declaration sent the mass into a frenzy of notation. There would be interesting headlines tomorrow.
/There, chew on that./ Une thought smugly behind carefully bland features.
In only two days a "reluctant" inside source would feed the overly curious and carefully selected press members tidbits about the bacteria discovered there. Within ten minutes, they would have spun themselves a grand story about the Preventer's "lucky" discovery, and the official silence on the matter was only to keep the populous calm.
"Lady Une!"
"I think that will be enough questions today." Kuno said as he ushered Une within the safety of the office building.
"More than enough. Thank you Kuno." Une finally said as the thick doors closed behind her.
Laid up in his own bed, and restricted by Sally from walking until the bullet wound on his upper thigh closed, Trowa had discovered that Quatre made a wonderful nurse. As a food tray was dropped, no, near flung at Trowa, he was forced to amend that statement. /A still-peevish, but cute nurse./ The visible green eyes glittered with amusement.
"I can't believe you didn't tell me," Quatre mumbled. It had been his mantra. Trowa set aside the tray and sat up with a wince as the muscles involved in the simple act informed him that they still weren't up to snuff. Ignoring them, he pulled Quatre over to him in a tender hug.
"I'm sorry," he whispered to his angel. "I didn't want to worry you then."
"I know, I know." Quatre grumped. The small blond relaxed slightly, snuggling closer to the taller boy. "How's your leg?" he murmured.
"Still hurts a bit," Trowa admitted honestly.
"Well then, let me kiss it and make it better."
"Quatre.... Quatre, the wound is lower than... that."
"Are you complaining?" The question was asked with an angelic mischievousness.
A soft gasp answered the Arabian. "Never."
Waking up was not easy, like swimming through tar. She didn't want to, but her body seemed determined. It was tired of her long rest.
The doctors, under Quatre's employ she recognized, bustled around her as her eyelids flickered open. With muted excitement they flashed lights in her eyes, took her blood pressure and other less easily identifiable procedures in a flurry of action.
The breathing tube had been removed, leaving a terribly raw feeling. She didn't feel brave enough to talk until long after the doctors had downgraded her watch. Until a figure in black appeared in the doorway.
"Tell me...." She winced, her voice failing painfully. The figure knelt by her side and with a gentleness she wouldn't have expected, lifted her head and pressed a glass of water to her lips. Taking small, refreshing sips, she felt more fortified. "Tell me it was all a dream. A terrible horrible nightmare."
Duo leaned back slightly, pulling the glass away. "'Fraid I can't, ojosan," he replied.
"You're not.. angry?" she asked, blinking up at him. "I'd have thought you'd..." she coughed again, but instead of helping, Duo merely waited patiently. "You'd want to kill me.... you should... want to... you should just do it." Her voice had dropped to a rasping whisper. He offered her a few more sips of water, which she took gratefully.
"Heh, trust me, if I wanted you dead, I could just so much as hint it to Heero. He's pretty keen on the idea right now."
Relena flinched at that. Her protector, her knight in shining armor... How could she have ruined things so completely? How a moment of freedom spun so horribly out of control and put her so out of balance? She had thought, before the accident, that she was content.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. Her voice wasn't so low because of injury this time. She struggled to look anywhere but the violet eyes fixed on hers.
"I know. I don't really have a choice, but I know." He grinned at her. Her own memory flashed with that moment of contact at the end, the simple, pure understanding that had jolted like an electric current between them, circling without any hope of grounding, until that other boy.... Solo... Oblivious to her thoughts, Duo went on, "It's why I haven't given Hee-chan the go-ahead. Besides... it'd tear him up like nothing else, even now, to kill you. He doesn't think so, but I know better."
/The other boy lead me out... he must be gone now... How long had he been with Duo? How much of another loss was this, despite the gentle parting?/ "Can you forgive me?" Weakly, one of her hands, reached up to curl around the one clenched, white knuckled on the rail of her bed. "Somehow, can you? Can I make it up somehow?"
"No," he said flatly, with a little ferocity that hadn't been present before. "That's the one thing I wont do. I've spent a lot of time thinking about it. I'm not going to do anything against you either." The braided boy stood up, disentangling his hand from her grip and stepping backwards. He favored her with a half smile that wasn't entirely unkind. "You're going to have to find your own redemption ojosan."
/Find my own?/ The implications settled in as she vaguely noticed Duo slip out of the room again and another guard, faceless to her, took his turn at watch. There would be no easy penance, no solution offered by the offended. She would have to work to prove her desire to be forgiven, her sincerity. And hope that in the end, it would be enough to allow her to forgive herself. It was a nightmarish task.
The incredible determination so famous to the Peacecrafts began to sink in, as a new mission settled easily into the void that the shattering of her old ideals and purpose had left. She would find a way to do this.
Dorothy smiled, again, looking out of the window, the same base she'd watched not so long ago in ruins and shambles, deserted of any life.
"What a marvelous picture this has become. The paint is drying already. Do you like it, grandfather?"
Her smile turned serene as she scanned a memo. So Relena was awake. The little princess had served her purpose. She'd have to invite her over for tea later.
"Do you like it grandfather? I've named it 'Peace'."
OWARI (at last!)
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