21 August 2001

Pairing: 2+R/2xR
Category: Romance
Rating: NC-17 for the fic as a whole (Chapter 6 contains lemon; 7 & 10 contain serious lime); this section is rated G.
What to expect: Hetero-ai, shounen-ai, probable sap. I don't think this is OOC, but others are free to find it so. Takes place after EW, so it's AU in the way all hypothetical-future fics necessarily are.
Disclaimer: These characters belong to Sunrise, the Sotsu Agency, and Bandai, and I intend only to increase their revenues by contributing this derivative work. Section epigraphs are from U2's "She Moves in Mysterious Ways," from their album _Achtung Baby_. Notes: This is a sort of sequel to "Fool on Fire," though you don't have to have read that story for this one to make sense. (This fic does ask you to begin with the understanding that Duo's always had a crush on Relena in this version of GW's events--that was the basic premise of "Fool," after all--so I won't be showing that attachment's origins here. If that omission strains your suspension of disbelief past the breaking point, well, I apologize for the whiplash.)

Mystified by Lilias

Proem: Rituals

Johnny take a walk with your sister the moon
Let her pale light in to fill up your room

Another icy midwinter night, full of the sound of bells--not sounding the alarm this time, but pealing in celebration.

The year was After Colony 196, at least under the old system. But in an excess of optimism, people were already declaring it a new era: After War. On this New Year's Eve, they were getting ready to ring in AW 1.

It sounded nice, Relena decided, and a total overhaul of the calendar was an inconvenience that could easily be borne if it meant the people were happy. And they might well be; the Earth, the colonies, were all finally at peace. Her people were safe, at least for now.

And it really felt like almost all of the Earthsphere's population was here, crowded into a massive hall for the last and biggest of the post-war celebrations. The banquet had been organized mainly as a photo opportunity for a world press eager to gather images of the war's heroes. And they had been adding to their portfolios all through the speeches and the dinner that followed--snatching shots of the five Gundam pilots, of the brave Preventers who had played such a pivotal role in the war, of the young ambassador kidnapped in the early days of Dekim Barton's abortive coup.

Having finally eluded the flashbulbs, the Vice-Foreign Minister herself sat at one end of a long banquet table on a raised dais, gazing somewhat vacantly out over the milling crowd. Her absent expression masked a reflexive concentration. It was an embarrassing habit--she looked for their faces like a mother hen counting her chicks, naming the saviors of the peace in a litany that confirmed their safety: /Heero, Duo, Trowa, Quatre, Wufei; Milliardo and Noin should be halfway to Mars by now; Sally, Une, even Dorothy; too many Maganacs, don't know all the names..../ And when she finished, she began again, looking from profile to smiling face to uniformed back: /Une and Sally and a very tall Maganac...and where is Heero?/

Before she had time to do more than wrinkle her brows in worry, he dropped into the chair next to her. "Taking attendance again?"

"I can't help it," Relena admitted. "Whenever I don't have anything pressing to think about, this happens. I have nightmares where I'm trying to make all of you fit into a basket." She winced at the ridiculous antics of her subconscious, but Heero only looked at her thoughtfully.

"You don't have to feel responsible for everyone any more, Relena."

"Look who's talking!"

"At least I know when to quit." His eyes grew distant, and she watched him silently. In some ways, she knew, he was already far away from this place, already moving toward his own peace.

"So where will you be off to?"

"Don't know yet. Just away, to start with." Heero looked at her sideways. "Don't bother assigning trackers--I'll check in."

She grimaced. "You're never going to let me forget that, are you?"

"Not as long as it still annoys you to be reminded." His lopsided smirk looked almost boyish.

"Oh, wonderful." Relena rolled her eyes, but relented enough to smile at him. "Well, don't stay out there too long--you ought to get to live in the world you saved, after all."

"I won't. It's just a lot to think about, all at once. I have some things to sort out."

"I know what you mean." She looked out over the sea of faces in the banquet hall, sighing a little at the sheer numbers.

"What will you be doing?"

"Besides trying to make sure the Earthsphere Unified Nation stays unified? I honestly have no idea. It's not like I'll have time for much--but then, it's also not as though other things are beating down my door. Or other people. It's going to be lonely with you and Milliardo gone, and I'll miss Noin, too." Her eyes slid over the crowd again, as though her absent brother might appear among the others at any moment.

"You don't have to be alone if you don't want to be," Heero commented. "Plenty of people want to be your friends."

"It might look that way, I suppose," she said, dismissing the idea with a flick of her hand. "Everybody wants to be seen with me--but nobody wants to know me, not really."

"I wouldn't be too sure of that."

She turned to him, raising her eyebrows at his cryptic comment. "What do you mean?"

Heero shrugged. "Not for me to say. Just keep your eyes open."

Now Relena looked puzzled, but knew better than to press for answers. In any case, her chance for queries soon passed; his eye caught by something across the room, Heero stood up. "There are some things I need to talk to Wufei about before I go. I'll see you later, maybe."

Long accustomed to Heero's abrupt shifts of attention, Relena nodded without surprise. "Certainly. But if I don't have the chance to talk to you before you leave--be well, Heero. And thank you."

He offered her a rare smile, covering her hand with his in an even rarer gesture of affection. "You too."

Relena watched him walk away, smiling in spite of herself at the emotions brought to the surface by this familiar scenario: not so long ago, she would have been swept with longing, even anguish, at his departure. Even now she felt a bittersweet pang, but this time it was a twist of nostalgia for her own departed adoration, rather than a revival of the attachment itself. /It all seems so long ago. We've all come so far, in so very little time..../ She sighed, suddenly feeling very tired.

End of Proem: Rituals

Mystified by Lilias

Part 1: Sustenance

You've been living underground
Eating from a can

Just watching them made his stomach go hollow. She looked so happy, talking to Heero, laughing with Heero, gazing at Heero, Heero, Heero....

If he heard the name one more time, Duo decided, he was going to drown himself in a punchbowl, or maybe start sawing at his wrists with a butter knife. He'd come to this stupid dinner with the firm belief that he could handle anything as long as she was happy--but it wasn't at all true, and what mature acceptance he had once been able to muster was rapidly being drowned in a caustic mixture of frustration and outright self-pity. He was mildly surprised that there wasn't a little black cloud hovering over his lonely corner of the banquet hall; it would have been entirely fitting.

/It's not fair. Just not fair. I could have at least made a decent showing alongside any other guy on Earth or in space--but next to the wonder that is Heero Yuy, everyone else plays second fiddle. Hah. Well, at least I'm literally second. God, I kill me./

With a short, bitter laugh at his own weak humor, Duo went back to creating a surprisingly accurate likeness of Deathscythe out of little heaps of spilled salt and pepper. Only a moment or two later, he was sneaking yet another glance toward the head table, where Relena still sat--but alone, now. Looking very small and sad.

/Dammit, Yuy. Where the hell did you go?/ Duo craned his neck to see, following her eyes to where Heero was moving purposefully toward the exit. /Oh, no. Not again./

Duo risked a quick look back at Relena, who was turning her wine glass around and around in her hands, staring into it like some kind of crystal ball. He yanked his eyes away, cursing under his breath as he stabbed at a hapless roll with a stray fork. /Damn you, Yuy. Unto the seventh generation of sullen little Yuys, may you all be as miserable as you've made her..../

He would not look back up. Not a chance. She'd probably feel all embarrassed if she knew anyone was spying on her discomfort, and anyway Quatre, or Noin--no, she wasn't here--well, somebody would go and cheer her up as soon as they noticed.

All right, he'd look once. Just to check on her.

Damn. Relena was looking right at him, head tipped to one side questioningly.

Trying to look nonchalant, Duo began sweeping bits of mangled bread into a tidy pile--but he'd only managed to make the mess worse by the time he heard the rustle of taffeta approaching from the left. Swallowing, he raised his head to see Relena standing on the other side of the table.

"Hello," she said.

How many of his fantasies--the tamer ones, anyway--started out exactly like this? Duo reminded himself to blink. "Hi."

"Do you mind if I join you? Unless someone's sitting here--?"

"Uh, not at all. And that was Quatre's chair, but I think he's dancing." He leaned back to scan the crowd. "Yep. Burnin' up the floor. Don't think he'll be back for a while. Make yourself at home." His choice of words made him wince. /Geez, I sound like somebody's crazy old uncle--must be channeling Howard again./

But Relena was settling into the vacant chair, arranging her skirts so as not to crush them. She swept the room with a quick glance before turning back to him. "This place looks a little less imposing from down here. It's not quite as intimidating when you don't have to feel like you're on stage."

This close, Duo discovered that there was a light dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose, and that equally golden flecks glinted in the blue of her eyes. The distraction had unfortunate results: disengaged from the brain, his mouth went on autopilot. He dimly heard himself say, "So that's why you're slumming, Princess?"

She blinked at him, startled, and Duo immediately began to backpedal in horror. "I mean--"

"It's all right." The tone was still serene, but her smile had slipped a little. "I hear that sort of thing a lot. I just didn't realize that you--" She began to slide her chair back, gathering her skirt out of the way so she could rise. "I'm sorry to have bothered you."

"Hey." Realizing that he was still clutching his fork like a talisman, Duo let it drop and reached for her hand. "I'm a jerk. And it's common knowledge that I'm also a complete idiot--so forget I said that, okay?"

Relena's hand lay quite still under his, tense but unresisting--he didn't dare breathe, waiting for her to look up. When she finally raised wary eyes, Duo offered his most winning smile. "So do I get a do-over?"

Relena looked at him blankly.

"You know, like when you're playing a game and you screw up, and you get to repeat the last move."

"Oh. Well, I suppose--"

Duo pounced on the tentative go-ahead. "Okay. So you say 'My, it's more comfortable down here,' and then this time I say--"

"That's not what I said," she insisted.

"Whatever." He waved one hand airily. "Events before the critical play don't have to be reproduced exactly. You just start from where the ball got dropped."

Relena looked dubious, but the corners of her mouth twitched upward as she answered. "All right. What was it? 'My, it's more comfortable down here.'"

"Right. And then I say: 'Well, it's quite nice now that you're sitting here, though I can't say it was all that great before.'" Duo sat back, flashing a satisfied grin. "Now that's what I meant to say."

"Can't be done. You can only hit rewind once. And anyway, I swear I'm totally shameful." He wiggled his eyebrows, finally coaxing a laugh from her, and then coughed discreetly to cover his own sigh of relief. "So, uh--why did you come over here?"

"You looked like you'd been deserted." She indicated the empty table. "I thought you might not mind company."

"Yeah--the party animals were the first to go," Duo waved toward Quatre and Trowa, barely visible amid the crowd. "And Wufei was over there talking to--"

"Sally--I know. I wonder if she and Une have talked him into joining the Preventers yet?"

"No clue. Don't see them now, either."

"Oh--well, Wufei's probably talking to Heero. I know Heero went off to find him, anyway."

She didn't stumble over the name, or burst into tears, or even blush--as closely as he watched her, Duo couldn't find any evidence of lovelorn distress. /Such a trouper, the way she acts like nothing's wrong. Dammit, Heero--/ Out loud, however, all he said was: "Huh. I guess they'd have a lot to talk about."

Relena nodded. The final battle of the last war had pitted former allies against each other in what could have been a deadly dance for them both; Wufei's desperate attempts to find something to believe in had brought him dangerously close to the destruction of the world, as well as himself. Now that a fragile peace finally had the chance to turn into a lasting one, Wufei would be trying to figure out what his place in this new world might be--and making his peace with Heero was probably a good place to start.

"Let me guess--then he'll be vanishing into the night, huh? Rurouni Heero, man of mystery, and all that." Duo wasn't doing the world's best job of keeping the bitterness out of his voice.

Relena regarded him curiously, picking up on the biting tone without being quite sure what it meant. "Well--yes, actually. He's going to be gone for some time, I believe."

"Figures." He picked up the fork again, and began quite unconsciously to disembowel a wadded napkin.

Eyeing the motion of those tines with some concern, Relena finally asked, "Did he do something to make you angry with him?"

He caught her puzzled look, and quickly smoothed out the napkin. "Heero? Nah. I just don't understand some people, is all."

"Do we ever?" she wondered out loud. "Even when we think we know other people, there are always levels we don't see. We're always just making conjectures, I think."

Duo was relieved, at least a little, that she seemed to have missed his point--but her words gave him an opening. "Can I ask you a really strange question?"

"Certainly."

He began to fold the abused napkin into tiny pleats, not looking up. "What do you think about me?" /As if you ever think about me. But if you did--?/

Relena considered the question. "I think you're brave. No, I know that. Does it still count?"

Duo nodded, watching her closely.

"Then that's what I think. I also think you try harder--at everything--than anyone I've ever met. Though you usually try not to look like you're trying." She thought some more. "I think you have the biggest eyes I've ever seen." And then she spoke more hesitantly. "And I think you're lonely--though I don't know why, since everyone around you seems to care about you so much."

Duo stared at her as though hypnotized, watching the emotions chase one another across her face. Then he collected himself abruptly, clearing his throat. "That's funny."

"What is?"

"I always thought the same thing about you."

She laughed self-consciously. "My eyes aren't that big."

"Not that--the last part. I always thought you looked lonely, even with all those people around you."

Relena glanced up at him, startled, and then looked quickly away. "I suppose I was. It's hard to make real friends, sometimes." Her chin came up in deliberate confidence. "But I was rather accustomed to it, even before the war--we moved around quite a bit, so I was used to having just my parents to talk to. My father, particularly." Those last words seemed to shake her bravado a little, though she smiled at him with brisk determination. "It seems like a silly thing to worry about, doesn't it? Compared to everything else, I mean."

/Something there. Wish I could find out what--/ But he went for a change of subject instead. "Another strange question?"

"Fire away." She propped her elbows on the table, dropped her chin in her hands, and waited.

"What's your first memory ever?"

"Sneezing," Relena said without hesitation. "No, really. I was supposed to be having my picture taken--I was maybe four, maybe younger, and my parents were having formal photographs done. And I couldn't stop sneezing."

"What was it, dust or something?"

"I don't know. But I was exiled in disgrace--they made me sit in the hallway with a nanny while they finished the shoot.

Duo tried not to laugh, but Relena didn't seem too discomfited by his muffled snickering.

"I've always rather liked sneezing," she continued, her voice wistful. "It's such a relief, after the tickling. And you can't control it, but no one expects you to. Such a relief." Realizing how much she was revealing, she turned the question on him. "So? What's your first memory ever?"

Duo looked away, frowning a little. "I--I don't remember much from when I was a kid."

Relena didn't appear convinced. "Nothing? Not even your--" Something seemed to occur to her, and she trailed off, biting her lip. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean--"

"You didn't know." She looked so miserably sorry that Duo tried to come up with a memory for her. "I used to like to stand in the colored patches--you know, from a stained-glass window? I'd stand in yellow when I was happy, purple when I was sad--it put the feelings on the outside, sort of."

"Stained glass? Like church windows?"

"Yeah." He glanced up at her sideways from under his bangs, testing her reaction. "I lived in a church for a while. An orphanage in a church."

He braced himself for well-bred pity or poorly-concealed disdain, but Relena merely nodded. "Churches smell good. Especially old ones. Is it the incense?"

Before Duo could recover, he was answering. "I think it's the oil soap they use on the pews and rails. Sort of like lemons, but not?"

"Right."

"That'd be the soap. And the polish, too. Seasoned with plenty of dust."

"It probably would have made me sneeze, then."

"But that's not a bad thing?"

"Not at all. Very cathartic--freeing to the soul, you know." She laughed, and he couldn't help laughing too.

The whole situation felt increasingly unreal--for no reason that Duo could fathom, it felt bizarrely comfortable to be sitting here with royalty. Enough to make him feel daring, enough to make him do something colossally stupid: "Another strange question?"

This game was becoming familiar. "Of course. Though if I were a genie, this would be your third and final strange question. So ask wisely."

As if he needed more pressure. /Now or never, Maxwell./

"If I wanted to see you." Relena was looking at him quizzically, as if to ask whether she might be somehow invisible at the moment. Determined, Duo soldiered on. "You know, if I wanted to talk to you again sometime. How would that work?"

"Well, you'd have to pick up the phone, and dial the phone, and then--" Unable to sustain her mock-serious tone, she laughed. "Just call, really. I can't promise I'll always be available, but I do call back." She grew quietly grave, reaching across the table to touch the very ends of his fingers with her own. "You can tell me about churches, if you want. Purple and all."

Duo stared at her in sudden helplessness, letting her fingertips slip briefly between his--but was blessedly spared the necessity of answering when an aide appeared at her elbow with an urgent summons. Relena sighed in annoyance, pushing her chair back to rise. "I'm sorry. This always happens, I'm afraid."

Duo shook his head, waving a hand to indicate that it was no big deal. He couldn't have spoken if his life depended on it, even though she was about to go back to wherever she belonged; everything was about to go back to normal, and tomorrow she'd be laughing with someone else over that silly Gundam pilot, the one with the big mouth, and--

And then she turned back, looking mischievous. "Oh, and Duo?"

"Hm?"

"It resets." Duo looked puzzled, at least until she elaborated. "You get three more strange questions next time." She crossed her arms in front of her, genie-fashion, and nodded ceremoniously--then flashed him a smile, and turned to follow the aide off into the crowd.

Duo sat staring blankly after them for a minute, and then sat for a while longer gazing at nothing in particular. In fact, he might have gone on sitting there indefinitely if Quatre hadn't materialized in the seat across from him, smiling knowingly. Even then, it took repeated hailing to secure his attention. "Duo. Hey, Duo. Helloo-ooo?"

Duo blinked at him absently. "What?"

Quatre rolled his eyes. "'What,' he says. Like he wasn't just putting the moves on an innocent girl."

"I noticed that," commented Trowa from his perch at the end of the table.

"Hey," Duo protested. "She sat down by me--I'm the innocent one here. Honest. Call off the goon squad."

"He doesn't look very honest," Quatre observed, tilting his head to peer at Duo. "I do believe he's honoring us with his first lie, Trowa."

Narrowing his eyes right back, Duo snorted. "If I didn't know you better, Quatre, I'd say you were drunk."

"Oh, no." Quatre shook his head emphatically. "It was only sparkling juice."

"Sparkling champagne juice, he means," Trowa explained in a low voice. "Someone refilled his glass without asking. Five times."

"Ah." Duo nodded, wincing. "He's gonna feel that in the morning."

"He's not the only one feeling no pain," Trowa said. "You look pretty far gone yourself."

"Dead gone!" Quatre sang out, then put a hand to his head with a piteous moan. "Oh, no. Everything's spinny."

"At least my high doesn't come with a killer hangover." Duo stood up decisively. "You'd better take the Lion of the Desert to bed, Trowa. And yes, I did mean that the way it sounded. I am going back to my lonely little bunk to dream chaste little dreams."

"For now, anyway," Trowa laughed.

Abandoning his miffed pose, Duo grinned back. "Yeah. For now." After all, she'd said he should call. She'd even said 'next time.'

End of Part 1: Sustenance

(:./lilias/mystified1)