24 Aug 2000
This is my favorite section! And the first one written, too.
Category: Angsty romance
Pairings: A very lonely R; references to 2x1
Disclaimers: I don't own these delightful people (Sunrise and the
Sotsu Agency do, and Bandai has a license to pass them around), nor
do I intend to infringe upon the rights of their owners.
Rating: R
Warnings: Violence. Angst by the tanker-truck. References to shounen-ai.
Feedback: Always welcome!
<> denotes thoughts.
// denotes verse.
//Heart, do not bruise the breast
That sheltered you so long;
Beat quietly, strange guest.//
For the first few weeks, she let herself believe he would be back; she busied herself with making calls, overseeing arrangements against their return. He called once, from the Venus station, to let her know he had arrived in one piece. He had been exhausted from the trip, but strung so tight with nervous anticipation that it was hard for him to carry his half of the conversation--so she hurried him off the line, and went back to her preparations with a smile.
A stupid, self-deluding smile.
It took her two more weeks to start worrying, two more weeks after that before she risked trying to get in touch with him. An email to his coded account (non-invasive, undemanding, the mode seemed appropriate). Over a week later, she got a vague, apologetic reply: it was going well, but slowly. He couldn't leave yet, not when he hadn't talked Heero into coming back with him. No idea how long this was going to take. He was thinking of taking a job on the station, just for a while. More later.
It was silly to worry so much about this, she told herself sternly. Of course it was taking a while. Even given Duo's considerable charm, it was bound to take a good deal of time and effort to talk some sense into him. He'd be back--he promised. And he never lied.
She packed up a few more of his things, thinking he might need additional clothes, the rest of his music discs, at least some of his manga collection, if he was staying longer than originally planned. The shipping company assured her the packing cases had been delivered--United Freight's tracking system was flawless, they insisted--but that was her only confirmation.
Three months went by.
He didn't write again.
So that was that. He wasn't coming back. When will you learn, Relena?
//Or have I done you wrong
To feed you life so fast?
Why, no; digest this food
And thrive. You could outlast
Discomfort if you would.//
Six months and counting. She was fooling everybody but Nina, who had seen this before. Relena had looked almost like this right after the war, when her secretary was still her new secretary. When she was trying to hold it together after Heero's defection. The same slightly strained posture, like a ballerina holding a painful arabesque--head a little too high, shoulders a fraction too poised. And the same controlled eyes, the same determined laugh. If you knew what to look for, it hurt even to watch.
"People walk through pain every day," she said to Nina when her secretary finally tried to voice her concerns. "Mine is no worse than the least of what I've seen others go through. Look"--holding up a pale hand--"I'm all in one piece, I don't lack food, or warmth, or shelter. And I have friends." Smiling at her assistant, including her in the catalogue of plenty. "I'm just a little lonely, that's all. It'll pass."
Nina was not convinced. This looked just like last time, and it hadn't been pretty then, either. Except that last time, three years ago, this hadn't gone on much longer. Last time, she had found Duo. And he had found her. There didn't seem to be a rescue party on its way this time, which might be for the best, considering that the last St. Bernard through the pass had saved her from the avalanche only to boot her off a cliff. So Nina continued to watch, continued to worry.
The façade held, most of the time. Minister Peacecraft moved with her usual grace through the days of meetings, public appearances, and state dinners. She hired an interim security chief, had the west wing repainted, and nodded as if interested when the gardener brought her the azaleas he wanted to plant in the fountain court.
But her smiles never reached her eyes, and there was at least one hallway she didn't venture down, not any more. His rooms stayed as he had left them, and the patient maids continued to clean them once a week. The things of his that had found his way to her quarters--a toothbrush, a wad of hair bands, a little pile of clothes and manga-- formed a heap at the foot of his neatly-made bed.
And every night, when she thought no one was listening, she cried as if she would never stop.
//You do not know for whom
These tears drip through my hands.
You thud in the bright room
Darkly. This pain demands
No action on your part,
Who never saw that face.//
Nine months, and still counting.
Another day, another speech--if it's Tuesday, this must be Belgium. If the reconstruction of Central Africa hadn't been so important, she might have given in to the impulse to stay in bed. Without Oz's centralized control, its regular traffic in materials and manpower, the whole region's economy had virtually collapsed. Today, she would be outlining yet another plan to help the beleaguered nations weave their own replacement infrastructure. The World Council was receptive, but frustratingly slow to implement any sort of concrete plan.
Emerging from the shower, she briskly toweled her hair. Dug out clothes and put them on. Then paused to regard the row of pill bottles lined up on the dresser. "Morning, gentlemen." Nina and the doctors seemed to think this portable pharmacy would help--they were antidepressants, mostly, though at least one was supposed to be an appetite stimulant. When Relena actually took them, they only seemed to thicken the fog that insulated her from the world. More numbness didn't seem like such a bad idea today, though, so she obediently tipped the recommended doses into her hand. When her palm was full of colored capsules, she reached for a glass of water.
It was autumn in Brussels, but a steady rain muted the colors of the trees lining the venerable streets. The motorcade pulled smoothly up to the hall where the conference was taking place--not the Council's usual marble pile, since it was being refitted for greater security, but a nearby convention center. The usual carpeted, mirrored hallways led to a cavernous audience hall--her security staff, bustling importantly, took a quick half-hour to check it out and confirm the success of the Council's own arrangements. Duo would have given it two hours, and would still have been wary.
Stop it. Now. The thought returned reluctantly to its locked room.
//These eyes, that let him in,
(Not you, my guiltless heart)
These eyes, let them erase
His image, blot him out
With weeping, and go blind.//
She used to get nervous before these speeches, she remembered--now she didn't even need deep-breathing exercises to achieve the necessary poise. She was already dead calm. But she took a deep breath, for appearances' sake, before taking to the stage.
It was going well, Nina thought. The crowd of well-groomed world leaders was nodding in agreement with the Minister's words, looking an awful lot like they might actually do something this time.
And then it happened.
She was finishing her opening remarks when a man in the balcony stood up, ripped off his suit jacket, and started to scream: "Why won't you die? How many times do we have to kill you? She's still Oz's Queen! Can't any of you see? Death to the Queen of Oz!"
He sounded like a regular crazy--but then he pulled out a very professional-looking gun.
Pandemonium on the stage as staffers fell over each other: some trying to get to her, most just trying to get away. Her security staff was in more organized motion, heading for the attacker and trying to get close enough to her to block his shots. They weren't quite fast enough.
It all seemed to be happening in slow motion, and she wondered almost idly how it was going to look on the newsvid: stage lights on a nondescript-looking girl in a blue suit, house lights coming up on a yelling man in a green jumpsuit, on his waving gun. Close-ups of diplomats scrambling over their seat-backs. Then he stopped yelling, started firing, and she felt the impact of the bullets--like a punch, only somehow sharp-- just after she heard the popping sound of the shots. As more shots followed, splinters flew from the side of the podium to sting into her legs.
Swaying, not yet falling, she clutched at the podium. She knew she had been hit, but where? One spreading red patch at her left shoulder, another high on the right side of her abdomen. She supposed she should have been able to feel the wounds, but after the initial impact she seemed to have gone numb. Vision doubling. The shouting seemed to be coming from a long way away. Shock. She met the horrified eyes of one young guard who seemed frozen at the edge of the platform. It's all right, she wanted to tell him--it doesn't even hurt, it's all right.
As two guards finally reached the desperate assassin, bringing him down among the chairs, the gunman got off one last shot.
It felt like a massive hand cuffing her once, as if in reprimand, on the side of her head. Almost welcoming the swift darkness that followed, she went down.
//Heart, do not stain my skin
With bruises; go about
Your simple function. Mind,
Sleep now, do not intrude;
And do not spy; be kind.Sweet blindness, now begin.//
"Will she be all right?" Quatre's voice was low, but tight with concern. He had come as quickly as a private jet could bring him, and had been waiting with the others in the chilly beige waiting room for most of the past two days. Now he stood, stretching his stiff joints.
Nina shook her head, hugging herself miserably. "They don't know-- still too early to tell."
She had fought and clawed to get to the stage, but others had held her back until the techs could lift the limp body onto a stretcher. There had been so much blood--like a sash across her body, a cloak spreading beneath her. So much blood. But that, at least, they had been able to pump back into her. And they had been able to effect repairs to most of the organs damaged by the bullets she had taken to the body, too, though the surgery had taken hours. The head wound was worrying the doctors much, much more; her brain was swelling dangerously, and they were keeping her in an induced coma until her condition improved. Which it might never do.
Still sitting on the hard sofa, Trowa shook his head. "It doesn't make sense. Why didn't she get out of the way? She didn't even move."
"There wasn't time. You saw how quickly it happened," Quatre insisted, though he had wondered the same thing when they reviewed the security tapes.
Wufei didn't look convinced. "She shouldn't have had to get herself out of the way. What was her security staff thinking? That man never should have made it into the hall."
Nina had turned away to stand at the high window, looking out to where sunshine poured over the bronze and red of the autumn trees, the white buildings. Relena's security staff had been short one person. The one who might have made all the difference. There might have been time enough for Relena to dodge the bullets, Nina thought bitterly, if she had thought there was a reason to bother with trying.
When she finally spoke, Nina's voice was distant and full of self-loathing. "I found her sitting in her room last week. With a double handful of pills. She was just--looking at them. She looked up at me, and she smiled, and she poured them back into the bottles. 'Not today,' she said. 'Not today.' I tried to make her go to the doctor again, to talk to someone, but she said there was no time. Why didn't I make her go?" She broke down again, forcing her words past sobs. "She just smiled at me--I knew she wasn't all right, but she could convince anybody with that smile...."
Quatre wished, not for the first time, that his empathic abilities went both ways--that he could pour soothing reassurance over her, instead of just feeling her misery wash over him. He knew what he had to ask would only make it worse. "Nina--has anyone told Duo?"
Anger flamed past the pain, bright and swift. "Him? I don't even know where to find him--she wanted to give them privacy, so she encrypted the files that included his destination. All I could do was send an email." She laughed, but it came out of her raw throat as a bark. "And he never answered. The admin says he hasn't even opened it. If he ever does come back, you'll be sitting here worrying over his broken skull."
Quatre sighed, eyes deeply tired. "Let me try. Aside from Relena herself, I've probably got the highest clearance of all of us. He shouldn't find this out from the newsvids."
End of Part 7.
The poem is by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)--it's Part II of "Theme and Variations," originally published in a collection called Huntsman, What Quarry?
In case you're interested, here's another Millay poem that also suits this section of the fic, I think. (It's from Fatal Interview, 1931):
There is a well into whose bottomless eye,
Though I were flayed, I dare not lean and look,
Sweet once with mountain water now gone dry,
Miraculously abandoned by the brook
Wherewith for years miraculously fed
It kept a constant level clear and bright,
Though summer parched the rivers in their bed;
Withdrawn these waters, vanished overnight.
There is a word I dare not speak again,
A face I never again must call to mind;
I was not craven ever nor blenched at pain,
But pain to such degree and of such kind
As I must suffer if I think of you,
Not in my senses will I undergo.
(:./lilias/complicated7)
