23 Aug 2001
Pairing: 2+R
Category: Romance
Rating for this section: PG
What to expect: Hetero-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.
/ denotes thoughts, indicates emphasis
It's all right, it's all right, it's all right
She moves in mysterious ways
The next months were a roller-coaster ride; sometimes Relena was able to call as often as once a week, and even had access to her email. But there were also stretches of time when she was caught up in diplomatic business of one kind or another, and communications became more difficult. Those weeks were pure hell; the salvage yard's employees walked on eggshells, but their hangdog expressions were proof that they knew full well they couldn't do anything right if they tried. Meanwhile, Hilde tried to keep some semblance of peace on the home front--no easy task, since her roommate had apparently been replaced with a glowering ogre.
About halfway through one of the lengthier downswings, Hilde finally got fed up and insisted that she deserved a break; only a little chastened, Duo made himself scarce for almost three weeks. He had only been back for a day and a half when the mysterious deliveries resumed
.Hilde was in the entryway, humming to herself as she sorted bottles into a recycling bin, when a child ran past the screen door, eyes wide. Another and another followed, until half the neighborhood's kids seemed to have gathered in front of their building. Puzzled, Hilde came to the door to see what in heaven's name was going on.
"Um, Duo? You want to explain to me why there's a limo out front?"
Duo seemed only mildly surprised. "Already? Whoa, he's early." Whistling tunelessly, he headed outside.
Hilde hurried to the kitchen window, unabashedly curious; Duo was talking to a uniformed courier through the limousine's open window, one hand braced against the shining roof while the other cradled a parcel against his chest. Then Duo backed away, waving a cheerful farewell. "Thanks, man. See ya next trip, huh?"
Before the long black car had even had time to disappear down the street, Duo had ripped the plasti-seal off the pouch and spread the contents over the kitchen table. It looked like the haul from a looted office-supply store, but the heap was not without its own organizational principle: bits and sheets of paper were stacked neatly by date, each covered front and back with tiny, precise handwriting. Letters? They certainly seemed to be. And given the diplomatic plates on that limo, as well as the reverence with which Duo was handling the various scraps, Hilde didn't even have to ponder who might be his correspondent.
"This gives a whole new meaning to the term 'royal mail,'" Hilde commented, gazing at the debris field. "I always wondered where these mysterious little packets came from."
Duo smiled vaguely, but didn't look up.
She pulled up a chair, poking a pile of slightly crumpled sticky- back notes with her finger. "Let me get this straight: you write emails, and Relena sends you letters back?"
"Right," Duo explained patiently. "See, she doesn't always have access to a computer, but she always has some kind of paper. A notepad, a blank envelope--"
"A napkin?" Hilde held up a folded square covered with the same elegant script.
Duo yelped, almost blushing. "Give that back!"
Hilde relinquished the fragile note after only a brief struggle, then sat back to regard him thoughtfully. "But you're on email at least once a day, and these packets only come every week or so. No wonder you were getting so crazy."
"Yeah, that's pretty much why," Duo conceded. "The regular courier brings them whenever he has other stuff to deliver to this cluster, which isn't all that often. But it usually takes me almost that long to read everything from the last shipment, anyway."
"Suuure it does." Hilde sniffed in disbelief. "I've seen you tear through those bales of paper."
"Okay, so it takes me a week to get done reading them a hundred times." He shrugged. "At least it's something."
"Bunch of dead trees, is what it is. She really needs to get in touch with her electronic side--I can't believe the sheer amount of paper here!"
"She's got a lot to say," he insisted.
"I'll say. When you're not levelling the world's forests, you're tying up the phone till all hours. You sure find plenty to talk about," Hilde teased.
"Yeah, well, y'know." Duo gestured expansively. "There's a good bit of ground to cover. We talk about her day, my day, super-string theory, Keats...."
"You're hopeless, you know that?" Hilde ruffled his hair, unable to keep from smiling.
He grinned at her. "You keep calling me that. I do not think that word means what you think it means. Anyway, I haven't gotten to talk to her in weeks. If I'm crazy, that's why."
"Ohhh. Well, there's one age-old mystery solved at last!" She ducked not a moment too soon, squeaking in protest as a cushion sailed over her head.
Before the skirmish could escalate to all-out war, the phone rang; Duo almost broke his neck hurdling the sofa to answer it. As soon as she confirmed who was on the other end, Hilde invented pressing business in the next room and wandered away, closing the door carefully behind her.
Relena's voice sounded strangely close by, though there were miles of space--and several satellite linkups--between them. "You didn't call for a while, so I thought I would. I hope that's all right?" "Oh, yeah! I mean, I just--how are you?"
"Oh, I'm fine. The usual, you know. Suits, heels, committees, idiots."
"Some usual."
"I'm alarmed to say that I may be getting used to it."
"Even the heels?"
"Especially the heels."
"That's so not good. You've got to get out of there," Duo insisted. "Give it a break."
"I don't think I get breaks," Relena mused.
"That's why they call it taking a break--offered or not, you need it, you take it."
"That's where you were, isn't it?" she asked. "While I was trapped in Rome? I talked to Hilde, and she said you were taking a break."
"You could call it that, I guess. A break that long's more like an actual vacation, though--yet another thing you wouldn't know anything about, Vice-Foreign Minister."
"Oh, very funny."
"Anyway, I have this friend Howard," he continued.
"I think I met him once, on MO-II. With the sunglasses?"
"That's him. He was moving his rig out to the South Pacific, and wanted some help. So I went along, and it took like a month, which is why I didn't get a chance to call."
"It must be beautiful out there, on the boat."
Duo laughed ruefully. "It's a really ugly boat. A big, slow, ugly boat. But everything it went past was beautiful. They have fish out there the color of flowers--and dolphins that'll come right up next to the side and look you in the eye."
"I've never been out where the islands are," she confessed. "No diplomatic conferences there, so my father never had a reason to go."
"You should totally go sometime. It's really warm, tons of sunshine, fruit like you wouldn't believe. We could even--" He was struck by a dangerous impulse even as he realized he was starting to ramble. "Can I tell you something stupid?"
Relena sounded like she might be smiling. "A variation on the strange questions?"
"Yeah. You have to promise to forget it as soon as I'm done saying it, though."
"I can try."
"Okay." A deep breath, and then Duo forged ahead. "It's just that I--I thought about you the whole time I was out there, and I'm dreaming about you again, and one time I was almost all the way awake before I figured out that you weren't sleeping on my shoulder, which is completely weird because you've never slept on my shoulder before, but still it was really nice. That's all."
"Oh."
A long silence.
"I'm sorry," Relena began.
/Oh, shit. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it, I--/
"I don't think I can forget you said that, after all."
/--think I'll dig myself a little hole and hide, and not come out until I'm so old and grey that no one recognizes me, and--/
"In fact, I think you need to say it again, to make sure I remember it all correctly. If you don't mind."
"Wh-what?"
"I said, you can stop panicking. Well, that's not literally what I said, but it amounts to the same thing."
"Who said I was panicking?"
"You started tapping a pen, very fast. Weren't you panicking?"
A startled pause, and then a sheepish laugh. "Yeah."
"Well, don't." She paused, then said calmly, "Because I dream about you, too."
He held very, very still; this moment was made of glass, and the slightest movement would make it shatter.
"Duo?"
He realized his eyes were closed, and opened them very slowly. The room looked the same: the same refrigerator, same linoleum, same geranium dropping leaves on the windowsill. But everything was different, on this side of her words.
And though Duo had moved, had gone on breathing, the moment hadn't shattered after all; it was like walking out onto a lake stilled by the merest sheen of frost, and finding it capable of bearing his full weight. Impossible, certainly implausible, but true anyway.
He could hear her waiting on the other end of the phone; the connection was so good that he almost swore he could hear her shift in her chair, could hear a bird chirp outside her window. In fact, he could almost see her, sitting in some sunny place, looking down at her hands with that thoughtful little frown on her face.
"Duo?" Another person might have sounded worried, but Relena just sounded patient, and even faintly amused. "Breathe, Duo. I didn't mean to send you into cardiac arrest over there."
"Sorry. I just can't believe you said that. Wait--we're not talking nightmares, are we? 'Cause I can see why you'd--"
"No, no--nothing like that." Another brief pause. "Very good dreams."
"Oh." He pondered this development. "I don't suppose you know how to teleport, huh? Because it would be really, really good if we didn't have to talk about this on the phone."
Relena laughed. "I'm afraid that's a bit beyond my skills."
"Sheesh. What do they teach you people in those fancy private schools, anyway?"
"Nothing very useful, obviously."
"Well, I--what? Oh, of all the--Relena? I've got to go; there's some press doofus here bugging Hilde, and I'd better rescue him before she takes his head off."
"Certainly. And I'll--I'll see you tonight, maybe?"
"You bet. Soon as I shut my eyes."
End of Part 4: Sibylline leaves
(:./lilias/mystified4)
