Sometimes Relena wished she had a normal job. One where the hours were always 9 to 5 and everyone you worked with was around your age or at the very most a decade older.
A job where you didn't have to be weary of a ton of old men staring at your neckline or calling you "dear". Or a job where the only thing that was really affected by your job was maybe your employer's testament and not the fate of the entire world.
A job where your biggest worry is not whether those two factions in the colony have somehow procured chemical weapons and are about to launch them at each other and more had to deal with buying a new coffee machine for the break room.
A normal job where for once she could hopefully get a full night's rest every once in awhile.
Sometimes Relena wished she had a normal boyfriend. One who always wanted to watch the big game on TV, and who would spend copious amounts of time noticing the ample amount of cleavage in his girlfriends slim back dress.
Or a boyfriend whose appearance doesn't mean that there is most likely a terrorist hiding in the gardens pointing a sniper rifle at the back of one's head. Or a boyfriend whose idea of foreplay was saving you from a maniacal sociopath bent on world denomination.
It would be nice to have a relationship where sex did not just occur after she was minutes from death and her boyfriend had yet another broken bone (in which he promptly put back into place).
A normal boyfriend, one where Relena could go to sleep and not have to worry about whether her boyfriend had committed suicide or not.
Sometimes Relena wished she had a normal family. One with a father and a mother and a brother and a golden retriever. A family that would sit down every Christmas Eve and give thanks.
A family where she didn't have to pretend that her brother was deceased. A family where she didn't have to keep answering questions about why her brother had once tried to blow up the world. A family where she could visit by just going around the block as opposed to a whole other planet.
It would be nice to have a family where she could actually share things with them. A family that she knew wasn't torn and weary of all the death and destruction it went through.
A normal family, that she could come home to and know that they would always be there as opposed to just going off and dying.
Sometimes Relena wished she had normal friends. Friends to just go shopping and take in a movie with. Friends whom she could confess her deepest darkest secrets to and knew that she could call at any point in the night.
Friends who didn't just want to talk about geopolitics and vastly praising her work. Friends who would just call her Relena without having to attach titles to it. Friends who didn't just show up and mock one for wanting to do normal things that normal twenty one year olds do.
It would be nice to have friends who did not have fifty golden trucks and limos at their disposal, and friends whose favorite pastime was playing chess all the way explaining how each of the markers was representative of one politician or another.
Normal friends, whom Relena would not have to worry about somehow stumbling drunken into an expensive dinner party and screaming about how one cannot just engage in a land war in Asia.
Sometimes Relena would think all this. However, she would then also think about how satisfying it was to shut up one of those elderly statesmen with a brilliant idea or treaty, or how hot being-taken-hostage sex was, or how her brother's place on Mars was really the best place to get away, or how awesome it was to see Dorothy's face fall after Relena totally captures her queen.
Yes, sometimes Relena wonders about what it is like to have a normal life. Most of the time, she is thankful that her life (and the people in it) are anything but.