Edges of the Mind by jmi
Chapter 1
**Disclaimer** Gundam Wing characters are owned by Sotsu/Sunrise.
Relena sighed as she lay back on her large bed. She was exhausted, but it was a happy exhaustion. It was the first time in weeks she'd been able to sneak away from her duties as Vice Foreign Minister and relax with her family and friends. She smiled as she thought about what an eclectic group they were. Her brother Milliardo (or Zechs as he still preferred to be called) and his wife Lucrezia (who everyone still called Noin though that hadn't been her name for over a year), Duo Maxwell and his friend/girlfriend Hilde Schbeiker, Trowa Barton and his sister Catherine Bloom, Quatre Raberba Winner and his now constant assistant/companion Dorothy Catalonia (that relationship puzzled her on several levels), and finally Wufei Chang and Sally Po (another puzzler....how she suffered to stay in Wufei's ranting distance was beyond Relena). She sighed again her mind unwittingly drifted onto the only presence missing from their group. 'No,' she chided herself. 'You must not dwell on things that cannot be changed.' The man she'd known and loved was gone. Lost these three years to the voracious appetites of his own mental demons.
She sat up when she heard a car tear into the driveway in front of the Peacecraft's mountain retreat. 'It must be Duo, Hilde, and Sally coming back,' she thought as she got up and put a robe on. Sally had asked Duo to drive her back to the Preventer's medical facility earlier to take care of a few things that needed her immediate attention. Hilde had tagged along for the ride. She wasn't really alarmed when she heard the front door burst open, but when the door of her own room flung wide she became frightened. Duo's eyes were glazed and his skin had a pale clammy appearance.
"Lena get dressed now we have to get out of here!" he yelled as he quickly ran to the window.
"Wha... what's the matter Duo?" she stuttered mystified by his fearful expression.
"Don't ask questions! Just do as I say!" he left her room and started pounding on the adjacent bedrooms doors of the other Gundam pilots.
'What could frighten Duo so much,' she wondered as she quickly pulled on some sweatpants and a t-shirt. She heard a sharp cry come from the room across the hall where Wufei had been sleeping. She ran to the door to see Duo exiting looking very solemn.
"Duo?" she pulled at his arm.
"We need to leave here immediately," his violet gaze hardened. "None of us are safe."
"Duo, I'm not doing anything until you tell me what's happened? Where are Hilde and Sally?"
"They're dead all right! Will you get dressed now!?" his gaze was hard and unforgiving.
"What? How?" Relena felt herself fall back on the door frame for support.
"When we got to the hospital, everything seemed fine," Duo shook his head. "But when we went inside..." tears began to choke off his words. "HE was waiting for us. He dropped me from behind with some kind of nerve block. I couldn't move anything. He got Sally next. She tried to fight him, but..." his voice faded off again. "And Hilde..." she saw the tears forming again, "the damn bastard tortured her in front of me and I couldn't do a thing to stop him."
"Oh Duo," Relena wanted to reach out and comfort him but his features immediately hardened again.
"We have to leave now! This location isn't safe."
By this time, the others were in the hall. Wufei finally joined them. His face was it's normal calm, but Relena could tell he'd been crying. "Ok everyone," Duo looked at the group, "this is a situation Omega, we're evac'ing ASAP." Trowa, Quatre, and Dorothy nodded their acknowledgment. They immediately collected the confused Catherine and headed for their rooms. Wufei stood stoically as he simply unsheathed his katana and headed for the stairs.
Relena started to call after him when Duo grabbed her shoulders. "Let him be," he said quietly. "Come on we're leaving."
"No wait Duo! My brother and Noin... they're sleeping in the other wing. We can't leave them!" she pulled away and ran down the corridor with Duo in close pursuit.
"LENA!" he screamed after her.
She didn't stop until she crashed into the door of her brother's room. "Zechs," she cried out of breath and opened the door. No sounds would come from her throat as she tried to comprehended the scene that greeted her. Zech's body was laying on top of Noin's, his long platinum hair thankfully hid their faces. The wooden pole and flag ,which Relena recognized as being from on top of the house, were impaled through her brother's back, through his wife, and into the mattress. She was too shell shocked to realize that Duo had grabbed her waist and was dragging back down the hall when she finally started to scream.
Her scream had brought the others back into the hall. They were preparing to go when the retreat's security systems armed. Thick metal shutters clamped over the windows, external doors slammed and bolted, and all vents sealed over.
"Oh shit," Duo pulled Relena towards the stairs, but stopped when he saw the front door was still wide open. They eyed the only escape route for a moment. The pilots smelled the obvious trap, when a shadow fell across the floor. Relena felt Duo pull her protectively behind him, but she held her ground enough to see the figure as it entered their line of sight.
"Releeeenaaaaaaaaa." The voice that had once made her weak with desire, was now twisted with a maniacal sounding happiness. She shuddered when she saw the same twisted glee was emanating from the previously cold blue eyes. Though the words were almost turned into a song by that glee, the weight of their meaning was a menacing as ever.
"Omae o Korosu," Heero grinned at the assembly on the stairs.