Disclaimer: Characters contained within do not belong to me.

Author's Notes: After the story.

Dedication: To my grandma for all the gifts she's given us.

Her Greatest Gift
by Kristen Elizabeth

As soon as I saw him, I knew it would be the last time I would make love with Heero Yuy.

He came to my room in the middle of a terrible storm, not by the balcony like usual, but simply by knocking on my door and entering. Knowing me all too well, he let himself in and locked the door behind him. I continued to brush out my hair at my dressing table. I was very familiar with the rules of this game.

When I was done, I set down the silver-handled brush and stood up. My silk robe reached down to the floor, yet covered nothing from his burning blue eyes. His ubiquitious green shirt was already gone, exposing the smooth muscles for which I would often lay awake at night just to trace with my finger. There wasn't an inch of him that I didn't know completely. Likewise, he had mapped out every part of me. It was as though we had been preparing for the end ever since the beginning.

Heero walked towards me without hurry. A bolt of lightning illuminated the room as he reached for the silk tie holding my robe closed. I let him undress me. His hands slid up over my breasts and down my shoulders, sending the robe puddling around my feet. There was nothing but the sound of rain and the whisper of silk.

We didn't speak because there was nothing to say. Everything that needed to be said had been done so long before. All I wanted was to feel his lips on my skin, to hold onto his solid body one more time, to feel the power and pleasure as he thrust into me..because I knew that it would never happen again.

I might have whispered his name as he entered me, but I'm not sure. It was wonderful, as it always was. I cradled his body between my legs and wound my arms around his shoulders. His lips were everywhere...my cheeks, my throat, my breasts. But he didn't kiss me. He always saved the best for last.

Our eyes met and locked when the pleasure reached its ultimate peak. Was it a tear that escaped his eye when he filled my body for the final time? I know I felt one course down my cheek. His forehead touched mine as we struggled to catch our breath. His skin was slick with perspiration.

As I had expected and hoped, Heero lifted his head and looked down at me for a moment with the most tender look I had ever seen in his eyes. As he withdrew from my body, he kissed me. It was long and slow and sweet. Then, he finally spoke the words I had known were coming.

"I'm leaving tonight."

I nodded. "I know." My fingers stroked his cheek. "Please take care of yourself."

He caught my hand in his own and kissed my fingertips. "Thank you, Relena."

Still naked and propped up on my elbow, I watched him re-dress. When he tied the last lace on his shoes and looked back at me, I tried to convince myself that what I was feeling was simply sorrow over losing a friend.

Surely, it couldn't be my heart breaking.

He paused before he stepped out of the door and out of my life. "Promise me you'll be happy," was all he said. But I couldn't make that promise. All I did was lower my head. Taking the gesture as his answer, Heero Yuy walked out, closing the door gently behind him.

It was that exact moment that I decided never to fall in love again.

When I buried my Hilde, my wife and best friend, I decided that I'd never let myself fall in love with anyone, ever again. It was just too risky. There were too many ways to get hurt. I could live without love; I wouldn't be its punching bag again.

I spent the first year after her death doing everything possible to numb the pain. It won't surprise anyone to hear it, but I did the usual things. I drank too much. I had sex with women whose faces I can't remember, much less their names. Everytime I spent myself in the arms of another woman, I cried out for Hilde. The crazy thing was, not a single one of those women cared. They weren't fucking me any more than I was fucking them. We were all with someone else when we were together.

During these encounters, I was always very careful. The best boy scout. I wasn't about to have my self-destruction slowed down by an unwanted child or terminal illness. Funny, isn't it, that I would end up finding myself because of both.

I knew Heero had left from the moment I recieved the assignment. I wasn't supposed to be on active duty. The Preventer shrinks had all declared me "emotionally unstable due to his spouse's untimely death". I'd like to meet the person who has stable emotions. And then punch him. Hard.

My time with the Preventers had been brief; I had only agreed to join them, per Quatre Winner's request, two months before a very drunk man in a car took my Hilde away from me. So to sum it up, I was suprised to recieve the request from Lady Une that I return to Earth and be Relena Peacecraft's new bodyguard. Heero had left her; I was supposed to pick up the slack. It didn't exactly thrill me. But I accepted. Later, I would call it the greatest choice I'd ever made after asking Hilde to marry me. At the time, I couldn't have been more bitter.

The first thing I noticed when I walked into her office that day was how happy she seemed. Not at all like the abandoned lover, pining for her loss. I realized right then how very little I knew about Relena Peacecraft. She greeted me with a smile, as though everything was going well in her life. She had been the only person to send Hilde's favorite flower to her gravesite.

"Duo!" she said warmly. "Thank you so much for coming. And for agreeing to put up with me." Was that a wink she gave me? Nothing sexual, just a friendly gesture.

I was distinctly uncomfortable with how comfortable she was. Shouldn't she be crying or yelling Heero's name in agony? "I was glad to get the assignment," I replied. It was a lie at the time, but it would grow into the truth.

Relena took a breath. I would come to recognize it as her way of collecting her thoughts before she spoke, of weighing her words carefully. When people have asked me how she was always so posed when she was under such pressure, I have to simply smile at them. They never knew her at all. Relena was just as confused and emotional as the rest of us. Only she knew how to control herself at all times.

"Duo...I believe in being totally honest with the people who are risking their lives to protect me."

I wanted to tell her that I was taking no risk by being her bodyguard. You have to have something to lose to be at risk and ever since Hilde held my hand and closed her eyes forever, there had been nothing in my life of any value. All I said was, "Okay," and waited for her to go on.

After another breath, she let the words tumble out of her mouth. "I'm three months pregnant."

How long was he going to keep looking at me like that? Certainly, he must have seen other pregnant women before, on the streets if nowhere else. Why did he have to look at my expanded stomach as though I were growing alien spawn instead of his old friend's child?

Ever since that first day in my office, he had treated me like a piece of finely blown glass that had been cracked down the middle. Interesting to look at, but dangerous to touch. It drove me absolutely crazy. I didn't care what his reasons were, even if he had good ones. I couldn't complain about the job he was doing; I was still alive, after all. I could only complain about how he treated me away from the public's eye. It hurt to be regarded as some kind of freak of nature simply for being pregnant.

Duo had changed. He wasn't the cautionless boy I had met during the wars. I attributed it to Hilde's death and I was understanding...up to a point. But on that night, as we were driving back from a formal dinner, I was feeling particurally fat and especially cranky. All I wanted was to get home, put my feet up and try to forget that, at only six months, I already looked like an inflated beach ball. The last thing I wanted to do was to answer questions about my baby's father.

So of course, he chose that moment to get curious.

"Does Heero know that you're pregnant?"

"Are you so sure that Heero is the father?" I shot back.

He didn't fall for it. "Does he know, Relena?"

I sighed and rubbed my forehead. It was always hurting these days. "I have no way of contacting Heero." I didn't want to add that even if I knew where Heero was, I wouldn't tell him. I could never burden him with something he had never asked for.

"You know what he'd do if he knew." Duo glanced out of the window at the dark landscape. "I know what I'd do anyway."

Deciding not to pry, I ignored his last remark. "It's just the way things happened, Duo. There's no need to upset everything. This is my baby which Heero only helped to create."

He said nothing. I could tell my words upset him, but I couldn't figure out why it bothered me to see him upset. "Duo..." He looked back at me with wet eyes. I could have sworn I saw straight through him in that brief second. "Would you like to feel the baby kick?"

Feel the baby kick? Did I want to feel the baby kick? How could she have known how desperately I did? Rather than show her, I simply let her pick up my hand and place it on her lower belly. It was the most intimate touch we had ever shared.

Then, I felt it. A tiny flutter against my palm. Once...twice. It was as amazing as everyone always says it is. I closed my eyes, not caring what Relena might be thinking as I did. With my eyes shut, I could almost imagine that it was Hilde's stomach I was touching, that I was feeling our child kicking. The child who had died with his mother before he ever got big enough to kick. I put my other hand on her belly, reaching out to her unborn baby. A tear must have slipped past my tightly closed eyelids. I felt soft fingers on my chin.

"Why are you crying, Duo?"

The question, so simple and yet so weighted, hung in the space between us. I opened my eyes to see her looking at me with concern, but also with an air of understanding. I pulled my hands back as though I'd been burned. "I'm sorry," I heard myself mumble.

"Does I really disgust you that much?" Her voice was dull. "Do you think I should have gotten rid of it? Like 65 of the people polled do?"

If my jaw could have detached, it would have been on the floor. How could she say these things about herself? How could the public who claimed to love her so much treat her like that? Did she have no idea how much respect I had for her? Although I didn't agree with everything about how she was handling her pregnancy, namely her decision to keep Heero in the dark, she still had my admiration for choosing to keep the baby instead of taking the easy way out.

"Princess." It was the first time I had called her that since Hilde died. "Princess...I'm sorry."

She looked down at her rounded lap as her tears fell. "I can't tell him!" she cried after a minute. "I won't hold him down like that."

I nodded. It wasn't my place to pass judgement on her. I touched her stomach again; her smaller hands covered mine and held it there, where we could both feel the child kick.

It was then that I told her about my own baby, taken away from me at the same time as my Hilde. How I would never get to feel him kick...never even be really sure that it had been a 'him'. God had deprived me of my son, but I wouldn't judge her for depriving Heero of the same thing. After all, Relena had her reasons.

God was just cruel.

From that night on, Duo was an active participant in my pregnancy. And slowly, as my stomach grew bigger and the due date loomed nearer, he began to come alive again. It was the little, subtle things. Calling me 'Princess', teasing the maids, encouraging me to invite Quatre Winner and Trowa Barton to dinner. The pain in his eyes was ever so gradually easing. I wanted to believe it was just the baby, but the more time I spent with him, the more I would catch him looking at me longer than necessary. When he'd notice that I'd noticed him staring, he'd quickly glance away, as though he was a child caught with his hand in a forbidden cookie jar.

It worried me. Not because it was unwanted...but because of how dependent I was becoming upon it. I fought against it, every step of the way. I was not going to fall in love with Duo Maxwell. I was not going to fall in love with Duo Maxwell!!

I realized I was in love with him the morning I went into labor. Barely awake and only half-dressed, he drove me to the medical bay at Preventer headquarters and did not leave my side for fifteen hours. He was there to wipe the sweat from my forehead and he barely flinched when I squeezed his hand so hard that his knuckles turned white. Duo was the one who took the brunt of my rantings against men, in particular the man who had done this to me. It was Duo who cut the umbilical cord when my son emerged into the world.

Together, we named him Nathan. I wanted his middle name to be Maxwell, but Duo insisted it be Yuy. It was the least I could do, to give him part of his father. Nathan Yuy Peacecraft. I had loved him from the moment I knew he existed, but seeing him...holding him...I understood why people died for their children. There is no greater love.

When Duo kissed me in those few minutes following labor, I gave up trying to keep his love away. I had been fighting too long and now all I wanted to do was give in and be loved.

I was sitting in the cheapest bar I could find on L1 when I saw the news broadcast about their wedding. I dropped my beer, but I didn't care. When I threatened him, the bartender turned the volume up on the little television. I'll never forget that news anchor's words. They are forever burned into my brain. After nearly two years underground, completely cut off from the outside world, this news could not have hit me any harder.

"Vice Foriegn Minister Peacecraft was married to Preventer Duo Maxwell today in a small ceremony for their closest friends and relatives..."

That was all I needed to hear. I rested my forehead in my hands, unable to think for a long time. I didn't need to ask how it had happened. They were both people who were capable of loving other people...why not share that with each other? Really, it couldn't have worked out any better.

So why did my chest hurt?

The pictures on the screen seemed so distant. A life I had belonged to once, but now was as foriegn to me as the Martian landscape I had spent the last two years living under. I saw him first, dressed in a tuxedo, a huge smile on his face as he and his bride emerged from a church into the glare of a hundred photographers. The corners of my lips twitched; I couldn't help it. That smile was infectious. Then, she appeared on the screen.

Two years had only made her more beautiful. She was as stunning in her wedding gown as she had been lying naked on her bed the last time I had seen her. The smile on her face might not have been as brilliant as Duo's, but it made some of the ache in my chest dissipate.

While the couple were paused for pictures, Relena bent down and lifted something up from the ground. A child, perhaps a year or so old. The little boy rested his head on her shoulder as though he could block out the people and flashbulbs. The fresh beer the bartender had put in front of me slipped out of my hand. With the man yelling obsenties at my clumsiness, I stalked out of the bar.

I didn't want to think. I couldn't decide whether I would be more upset if the child were mine or Duo's. Then, as I unconciously added up months and dates in my head, I knew whose child it was, beyond a shadow of a doubt. So I did the best thing for everyone involved. I ignored every paternal instinct that screamed at me to return to Earth and found a cheap motel room. In the morning, I headed back to Mars.

She fainted for the first time during Nathan's second birthday party. We chalked it up to the stress of having fourteen little boys and girls over, not to mention the trade talks the week before and the possibility that she might be pregnant. The latter was what we hoped was behind her weakness. After a miscarriage three months into our marriage, we had been trying for quite awhile to get pregnant again.

But when it became clear that she wasn't pregnant, and the party and trade talks were but distant memories, and she fainted again, I started to get worried. I fought Relena every step of the way, but I finally made her set up an appointment with her doctor. The night before, we lay in bed, simply holding each other. I look back at it now and realize that we both must have known something was wrong. We simply didn't want to acknowledge it. Our life together was just beginning.

The examination took forever. At least that's how it seemed to me as I sat in the waiting room, unable to do anything but watch the hands on the clock move. When she emerged too many tests later, I didn't even have to ask if it was good news or bad news. The tears in her eyes were enough.

Cancer. How could I have cancer? I was just getting started! I was twenty-four years old. I had a husband I adored and a son who depended on me. How could I be dying?

I cried for two days after I found out. Duo let me cry, but after forty-eight hours had passed, he came into our bedroom, threw the drapes open and single-handedly pulled me out of depression.

As he pushed me into the shower, I screamed at him. "It doesn't matter, does it? Whether I wash my hair, whether I get up before noon. I'm dying, Duo!! Just...let me."

He shampooed my hair with determined precision. "Nothing is over until it's over. Nathan needs his mother and you need to talk to your doctor about chemo."

That was Duo. No bullshit when things mattered. He saw my cancer as an enemy he could fight, not with a mobile suit, but with medicine and sheer willpower. And because he believed it was a battle worth waging, so did I. With him by my side, I endured endless rounds of radiation therapy. He held my head when the poison put in my body to destroy the cancer cells sent my stomach into spirals. When my hair began to fall out, he told me that he had always thought I'd be sexy bald and that he was glad to find out he had been right.

The last time we made love, we didn't have sex. He just held me and gently rocked me back and forth. The last of my hair was gone and with it, my hope that someday I would be healthy again. Nathan climbed up into our bed and we held him between us. His little hands reached up, searching for a hank of hair to pull on. He found nothing. The long, luxurious locks of Duo's hair had been cut to make me a wig to wear during my resignment speech. Besides the little boy in our arms, it was the greatest gift ever given to me. I kissed Nathan's tiny fingers. He was three.

I didn't want to leave him. But because I could not stop it, I went happy with the knowledge that he would be with Duo. His father.

It was the only fight I had ever really lost. Relena's cancer beat me because it fought on grounds I could not understand. I believed, up until the moment she died, that if I concentrated all of my energy into the battle, I could win for her and she would be cured. But it wasn't how things worked. In our short time together, I had almost managed to forget how cruel God could be.

She died on our second wedding anniversary. Like I had with Hilde, I held her hand as she slipped out of my life. I can't remember crying. I spent all of my tears during the months leading up to her death. As soon as she was gone, I let Quatre bring Nathan into the hospital room. I knew nothing about child psychology and I was probably breaking every rule of it, but I couldn't keep her death from him. He was too bright of a child even at three years old. His mother was gone and he would have felt it, even if he hadn't seen it.

My eyes burned as I watched him run his little hands over her cheeks and lips. They were still warm; I knew because I had kissed them only minutes earlier. He looked up at me with Heero's eyes.

"Mommy's sleeping?"

I shook my head. "Mommy won't wake up again."

Her grave lay beside her brother's empty one. Only a handful of people knew that Millardo Peacecraft was alive and well, living with his wife and two children on Mars. He could not come to the funeral. Many other people came in his place. Relena touched more lives than she could have ever realized. In a short twenty-four years of existence, she left behind a legacy that would not fade for a hundred more.

She was buried in the wig made of my hair. It was the only thing I could give her after she had not only given me a reason to live, but given me the son I had once thought I would never have. I made a promise on her grave that afternoon which I will never break.

"Our son will never forget you. I will always protect him. He'll feel as loved as he would if you were here because I'll love him enough for the both of us."

I left daisies on her grave. The same flower she had put on Hilde's. Both of the women in my life had loved daisies. If I really wanted to, I could probably find some symbolism in that. But all I knew then and all I know now is that like the flowers they loved, Relena and Hilde bloomed in my life for a brief moment and then faded away. Hilde left me with the capacity to love. Relena left me with a person to love.

Two years passed. Seasons of watching my son grow up before my eyes. It was very easy to see his mother in him. His sandy blond hair and petal-white skin were entirely Relena. It was only when I looked at his eyes that could I see Heero. At five years old, he was into everything and utterly exhausting. His vocabulary tripled; his energy quadrupled. Nathan was the joy in my life. He was what kept me sane. The possibility that he might be taken away from me never even crossed my mind...until I saw Heero at the front gates one sunny morning.

I was on edge instantaneously. The ball Nathan and I had been rolling back and forth on the grass was forgotten. I got to my feet as he walked up the hill towards us.

"Duo?" It was a question, not a statement. I realized that without my braid, he didn't recognize me. I slowly nodded.

"It's me."

We didn't say anything more for a long time. I could feel his eyes on Nathan and I wanted very badly to scoop the boy up and carry him back into the house. But Heero made no motions towards him, as though he could sense what I was feeling. The sun was blinding me, but I could still see how red his eyes were.

When he spoke, his voice was dull and soft. "What is his name?"

"Nathan," I replied. The taste of blood was in my mouth.

To his credit, he did not ask if the child belonged to him. Instead, he looked past me at the house. "I just want to know..." he began. Something caught in the back of his throat. He swallowed heavily. "Was she happy?"

I told him the truth. "Yes. Even at the end. She was happy."

He nodded. "That's all I..." Heero looked up at the sky. "That's all I wanted for her."

Something tugged at my jeans. I looked down at Nathan's little face, turned up to see me. "Daddy," he addressed me. "Who's that?"

I had no idea how to answer him. Fortunately, Heero stepped forward and bent over ever so slightly, held out his hand. "I'm a friend of your father's. My name is Heero."

"My name is Nathan Yuy Maxwell and I'm five years old." My son shook the hand of what to him was a stranger.

It was faint, but there was a smile on Heero's face. "It's nice to meet you." He looked up at me. "Can you do me a favor, Nathan?" The boy nodded. "Can you keep your father out of trouble?"

Nathan giggled. "Daddy says Mommy already does that from up in heaven."

"I'm sure she does." Heero straightened up. After a long moment, he held out his hand to me. I shook it without hesitation. "Thank you," were the last words he ever spoke to me.

Her grave was the final place I visited on what would be my last trip to Earth. I came empty-handed, but I knew she would understand. She had always known me better than I knew myself. I sat on the grass next to the headstone.

Relena Maxwell

180 - 204

A dove finds her peace

For the first time in my entire life, I wept.

When the tears were gone, I wiped my eyes and touched the ground under which she rested. I had seen the pictures in the old newspapers I had scoured once I surfaced on Mars and learned of her death. I had seen how she looked in her wig...even seen a photo or two of her as she began to lose her hair. I saw Relena the mother, Relena the wife. Relena the fading monarch. They were not the images of her that I would carry for the rest of my life.

In my mind, she will never age. She will always be twenty on the edge of twenty-one, rosy skin naked and glowing as she lay on her bed watching me leave, knowing that we would never meet again, but letting me go. Giving me my space as freely as she gave everything else in her life.

And when over the years, I emerge into the world and read an article or hear a story about their son...how he's graduating from high school, law school, running for Vice Foriegn Minister, always with his father by his side, I smile and sip my beer. It was all for the best.

Fin

Thank you for taking the time to read my story. I'd just like to also thank Melissa for beta-reading and for just generally being cool;) The final thing I have to say is, the idea of Duo cutting his hair to make a wig for someone is not totally mine. Although I have not read the story myself, it has been mentioned to me that somewhere on the web, there is a story of Duo cutting off his braid to make a wig for Hilde for Christmas. I just wanted to make that disclaimer to be fair to that author. Again, thanks.