I don't know when exactly I first noticed it, but I do know the first time it intruded on my thoughts. An inconsequential thing, a black gash across Heero's wrist, no more than a simple black hair tie. The elastic kind, they come in a hundred pack for less than a buck. Why Heero, with short hair, had it on his wrist I never thought about, not until that first night.

It was the first night we made love, the first night of many. I groped at it blindly, seeking to remove it as I had removed the rest of his clothing.

I remember this unerringly- he stopped. Just stopped. A moment's pause, and he murmured "No." in my ear, and drew his wrist away. Caught up in passion, I payed it no more thought, and pulled him down to me.

Later that night, I layed eyes on it again. Heero was sleeping beside me, breathing almost to gently to be seen. His right hand lay entwined with my own, and I reached across to grab his left, and again noticed the hairtie. Puzzled by the fact that it was still on, that he had not slipped it off during the night, I gently fingered it. It was still just a hairtie. Carefully, I began to slip it off his wrist.

His reaction… Heero's eyes flew open, he actually sat up faster than I could blink. His left hand was gone from my lap, as he blinked at me.

I should have known right then. I think I may have, but I went on with my carefully thought out plan of weeks anyway.

"Relena?" he asked softly, wondering why I had woken him. He seemed unaware of the way I had awaken him, for which I was grateful. For some reason, I felt shamed for having been caught removing the simple item.

"Heero… Do you love me? Would you die for me?" I asked, voicing the inflections as carefully as I could.

"Yes." He replied simply, and lay back down. For some reason, this didn't satisfy me.

"Who else do you love? Who else…?" I did not voice the last of that question, but it hung in the air between us /who else would you die for??/. He looked at me with surprise, and a bit of consternation, then thought for a moment.

Most of the time, I love Heero's ability to answer every question honestly. He is not one to whisper sweet nothings, but this time, I wish he had.

"Everyone. I would love anyone who asked it for me. I would die for anyone who asked it of me, with few exceptions." He whispered hoarsely with dawning surprise, as though the fact had never occurred to him. It probably hadn't.

I actually sputtered a bit. "But, but… but Heero." I finally managed reproachfully. Then with a bit of sadness, "Haven't you saved anything special? Haven't you left a degree of love stronger, to give to someone?" To give to me, I meant, and he knew it.

"What could be higher than life price?" he asked rhetorically, in a whisper.

There was no answer for me to give.



I spent the next few weeks with him quietly, making no mention of the hairtie that was fast becoming more than a minor annoyance. Once, I resolved to steal it while he was in the shower.

I crept quietly into the bathroom, surrounded by the steam of his scalding hot water and glanced across the countertop. No luck. I turned to the sink, but besides my hairbrush, it was empty. Reluctantly, I began to search the pockets of his jeans, piled in an adorable mound on the floor.

"Relena? What are you looking for?" Heero's voice interrupted my thoughts.

"Honey, where are your keys?" I asked absentmindedly, "Oh, here they are! Thanks. I think I left my wallet in your car." I explained, looking over at him. His left hand had pulled aside the curtain to gaze at me. On it, was the hairtie.

I cursed myself for stupidity, once out of the bathroom. He didn't take it off to sleep, not to make love, why for the shower? All of which echoed that one question- Why wouldn't he take it off? Why was it so damn important?

That week I changed tactics and started researching his Japanese heritage. Perhaps it was a cultural thing, I thought to myself.

A few nights later, again after we made love, I posed another question. On retrospect, I really should stop with the damn questions.

"Heero? Do you "ai shiteru" me?" I asked as innocently as I could. He looked sharply at me and asked a question of his own.

"Do you know what that means?" he asked blandly. Far to blandly.

"Well, sort of. It means I Love You, but it's a bit stronger than that. It didn't translate well into english, I understand. It's like you would die for somebody, like you're soul mates. You'd die without them, they are perfect in every way in your eyes. Right?" I garbled through what I thought was a decent understanding of the phrase.

"You do not understand." He stated, just as blandly as before.

"Would you explain?" I asked, confused.

"If you were standing on the edge of a cliff with someone you would say ai shiteru to, and they asked you to jump off, and told you that if you did, you would fly, you would jump. Immediately and without fear." Heero began. "It would not matter if this person is trustworthy or not. It would not matter if they returned your feelings. You would jump."

"Because if they were untrustworthy or unreliable, you'd not see that, and so believe them?" I asked rhetorically. Heero answered me anyway.

"It would not matter because you love them with that much depth. Part of ai shiteru is clear vision- you would know they were unreliable, you would be fully aware of it, and you would still jump." I looked so confused that Heero searched for another example, "If you knew, without doubt, that the person you ai shiteru was going to betray you on the worst levels, and would do it by asking you to do something, when the time came and they made the request, you would do it with that full knowledge. Simply because it mattered so much to them."

"I don't understand."

"To ai shiteru is to be so completely wrapped up in another person it borders on madness. In many cases, it ceases to matter about the person's character, or wether the feelings are returned. You see all the person is without judgement, and accept them anyway. If the person begged you to do something, you would do it. Without regards to the consequences. Yet, should this person take advantage of your feeling, you would balk. You would recognize it and cease to serve, for ai shiteru is a love of equals and not master/slave. Still, this person you ai shiteru, when they are gone, their absence manifests as a physical pain. If this person asked you to stay away, you would bear the pain willingly, without complaint."

"Heero… I think I understand, but… is it humanly possible?" I asked timidly.

"Sometimes. Very, very rarely. There are few with the capacity for it."

"What… what if The One dies?"

"You, for the most part, follow them. Unless asked specifically not to, that is. You may find love again- and probably will, if you're young when they leave. But you will never, never stop grieving. Nor will you ai shiteru again." Heero said somberly, then continued, "Now do you understand?"

"Yes, I do. Heero- do you ai shiteru me?" I whispered.

"Do you want me to answer that?" Heero asked.

"No…"





I confided my obsession with the hairtie to a close friend, over coffee, and her answer surprised and delighted me.

"Relena, you goose, the hairtie's probably yours. It's just a love token of some sort, and he's too embarrassed to admit it. Just look through your elastics and see if one matches, and then you know. You can be such a worrywart sometimes." Noin said in an amused tone. Then she lightly turned the topic to *her* love troubles and let me contemplate the possibility in silence.

That night I again took his wrist and studied the hairtie as he slept. It was black, and very thin, the cheap kind of elastic. The little metal clamp that kept the two ends together was not gold or silver, per normal, but black as well. It was a bit stretched, but not enough to slip off loosely. Satisfied, I turned to my vanity table and began going through my hair oddments.

Twenty minutes later, I was no longer so satisfied. By and large, my hair elastics were thick, brightly patterned, and beaded. The plain ones were white. I had only a few black ones, and all had a gold or silver clamp.

Suddenly, the hilarity of my situation struck me. I choked back a laugh- I was a girlfriend jealous over a stupid hair elastic. How incredibly moronic. And what an easy solution there was to it all- just ask my loving boyfriend, and he'd tell me. After all, why not?

I posed the question at breakfast the next morning. "Heero, why do you wear a hairtie on your wrist? I've never seen you take it off." I asked pleasantly, curiously.

He looked at me in startlement. (It occurs to me that I surprise him almost daily.) "Well… it started as a useful oddment, and then I just got used to it, and now it's like a piece of my skin, I guess. I don't really think about it anymore." Heero said thoughtfully.

He was lying. I know. I see him, every day, in the afternoon, sit in his favorite chair and stare out the window for maybe ten minutes, idly stroking the hair elastic. He does it every single day, a habit I thought endearing. If we're not home in the afternoon, he does it in the car, or while eating lunch. The days that he works, I'm sure he take a break for his 'Reload and Rest' as I've heard him call it.

"Who gave it to you?" I asked again, still curious.

"A very old friend. From the war." He replied absently. He didn't need to say more. That friend… might be dead. Was definitely gone. And somebody worth remembering, regardless. I resolved to look at his old photos and see if I could find a picture of his wingmates, from a war that was only three years gone. But first…

"How long have you been wearing it?" I persisted. He jolted back out of old memories and answered without hesitation.

"Four years, eight months, and sixteen days." He said automatically. So automatically it sent a shiver up my spine. I dropped the matter and went to look for old photos.



Days later, I reviewed my findings. Searching for my lover's possessions while he was not at home was difficult at best. Still, I had in my hands a half dozen photos from the wartime, of his wingmates and companions.

The first few were of no consequence. A single picture of a blond haired elfin boy, now a millionaire in the peacetime, one of a green eyed tall boy with hair that defied fashion, hanging over one eye, and one of Heero himself, typing at his computer. His dark brown hair was tousled enough to suggest hours of similar work. The first two had a name written on the back of each photo, Quatre and Trowa.

The next two photos were more interesting. One of a Chinese boy with murderous eyes, his black hair was tied back into a small rattail. The back claimed him to be Wufei. The next photo had an exuberant teenager with a four-foot long braid of chestnut hair. His purple eyes sparkled with glee and he smirked at the camera like he knew every secret of the world. The boy's name was Duo.

The final, last photograph was the best. A group shot of all five boys, a small and tight-knit group, all relaxed and enjoying themselves. Heero had been caught in the act of looking at Duo, who had twined his braid around Wufei's neck in a mock throttle. The other two, Quatre and Trowa, were talking in the background.

I caught my breath. The hairtie- it was Duo's. Duo, I knew, was the second-best of the pilot's, right after Heero, and had been Heero's best friend for many years. I did not know what had become of him, and berated myself for not noticing his absence in Heero's life sooner. Irately, I flipped over the picture to read it's caption.



Heero- Mayhap someday I will come back, but for now, I need your understanding. Fall in love, if you can. Find somebody to keep you from being lonely. And never, never forget any of us. Words fail me- but these people were wiser than I:





"It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars." – Keillor

"Assumptions are the termites of relationships"

– Winkler

"Love is a great wrecker of peace of mind"

- Cheever

Shinigami

I read this, and was completely non-plussed. And now more worried than ever. Duo left? On purpose? And Heero had never said anything. That in itself was upsetting. The more I looked, the more I realized how little I knew about Heero. And I had a feeling that at some point, the matter would be taken out of my hands.

Carefully, I put the precious photos back where they belonged. I turned to exit, and found Heero staring at me calmly from the doorway of the attic.

"Heero!"

"Relena." Heero observed evenly. "If you wanted pictures of my family, you could have asked."

"I- I… I don't know why I didn't ask. It's just…" I spread my hands helplessly.

"Forget about it. It's no big deal." Heero turned, and I followed him out of the attic.

"Heero… If Duo came-" I began, but was cut off roughly.

"He hasn't. Drop it." He interrupted me harshly. "Start dinner, and I'll wash the dishes." Heero continued as though he hadn't barked at me. I just nodded and walked into the kitchen.



I again confided in Noin over coffee, and this time Noin just stared at me for a long moment before responding.

"You should drop the matter, Relena. This will kill your relationship if you don't. If you *can't* let it be, leave at least until the peacetime anniversary. That's coming up in what, two months? Be patient." Noin advised me. I sighed and resolved to take her advice.

The next two months passed at such a status quo that it could only be termed boring. The only oddity- Heero sat at the window every day at a gradually increasing length of time. By the end of two months, He sat at the window and stared out, unseeing, for up to two hours at a time. I held my peace and let him sit, until the day before the celebration. That day, I sat down beside him, and looked out the window.

"Heero?" I asked hesitantly.

"Yes, Relena?" Heero sounded tired, and patient.

I focused my eyes on a dusty traveler far down the road, not daring to look at Heero. "Who would you jump for? Is there anyone?" I asked timidly.

"I would jump for four people. Duo, Trowa, Wufei, and Quatre." He answered calmly.

"But you don't-?" I dared not finish.

"No, ai shiteru does not happen with four people at once. But our bond is one that comes very, very close. Closer than almost any other I've ever known."

"Almost?" I whispered.

"Almost." He affirmed.

I stared harder at the traveler, still not really looking at him. I absorbed the black dusty clothes, bouncing step, and heart shaped face automatically, as well as the unraveling braid.

Unraveling braid. Chestnut brown, four foot braid. My small, quick intake of breath wasn't quite a gasp, but it made it's point.

"Relena?" Heero asked carefully. "What-?"

I just pointed, then whirled and ran upstairs.



Heero looked where she pointed, and no expression passed over his face. Yet, somehow, a lightening of his features, a flicker light in his eye, transformed his face into a place where smiles were superfluous. He carefully walked into the kitchen and put on a pot of boiling water, then opened the coabinet and brought out an unopened box of coffee, Duo's favorite brand. His movements were slow, methodical, and deliberate. Heero was afraid his hands would start shaking, otherwise.

Provisions thus provided for, Heero walked outside and started down the steps to meet Duo at the gate.

"Heero." Duo ran the last few steps, but slowed before reaching Heero. He walked forward uncertainly, eyes taking in everything about his companion, lighting on the jeans and t-shirt approvingly, noting the never-changing hair, then coming to rest on Heero's wrist. His eyes lightened at the sight. "Heero!" he exclaimed again, dashing forward and leaping to glomp Heero like he hadn't seen him in, well, years. Heero returned the embrace gingerly, but backed up quickly.

"Come inside. We must talk." Heero grasped Duo's hand

"Heero… no." Duo said gently. "I've wandered for three years, trying to answer your question."

Heero stopped and turned. "And…?" he whispered, carefully, fearfully.

"I want my hairtie back." Duo looked into Heero's eyes, searchingly.

Heero closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and beamed like a small child. "Of course." He only said, handing it over without complaint. Duo swiftly rebraided his hair and fastened it.

I watched their exchange from the top floor window, hopelessly. At their embrace, I went to my closet and packed a few clothes, ignoring my tears. Idiot. Stupid, foolish idiot. You knew, you knew from the first night when you saw that stupid hairtie. You didn't need to watch him return it.

Clothes packed, I ran downstairs and turned off the kettle to stop it's incessant whistling, then left by the back door.

Maybe someday I'd be as lucky as they.