Of the Earth
By Zapenstap
As the new Vice Foreign Minster, Relena had her own house in New Port City, the city that used to be the capital of the Sank Kingdom. Her house was a square-like building on the edge of the sea, painted mostly in white with overhanging eves and walls that almost seemed to be made out of windows in some places. There was a deck out back that looked out across the sky and the waves that crashed along the rocky beach below. There was a porch in the front that overlooked the driveway.
Heero was in her driveway today. His shirt sleeves were rolled up and he had his back to her. He was fixing her car.
Relena's house was not secluded. She lived at the edge of a classy neighborhood where most of the families were wealthy or important or both and almost everyone knew her. Sitting on her front steps, she thought it was nice to live in a neighborhood, to have a home away from the office and to associate with people who knew little about her job outside of what they saw on television, to look out the window over tea and breakfast to see children running around on the street with bikes and soccer balls, yelling "car!" and moving onto the sidewalks when one drove carefully by. It was nice to invite people over for dinner. Her brother and Noin were over almost every week, and sometimes Wayridge or Dorothy. Quatre had come to visit her before and Duo Maxwell came with him once. Her mother (or the woman she still thought of as her mother) visited frequently. Relena had other visitors as well, new friends and neighbors and old acquaintances from her past.
And then there was Heero, who always came to see her when he was in town. He was always back and forth between Earth and Space, there was so much aftermath to do following the war, and people like Une and Sally Po and those who knew who he was and what he was capable of were always calling on him for favors (and her too). Sometimes he accompanied Relena as a friend and bodyguard when she gave speeches (if he thought there was any danger present) and sometimes not, but they had kept in touch.
Relena sat on the steps leading up to her house, watching Heero fiddle with her car, which had something or other wrong with it again. She was looking into buying a new one, but she had to get places somehow in the meantime. Heero hadn't minded taking a look at her car. She hadn't even asked him to do it. She just mentioned it one day and he told her he would come over and take a look at it.
"What's wrong with it?" she asked him at last, folding her hands over her skirt, her bare knees pressed together as she sat on the steps a few feet away.
"I don't know yet," he said.
"Thanks for doing this," she told him with a smile he didn't see.
"It's not a problem."
They were silent a moment more as she watched him work, wondering what he was thinking as she often did. But she didn't wonder too hard. It was comfortable enough just to sit and watch him, leaning over her car so she could see only his back. The sun was setting in the west, casting a faint pink glow over the neighborhood and she didn't feel like moving.
Heero liked fixing machinery and it was delight to see him take joy in something. Helping her and fixing machinery were too things he enjoyed. At least, she thought so.
"Do you want to stay for dinner?" she asked him. "I mean, it's getting late and it won't be any trouble."
"Sure," he said in his distant, quiet voice, not looking at her. It was a minute before he lifted his head so she could see his face and closed the hood of her car. "You'll need a new alternator. It's going to cost you a couple hundred."
"Okay. Thanks."
He smiled at her, one of his sweet, closed-lip smiles that caught her just as he turned his head. She smiled back unconsciously, that same way, and felt a soft, sleepy void grow between them that seemed to open up a path to conversation. He glanced again at the car and shifted his shoulders, easing the muscles and adjusting his shirt.
"Do you ever get lonely up in space?" she asked him as he walked toward her and the house.
His gaze shifted from her to the car without expression. "Sometimes. But I'm used to being alone."
She nodded and settled her chin in her hands. "Me too, but I like it when you visit me, Heero. I like seeing you."
He smiled at her again, his eyes digging into her and dissecting her words, analyzing them. That smile that seemed both knowing and also a little sad. "I like you too, Relena." He wiped his hands on the white rag he had used to look at the insides of her car. His hair hung over his forehead haphazardly, but she could see his eyes, deep blue, intense, intent on his hands.
She lowered her head to conceal the pink flush in her cheeks. He knew. Of course he did. He probably always had. He wasn't stupid or unobservant. He just ignored what didn't concern him. "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean it like that." But she did. And she was sure he knew that too.
She heard him walking toward her. She could see the soles of his shoes hitting the pavement, stepping ever closer in a deliberate, even pace. "Don't worry about it," he said, and a moment later he had passed her, the wind from his movement brushing by like a breeze.
She forced herself to look up and twist her head to follow him as he passed her on the left and walked up the steps to her house. It occurred to her that he really meant it. "You like me?" she whispered, surprising herself.
He looked at her and she was suddenly conscious of her appearance, of the pink dress she wore other girls probably wouldn't be caught dead in, the clips she used to hold back her hair from her face, the clunky, mary jane shoes on her feet. "I wouldn't come around here if I didn't," he said.
She bit her lip and lowered her eyes. She knew she had a pretty face, but that was all she really felt she had physically going for her. That and the vague idea that someone somewhere would want a practical, intelligent woman who had a heart the size of the ocean, the courage of a lion and an unbending integrity even in politics, even if she wasn't that wild or fashionable or fun or experienced or all the things that desirable girls seemed to be. The days when she had been oblivious and popular seemed terribly long ago. "I like you too," she whispered. "I always have." She laughed under her breath, hiding her face, and drew her knees up under her chin. "But I think you know that. Have you ever thought about…?" She could say it. Them together. It seemed like such a preposterous, awkward idea. "I've often wondered what it would be like to kiss you," she said, and her face turned two shades redder just from the words.
When she was able to look him in the face, he didn't seem too affected by her words. "I have too," he said quietly. She blinked and stared at him, but his expression was still flat and unreadable, still Heero. "But I don't think it would be a good idea," he finished.
She turned her body, putting her hand down on the concrete step leading up to her house, her knees turning sideways and the sides of her shoes scraping the step below. "Why not?" she asked, and managed it with an almost perverse practicality.
He wiped his hands again on the rag, not quite looking at her, and then tossed it in the bucket sitting in the bark next to her lawn. "I like you, Relena, but I don't want to kiss you. I've never wanted that sort of thing from you. I just enjoy your company. We're alike in a lot of ways. Let's just leave it at that."
She didn't know what to say. "Do you like any other girls? Do you have a…a girlfriend in space?"
"No," he said. "You?"
She shook her head. "No. Nobody. Do you think that's odd?"
"I wouldn't know."
"Do you know how old I am?" she asked him.
If he thought the change in topic was odd, he gave no sign. "Twenty-one next week," he said and something like amusement overtook his expression when she seemed surprised. "I never forget your birthday," he said pointedly.
Of course he didn't. "Twenty-one," she said. "Twenty-one. Do you know the phrase 'sixteen and never been kissed'?"
"I think I've heard it somewhere."
She sighed. "Well, I'm almost twenty-one and I've never held hands with a boy, much less kissed one." She looked away. "I was never interested when I was young. I always thought it would just happen when I was older, but then it didn't. There was so much else going on it hardly seemed important, but sometimes I wonder if there maybe isn't something wrong with me."
"There's nothing wrong with you. You just concern yourself with more important things."
"But..."
He regarded her silently for a moment, but even his silence shut her up. It was his eyes. "I'm not the person to talk to about this, but there's nothing wrong with you," he said in his low, serious tone. "If anything, you're just too good for anybody."
She was puzzled. "What's that supposed to mean? I don't want to be that."
"It's better than being good enough for everybody, Relena. Stay the way you are."
Did he mean stay alone? "Are you hungry?"
"Yeah."
Swallowing, she got to her feet and brushed off her clothes. "You can use the sink inside to wash off," she said. "I'll get dinner out on the table."
"All right."
He knew his way around her house, so she just let him in and held the door open while he walked inside and down the hall toward the bathroom. Taking a deep breath to clear her mind of all its thoughts, she made her way into the kitchen and pulled out the casserole she had been cooking in the oven for the last hour. She had prepared it in advance for when Noin came. Her stir-fry vegetables weren't that exciting either, but she set them out on the table with the casserole and the bread and was putting out dishes when Heero came back into the room.
He sat down as she finished laying out the utensils, and her arm crossed in front of him as she gave him a knife (edge properly tucked in toward the plate on the right side). He leaned back to avoid getting her hair in his face and she flushed as she sat down across from him and began serving dinner.
Heero didn't talk while he was eating, and he didn't compliment her food, whether he liked it or not. He was so quiet, Relena would have thought poorly of him if she didn't know him so well.
"You know, Heero," she said with a teasing smile. "If you don't talk to people, they're going to think you're contemptuous of them and be offended."
He looked up, his eye catching hers. "Sorry. I didn't know."
She smiled at him. "It's okay," she said. "I understand. Do you want some more water?"
He did and she poured it for him from the pitcher while he steadied the glass between his fingers. "I used to be contemptuous of people," he said as she sat back and took a bite of her casserole. "Maybe the inverse is also true. If you don't talk to people you eventually become contemptuous of them."
"Because you don't get to know anybody?" she postulated. "Too wrapped up in your own head?"
"Yeah."
She nodded. "I can see that. Are you still contemptuous of people?"
"Sometimes. Some people. I'm never really sure when they deserve it and when I'm being too judgmental. That's one reason I like you. You give everyone a chance. It's rare to find that."
She stopped eating, staring at the table and feeling so strange. When they finished dinner, Heero helped her with the dishes. She washed them, but he put them away. It surprised her that he knew where they all went, but she didn't say anything. Heero's observation had always been uncanny. When the last dish was washed and put away, he grasped her arm and led her out of the kitchen.
It was dark outside and it was a lovely, warm night, almost like summer. They went out on the back deck together and stood side by side on the rail, watching the waves crash against the rocks in the darkness. Froth and spray flew into the air far below and Relena was conscious how unsafe her house would be if there was ever an earthquake or a mudslide in this area, not that either were common.
Heero had shifted his gaze and was looking at the stars. She watched him for a moment, tracing the lines of his face and throat. His profile was cut out of the night sharply, his hair hanging in front of his face, his eyes matching the color of the sky almost exactly. Space was in his eyes, the stars and the emptiness and the lonesome beauty of the world beyond the earth, the world she had come to love as a representative from the earth.
"Do you miss it?" she asked. "When you're here, do you miss Space?"
"Sometimes," he answered her. "It's home up there, but I like the Earth. I've always believed that Space and the Earth were connected by a bond as deep as…as anything. I don't always think people were meant to live in space. We will always be drawn to the Earth. People can't forget where they come from." He paused. "But we'll always dream about the stars."
A breeze swept up from the sea, blowing his hair around his face as he stared outward, seeming lost in the image he had created. Relena felt it stir her hair too and stared out where he was looking. All she saw was the ocean and the sky above, painted with stars, but in her mind's eye she saw the Earth as it looked from space, the beauty of it, its irresistibility, with the stars gleaming all around like beacons, signals to heaven burning billions of miles away, and the colonies, stretching into that Space, yet still circling the home planet.
"That's really beautiful, Heero," she whispered. She wondered if he meant something else by it on another level, if maybe it wasn't something from his heart as well as his head, something personal and reflective, but if so, it was nearly impossible to puzzle out.
He dropped his head suddenly and stared down at the ocean, his elbows on the rail and his wrists hanging over, his fingers limp in the hair. "I wish I could make up my mind," he said, pressing his forehead into his forearm and trembling.
Gently, she touched him, clasping a hand around his shoulder and leaning her cheek against his arm in a comforting way. "I know," she said, and had a vague inkling of what he meant. "But it's still beautiful idea. To wish…to dream…to believe…" He squeezed his eyes shut and then straightened, pushing away from the rail. She still held his arm. "What is it you want, Heero?"
"I don't really know," he said. "I don't have any ideas anymore. I just think sometimes…" he frowned and shook his head. "You think you're too old to be alone? Is that all you worry about?"
"I don't have a clear answer for that, Heero. Sometimes I think that I should want greater things and stop being small, and other times I think the small stuff is what really counts. But I know I want to be happy."
"I want to be happy too," he said, so quietly and so ominously she hardly understood him. "I don't know if it's possible in this world, but you know, I think there are a great many people who really don't want to be happy. Everybody says they do, but by the way they behave…"
He mouth felt dry. "That's one of the things I like about you," she said. "You're kind, but it's more than that. Even when things looked really bad you did your best. You never wanted sympathy, just completion. I always worried about you killing other and killing yourself. I don't anymore."
"I want to live," he said. "I want to be happy. I want to understand…I want to understand all sort of things. Sometimes I'm just tired."
"I'm tired too," she whispered. "Sometimes."
He smiled at her and sat down in the arm chair she had pulled outside the night before so she could sit against the wall in comfort and look out at heaven. Heero still held her hand as he sat down. After a moment, she realized Heero was half asking her to sit with him, in a space only big enough for one.
Smiling, she turned and settled against him, leaning back against his chest and closing her eyes. His arms encircled her and she became suddenly aware that even if Heero wasn't kissing girls, he was still old enough to want to hold one, and more aware of that than most young men his age. She was terrified of doing anything that would cause him to push her away so she didn't move at all. She was half afraid her hair was his face so that he couldn't breath, or that her weight was too heavy or uncomfortable or her body just too bony, but he merely held her and eventually she settled down, feeling safer, and slid deeper into his embrace, laying her head on his shoulder and swinging her legs over both of his.
To her surprise, he touched her hair, smoothing her bangs from her forehead. "Are you still tired?" he asked, as if wanting to know if she wanted to call it a night and go to bed.
"Are you leaving the Earth tomorrow?"
"Yeah."
She glanced at the sky, watched the stars glitter. "I'm not tired."
He nodded and took a deep breath. She felt his chest rise and fall and closed her eyes to the rhythmic sound. "Do you think that's what death is like?" he whispered. "When you get so tired of life your body just breaks down and you fade from the world? Like sleeping and not waking up?"
She didn't move. "I don't know," she said. "I always believed in God. I always thought I would go to heaven when I died."
He was silent for a moment. "What for?"
"To be loved, I guess, to be happy. Isn't that what you said you wanted?"
"I don't know," he said. "I guess if I thought it were possible, but I've seen a lot of pain, Relena."
She didn't know what else to say, but she felt sad, even as hope continued to burn in her heart. "I love you, Heero."
She felt his hand on her hair again, smoothing it. "You're the first one," he said quietly.
We will always be drawn to the Earth
"Do you believe me?" she asked, surprised.
"Yeah."
He held her, staring over her head at the night sky while her feet dangled above the ground. Even so, she didn't think he had been entirely honest with her out there on the driveway. She didn't say anything more, though. She understood him. He wasn't ready to love or be loved yet, and he knew enough to know that he didn't want anything less.
People can't forget where they come from.
"Do you want to come over for dinner again sometime?" she asked in a quiet voice, not wanting to break the mood.
"Yeah," he replied.
"Tomorrow night?"
He paused, as if considering her offer, weighing it in his mind. "Sure," he said, and the decision hardly sounded as thought-out as most of his decisions did.
But we'll always dream about the stars.
She gazed up where he was looking, at heaven stretching up and away from them, wrapped tightly around the Earth like a blanket and yet completely intangible, like a picture of something they could see and sense but not fully understand. It was large and beautiful, a scene that spread across the whole horizon and far up and over their heads. There was too much of it to take in and yet not enough, and not nearly close enough. On the Colonies, when one thought one was closer, one just discovered there was more to see, in all directions, going on forever and ever. In both places the stars gleamed ever brighter, twinkling, winking, smiling, burning, each a sun in its own right, set far, far away so they could stand to look at it. Heero's arms around her and the scent of the air drove her thoughts into her senses and she could merely stare, breathing it all in, feeling small and unnoticeable to that gigantic sky, yet Heero was there, loving her in the only way he knew how. And he was her prince from the stars, even if he didn't know it.