"No." she said quietly, reverently, as if the word surprised even herself in its surety. "I can't leave, Heero, I can't. Not now. The war is nearly done, nearly done and finished and safely put away. All it took was a symbol, something they could hold on to, an aspect of peace they could really grasp."
Her soft, broken voice flowed over like glass; the voice he'd heard screaming, sobbing, the one that had pleaded with an unseen nation of hatreds for peace. She stood so close to him, determined, as if at any moment she would reach out to grasp him, to hold him and make him see, see an end to the fighting that was, no, which had been his whole existence.
He could see it now, her fire, burning incandescent in her bones and veins. Not smoldering, but bright bright light. It was reflected back in every one of the feathers that framed her, that hung about her like a glory. The light they must have ripped out of her with every one of those feathers, every new unnatural twist of bone and science, until every reserve of it seemed lost forever. But now, as she spoke of a peace, a chance for people she had never met and who had never cared while she was broken and bleeding in a cell, or hiding and hidden in a walled garden, that fierce spirit shone again, and all the love and light stolen in those wings seemed now stored there, ready to reflect it at any moment. But she still spoke.
"It isn't the people Heero, nor even the sides. There isn't a good side and a bad side in this. It's the war. The war that allowed them to" here the she faltered, and gestured almost helplessly at the white masses about her, her eyes near closed, as if she still could not bear to look at them. "And" she whispered, eyes still lowered "to do what they did to you".
Heero still did not move, could only watch her, drink her in. But now the fire seemed gone, and the fragility of her, the delicacy that never left even in her fiercest moments, that which made her more fierce and more tender at every moment. Her words still flowed, like thoughts that had beaten themselves bloody against the cage of her teeth and only now limped out into the light. No triumph, only the inevitability that once begun they could no longer be left behind. Her breath, the very life of her seemed to catch in her throat.
"I thought that all I could ever want was to be near you. But... but you haven't seen me for weeks and Heero" finally, finally her eyes lifted and looked at his, but instead of the surety of peace and future, they were as lost as the moment between life and death."Heero I don't know if I can bear it".
She finished brokenly, a whisper that admitted an awful truth, but it was lies. All lies. He'd seen her. Seen her every moment, in every reflective surface or flittered motion from the corner of his eye. Every breath, and shudder, and desperate searching of his face for a sign he was too well trained to give. It was his job to protect her, to know it all, but he also knew not only the cries of distress from her nightmares, but the sighs she made in a quiet slumber. He knew the different colours hidden in the curls of her hair, and which ones you could only see when white feathers lay directly beside them. This was everything and his hand cupped the sweet softness of her cheek, beneath the lashes that lay open her eyes and all her being.
They stood frozen, a tableau caught in the fading light and he wasn't sure. Wasn't sure if he had actually moved his arm, touched her, or if the motion was still in his head, like so many words and deeds that were never looked on, never considered, and he still stood motionless and attentive, with not even a clenched fist.
But she was there, he could FEEL her, and if it was only in his mind then he would never leave and the world would have to continue to skid about him while he stood there silent with slow trickle of silent tears running through his fingers. Her eyes never left his, not when her own hands rose up to cradle his fingers as they lay against the pure satin of her skin.
"Heero, please, I don't want to be alone any more" and it was then that he knew, knew that the tears, the unhappiness he caught in her face when the cameras were gone and the speeches were finished wasn't because of the hours and the audience's hungry eyes, that it was for him. Was BECAUSE of him. That the one thing he'd sworn he would protect her from he had delivered her to without ever knowing it.