Edge of the Chase

Chapter 9


Last time on EotC: The list finished, and Relena stared at the last name in shock. She could feel bile rise from her stomach as it churned, and for the first time since escaping Wattmeter, she was terrified. Quickly, she shut the computer as quietly as she could and got back on the bed, her eyes still seeing the neat typing on the list. The last name still buzzed through her head. Heero made a slight noise in the bathroom, and she jumped. It couldn't be, her rational mind told her, but she had seen the name for herself. If it was true, she knew she was dead.

Heero Yuy was not her ally.


Heero entered the bedroom of the hotel with a towel tucked around his shower-dampened hips. His hair was flat against his head, dripping with water, and looked even longer than it had the night before. A strand curved around his cheek, and she ducked her head so she wouldn't have to look at him. She knew that he would assume it was modesty instead of alarm that had her looking away, and he wouldn't be thinking that there was a coiled snake of fear inside her, just waiting to strike. Relena had spent ten years of her life trusting Heero and she didn't know how to see him any other way, but she was learning that it wasn't impossible. Most of the time she looked at the things he could do and joked that she wouldn't want him as her enemy, but she never thought the day would come when she would think of him using all his elite skills against her.

She TRUSTED him, dammit. Heero was the only one in her life she was sure of.

Now she just didn't know.

Relena kept her eyes glued to the hideously unoriginal flowered comforter over the bed, making sure not to allow her eyes to wander to his laptop guiltily. She made a demure image, the angelic blond staring down and away from the half naked man, but her hands were clenched tightly in the blanket, and it was a struggle to keep the worry and fear off her face. She didn't want to obsess about it, she really didn't, and she was sure Heero had some explanation for being on that list, but –

Well, it was just that he had been acting so strange since they left Wattmeter's. He didn't care about fingerprints, he had his own laptop, and just a bunch of other small things she'd been noticing that she hadn't though to really mean anything. Now, it made her reluctant to completely dismiss her fears.

"Have you seen my pants?" Heero asked, eyes on the floor as he stared at the spot he had left them. It was such a foolishly normal thing for him to say that it drew Relena's gaze to him. He was glaring at the floor, so perplexed by the idea that his pants weren't where he dropped them that he hadn't even thought to look at the chair where she draped them after tripping on her way to the bathroom the night before.

"They're on the chair." Her words were stiff, and if he noticed that she wasn't teasing him like she usually did in cases like this, he didn't say anything. Relena smiled, her cheeks feeling as if they were making a foreign expression. Her voice, however, sounded normal and gently amused when she said: "You're such a bachelor sometimes, Heero." In that moment she decided that even if it was difficult for her, she would pretend and she would act until she knew for sure whether Heero was a traitor. She also knew that no matter what happened, she would never be able to get the sight of his name on that screen out of her head.

Heero turned his back on her, rummaging through the bag of their purchases. His towel slipped lower on his hips as Relena eyed his back suspiciously; he paused for a second, glancing at his computer. She turned red and bolted for the bathroom, shutting the door quickly behind her as her heart pounded rapidly in her chest, and it wasn't all due to fear. She brought her hand up, not sure whether her nerves wanted it to clutch at her chest or cover her mouth. "Oh God," she muttered, leaning her head back against the wall. The mirror was still covered in condensation from Heero's shower, and the obscured girl in it looked exactly how she felt – as though there was a thick opaque film covering the truth from her. Heero was a dangerous man, she thought as she stepped into the shower herself. Did she have that much faith in him that she could still put her life in his hands?

"Do you think I should dye my hair?" She asked as she emerged from the bathroom. It had taken her fifteen minutes in the shower to calm down enough so that she could think of a question to ask that wasn't along the lines of 'are you evil now?'.

Heero looked up at her from in front of his laptop. She almost lost her nerve as he slowly and deliberately shut the screen. Her heart rate accelerated again as he stood, eyes on her. She had to battle with her flight instincts as every sensible part of her screamed to run away. She had never been this scared of him, even when he had explicitly stated that he would kill her. "We need to leave," he told her, not answering the question.

Relena grabbed a pair of fresh underwear from the Walmart bag and shimmied into them under her towel. "How soon?" She asked, looking around for her cheap, torture device of a bra. Heero covertly looked out the window as though he expected someone to be waiting for them outside.

"Five at the most."

"Then help me find my bra," she told him, peering under the bed. Instead of a boxspring and bedframe, the floor had been built into a platform and a mattress thrown on top. Relena didn't think she had seen anything as gauche in her life. Heero raised an eyebrow at her request, but looked behind the chair like a good little soldier. Relena knew where it was, of course. She had accidentally broken the strap twenty minutes ago when she tried to take it off, and then in a pique of anger and desperation she had tried to flush it down the toilet. She needed a new one, but more importantly, she needed to learn how to fool Heero into-

"Is this it in the toilet?"

Darn the man! "Yeah, I think that's mine."

"How'd it get in there," Heero asked from the bathroom. Relena glanced around to corner, not sure if she wanted to keep an eye on him or if she just wanted to see his face. She had kind of hoped he'd be trying to pull it out, and discover like she did that one of the straps was stuck in the pipes. Instead, he was looking at her standing in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest. If this was the way he interrogated suspects, Relena had been more intimidated by Duo's puppy.

"Ghetto gnomes." She maintained eye contact and raised an eyebrow at him, waiting for him even suggest she was lying. Instead he shook his head and brushed past her, opening the door to the hotel room. It wasn't until they were back in the lobby that Relena realized that they hadn't taken the same way as they came in. She wasn't sure, but she thought that at least one camera had picked up her image. Heero seemed as oblivious now as the time she had tried to seduce him wearing a pair of thigh-highs and a smile.

Instead of pointing this out to him, or even worrying about it, she filed it away under damning things he had done in the last fourteen hours. A chill went through her at how much evidence there was against him. "I'm hungry," she said instead. "Can we eat?"

Heero deviated off his path towards the parking lot and led her into a sandwich shop with a hand at the small of her back. Relena smiled at him, stepping away from his touch and towards the girl at the counter. She wasn't sure if it boded well for the sandwich she was about to eat that there was no one in line in front of her. She had always been of the opinion that if a restaurant wasn't busy around lunch time, then it probably sucked. A glimpse at the clock on the wall told her why. It was almost three in the afternoon. Her shower must have lasted longer than she realized.

"Hi-" Relena said with a friendly smile, glancing at the girl's nametag. "-Stephani. I'll take the Extreme Supreme, please." She'd give this restaurant credit though, that had to be one of the most boring names for a sandwich she had ever heard.

"Oh, the UBERWICH!" Stephani said with glee. "I love those things." She took one of the largest pieces of bread Relena had ever seen, cut it in half and toasted it. Then she spread butter, mayo, and mustard over the bread, slapping almost every conceivable topping available over it. Relena saw so much deli meat it would give Heero a fun for his money.

"Wow," she muttered in awe.

"Yeah. These things are like an orgasm for your tastebuds. You'll never have so much meat in your mouth."

They both glanced sideways at Heero.

If Heero could look disturbed, his face would look exactly as it did in that moment.

"Anything else?" The sandwich artist asked, rolling her creation up in waxed paper. It looked like a dismembered arm when she was finished.

"Two cans of Pepsi," Relena said, eyeing the double chocolate cookies in the dessert cabinet. "And a bottle of water," she added, remembering that Heero usually wasn't one for carbonated drinks. Of course, without his morning coffee, he might just drink one anyway. Stephani filled their order with a cheery smile and an "enjoy" as Relena thanked her and left Heero with the bill. By the time he joined her, she was already trying to wrap her mouth around the sandwich in order to take a bite which consisted of both pieces of bread. Heero stared at her without touching his half.

Relena smiled around the sandwich, viciously tearing off a piece. Heero averted his gaze and opened his can of soda.

"This is the best sandwich ever," Relena moaned. "When we aren't on the lam, we need to come back here."

"Shh," Heero hushed her, looking over to the sandwich girl to see if she heard Relena's careless comment.

"Oh, calm down and take a bite. For Mr. Monotonous, this thing is probably sensory heaven. You might overload." Relena smirked at him, using all her strength to smush the bread so she could eat.

Heero glared.

"Glad we could have this talk." Relena rolled her eyes.

"You wanna talk? I'll talk to you when you stop being irresponsible."

"Irresponsible?" Relena asked, reining in the urge to stick her tongue out at him.

"Childish," he continued, reading her mind.

"I'm behaving perfectly normally. Especially compared –" Relena broke off, not wanting to bring attention to the way he was acting lately. She didn't want him to know that she suspected him, but now that she thought of it, wouldn't he get suspicious if she stopped nagging him now? She also realized that they probably shouldn't be seen together in a restaurant so close to the hotel, especially since less than half an hour ago he had insisted they needed to leave immediately. Relena eyed him guardedly.

"You are not acting normally. You flushed your bra!"

"It deserved it! You've killed people who have caused me less pain than that thing. I'm pretty sure if I had to wear it for another day, I would be permanently disfigured."

Heero didn't even bother responding to her melodrama. Instead, he took a bite of his sandwich. He didn't seem to have the same mouth/sandwich ratio problem going on as she did.

"That's a good reason to be a gay man."

"What?"

"Oh, forget it. I can't do amusing banter with you." Relena gulped her Pepsi, almost shivering in pleasure as the cold, caffeinated beverage hit her taste buds. She exhaled, keeping her eyes closed. When she opened them again, Heero had devoured almost half his sandwich. With the caffeine and sugar in her system, she was starting to think she could do anything. Like pee in a very public washroom.

"I need to go to the bathroom," she said, getting up from her seat and giving Stephani a friendly fingerwave. She headed towards the restroom in the back and continued straight out the backdoor without glancing behind her to see if she was being followed.

Almost as soon as she evaded Heero, Relena realized it probably wasn't the smartest thing she had ever done. The words "run" and "braless" didn't really go well together. Plus there was the whole issue with Heero actually being one of the best people in the universe at tracking. She almost turned around in defeat and reentered the restaurant. Of course, if Heero Yuy was a synonym for superior assassin-like skills, then the name Relena Dorlian meant someone who wouldn't give up when faced with them.

©RelenaFanel.Aug17.2007

Review, please. What do you think about Relena running away from Heero? Do you think she can make it more than five feet? And what about Heero; what do you think about his actions?