Disclaimer: Seriously, do you really need this anymore? GW ain't mine. Yes, I used the word 'ain't'. Too bad. Suck it up.

AN: This is essentially the last 'chapter', but I've got two more posts (think of them as epilogues 1 & 2) before I'm completely done. So, enjoy the wrap up.


Chapter 28

"Drop that bag right now, Heero Yuy!" It was really more of a screech than a command, one which Heero promptly ignored as he hoisted the duffle bag over his right shoulder and proceeded to carry it to the waiting limousine, drop it into the open trunk, and slam the trunk shut with one hand. Turning around, he looked at her pointedly with eyebrow quirked. Relena fumed. "I can't believe you! Two surgeries, a month of rehab, and you think you're Superman! What happens if you damage the muscle again? You can barely move your fingers as it is, I don't care how strong your muscles are! I'm perfectly capable of carrying my own bag, I'll have you know. I don't need you re-injuring yourself just because you want to prove how macho—"

There was something eerily satisfying about wrapping the offending arm around her waist and yanking. Predictably, he caught her off guard with the gesture, sending her sprawling against him with fingers splayed over his button-up shirt and eyes wide with surprise. He smirked down at her.

"Feels fine to me."

In truth, the muscles were tight and the movement awkward. Even after a month, his body was only just recovering from the severity of the wounds he had suffered under the hands of Osiris and Zephyr Cronis. Although most of his injuries were all but healed, the damage to his right arm had been significant. He would be subject to months more of rehabilitation to regain what was available of his motor functions, his fingers resistant to movement while his bicep tended to spasm without warning. Of course, he kept all of these facts far from general knowledge and used the arm as much as possible.

"You are impossible," Relena scolded half-heartedly, sighing in resignation. Her head dropped to rest against his collarbone, arms winding around his waist so that they stood comfortably linked. The gesture was still foreign, but he was slowly becoming accustomed to her expressions of affection. Since he had woken in the hospital ward at the Preventers Headquarters, she had been almost starved for human touch, constantly threading her fingers through his while they walked or setting a hand on his arm if they were seated. It was a new sensation to the solitary soldier, but Heero found himself unable to pull away; he was not sure if he really wanted to.

"You're finally going home."

She laughed softly, keeping her face buried against his chest. "'Home'. It sounds so foreign after all this time. How do I go back to a regular life after everything that's happened? I don't know if I remember how to lead a normal life anymore."

"You'll do fine. No one expects everything to return to the way it was, at least not right away."

"Hm… Yes, I suppose so…" They stood that way for a moment more, arms wrapped around each other. He could feel her breath ghosting against his neck, steady and warm. She was here, alive, cradled against him as though she had never gone. Satisfaction curled once again in his belly before he released her and turned back towards the Preventer building. The car was loaded, ready to take them both back to the Dorlian Mansion, but first…

"What do you think it is Miss Une wants to talk to everyone about?" Relena asked speculatively as they entered the headquarters and waited for the elevator. "Do you think it's about Osiris?"

"More than likely."

The Preventers had been in a flurry since the repression of the rogue faction, digging up documents and testimonies from the surviving soldiers to unravel the history behind the revival of Osiris and the men that had been so important in its near-success. The compound where the battle had taken place had been stripped and raided for papers, files, computers, and data until every nook was bare, concrete smashed and air ducts swept for any possibility of hidden records. The underground complex was now little more than metal and earth, uninhabitable without considerable effort to recreate the housing.

The elevator pinged to let them know they had arrived at their floor, the doors opening to reveal a grinning Duo. "Yo! Lovebirds! Look who I brought with me."

"Hilde!" Relena rushed forward to greet the dark-haired girl who sat quietly in a wheelchair, her throat wrapped in a thin bandage. She had woken only a week ago, voice weak and scratchy, but working. The bandages were more for reassurance than necessity, the remaining healing now happening below the surface where gauze and ointment could be no help. Heero had seen the scar that would remain in her skin as a reminder, but somehow he doubted that Hilde would mind in the end… With Duo to feed her battered ego, it would probably become a proud war wound.

Leaving the two women to talk quietly, Heero approached the braided man with a speculative glance. "She looks well." Duo's grin broadened.

"Ah, you know Hilde: take a knife to her and she's ready to kick ass the next day. It reminds me of when we first met her back on Libra," he laughed affectionately, watching the woman in question out of the corner of his eye. Heero felt one side of his own mouth kick up into a subtle smile.

"And Daye?"

"Schinzer took him to be tried on Earth for war crimes." The unspoken question lingered in the air, forcing Duo to regard Heero with serious eyes despite the smile that lingered on his face. "I figured it wasn't my place, seeing as Hilde'll recover and I'm not really the most objective person when it comes to what he did. I don't know enough about who he used to be and who he became during the war to judge what he did beyond the personal perspective. The old man will be better for all of that, I think. Hell, I wouldn't want to face Solo after everything we've done since we first stepped into the Gundams! Family is the worst guilt-trip anyone can ask for. I figure that's a pretty good punishment."

"Hn."

Laughing again, Duo clapped a hand over Heero's good shoulder without a thought. "Man, I feel like we're all getting so old! Twenty-one is like a threshold where you realize that it's all downhill from here and you have to give everyone that second chance. Geez, a couple years ago I would have just left that bastard in the building and blown it to smithereens." He sighed longingly, shaking her head. "This 'getting older' stuff sure does suck sometimes."

"Hn."

"What are you talking about?" Relena asked suspiciously as she wheeled Hilde over to where they stood. Waving his hands frantically, Duo wagged off the question in lieu of stealing the chair away from his friend.

"Nothing, nothing. Heero was just demonstrating his amazing knack for the human language. Did you know he can recite the entire Oz doctrine backwards with his eyes closed in less than five minutes? In E minor?" Both women laughed, leaving Heero to follow after the trio with a shake of his head.

It was true, though. If he had been a younger man, more than likely he would have shot Cronis the first moment they had met: killed the guards with a few choice blows, relieved them of their guns, and put a bullet right between the eyes of the Osiris leader. Three years ago, he would have felt justified in breaking his oath never to kill again. Now…

"You took care of it?"

"He won't bother her again." The white of Zechs' shirt was flecked with blood, the water running briefly red before splashing upon the earth and melding with the dark of the dirt. Bandaged and half-delirious with pain, Heero watched the blond-haired man wash the evidence from his hands and strip himself of the soiled shirt, throwing it away into the woods beyond the compound.

"She'll notice that you're not wearing a shirt."

Shades of blue clashed with each other as the two men glared at one another. "Not if you act like the victim and leave in one of the transports before me."

"Hn."

"…It's better that she doesn't know the truth."

"You'd rather she think he died in a cell somewhere? Like he intended for her?"

Running a wet hand through his hair, Zechs straightened to his full height and glanced towards the caravan of trucks crowded around the compound. Relena was tucked away in one of them, medics tending to the bruises and cuts left behind from her struggle with Cronis."Yes. She needs to know he's dead, but she doesn't need to know how it happened. She would feel guilty; believe that she forced me into it."

It was because they both knew her so well that Heero realized the truth of those words. "Hn…"

"Heero? Are you alright?" Looking down, he found her gazing up at him in concern. Her bruises had faded weeks ago, but he could still imagine them there on her face the day after: swollen cheek, cut lip, black eye, butterflies darkening her neck on either side where Cronis had choked her. Eyes narrowing, he forced himself to nod, although he knew she did not believe him.

"Fine."

"Yo! You two coming? No time for kissy-face when Une is waiting for us," Duo teased from down the hall. Hilde punched him in the arm in retribution, eliciting a childish 'Ow! Babe!'

"Heero?"

"Duo's right; Une's waiting."

He knew the answer was insufficient, her scrutiny burning a hole in his back as he started to walk. A moment later she was beside him, linking her fingers through his once more and holding tightly. "We'll talk about it later."

They entered the darkened conference room together, a sea of familiar faces already gathered before a digital projection. Predictably, they were the last to arrive, Lady Une at the head of the room with an expression that did not quite convey irritation. "Glad you four could join us. Take your seats and we'll begin."

Settling into one of the chairs offered, Heero found himself staring at an old picture of Zephyr Cronis dressed in Oz fatigues, grey eyes staring blankly into space for the military photo. His face was smoother than it had been in the compound: less lines, sharper angles. The eyes lacked the madness that had gleamed so brightly a month ago.

"His real name was Andrew Zephan Crowe. He was 27 at the time of Treize's death and a member of the Treize Faction. He worked almost directly under His Excellency, which would explain his obsession with Treize's 'ideals'. All known blood relatives are deceased, most during the era of the Alliance and the early days of the OZ coup d'etat, so there's no confirmation over where he was in the years between the end of the war and the present, but it's believed that he used that time to gather the soldiers to make up Osiris. Reports tell us that he specifically targeted former members of the Specials and the Treize Faction that, like him, had lost all or most of their families to the wars. Many of the captured Osiris soldiers suffer from post-traumatic stress that was only fed by Cronis' ideals, which would support the disarray after the separation of the generals," Une explained calmly, her back to the COM screen.

"Cut off the head and the body falls a-twitchin'," Duo offered grimly, earning an array of expressions from the occupants of the room. Lady Une ignored the comment.

"We don't have all the information completely organized yet, but there were blueprints in the compound for new designs of mobilesuits, and the very earliest stages of weapons development. From the bird's-eye view we have at the moment of the situation, apprehending Osiris when we did possibly prevented another era of military dominance such as what we saw with the Alliance and OZ. Casualties outside of our… inner ranks," brown eyes scanned the faces of the people gathered together, hesitating on some longer than others, "were minimum, for both Osiris and Preventer. Of the Generals, both Merrick Daye and Oren Linnux are being held pending trial. General Schinzer is still occupying L2 and helping to reassimilate some of the Osiris officers back into society." She hesitated on the last of the four, and Heero could not help but slant his own gaze to the woman at his side. Relena's eyes were fixated on her hands.

"The remains of Andrew Crowe were buried in a public cemetery, in an unmarked grave, as there were no relatives available to claim them." It was all any of them could offer, and the room remained silent after the declaration, as though they all needed the time to digest the knowledge that the nightmare was finally over. Beside him, Relena sighed and the heaviness lifted subtly.

"What I don't understand is why," Hilde rasped quietly, her voice stronger than it had been upon waking but still a ghost of its previous timbre.

"Dude was insane, Hil," Duo offered bitterly, his hand squeezing her shoulder gently.

Heero found himself shaking his head and looking up at the picture of Andrew Crowe that stared out from the screen. "It was more than that. He believed every word he said. He thought Treize really meant to become a god over humanity. Then, when Treize died and that misunderstood ideal was taken away, his training as a soldier told him to carry on that ideal in the only way he understood. War was sanity."

"And we took that away…" It was like dawn had broken suddenly in her eyes, the understanding crashing so hard into her that Heero felt Relena visibly shake beside him. He knew then that, despite her scars and her pain, Relena Peacecraft had suddenly found forgiveness for Zephyr Cronis in that startling, convicted manner that had always drawn Heero to her. Day by day, he could see her slowly regaining the footing that had made her Queen of the World and Vice Foreign Minister.

Around the darkened room, Heero watched as the other pilots acknowledged the information in their own way: passive stoicism, a pitying smile, a bitter nod, the narrowing of eyes. Zechs seemed unmoved by the revelation, but his hands twitched subtly in recognition of that same teetering sense of sanity outside of the battlefield. They had all walked to that edge, and at one point or another each of them had jumped head-first in the belief that they could no longer turn back. The difference was the women that now sat beside them; this strange mottled group of people that had somehow pulled each other back across that line time and again.

They were all dangling on the end of someone else's rope. Cronis' had been cut a long time ago. It was a bitter pill to swallow for any of them.

Une was the first to break the silence, regaining her composure as a Commander almost immediately and returning to the task at hand. "I called you all in here to debrief you on the situation, and also to let you know that you all have two weeks paid vacation effective immediately, whether you work for Preventer or not. It's all been arranged. What you choose to do with that time is up to all of you, but I would suggest using it appropriately," her glare reached all of them. "You're all dismissed."

As a group they rose, the chatter idle between the women and almost non-existent between the men. Only moments passed before they left in their own respective couples, no one needed the reassurance of goodbyes or fond farewells; they all knew that life, if not some twisted sense of fate, would throw them all back together again when it was most opportune.

Three years later, it was time to enjoy the greetings rather than the partings.


Next Chapter: 29, New Beginnings, In which the author gets all her sappy love scenes that she totally deprives herself of too often. Life after war for the pilots and their lady-friends.