What Can't Be Done
by Zapenstap
Dusk was descending over the Sank Kingdom
as Relena drove along the empty road leading to the city. There was nothing
on this road but trees and hillsides. A deathly quiet hung over everything.
Or maybe it was just her mood. She felt dead.
Heero sat in the passenger seat, staring
silently out the window, not looking at her. He looked a little different
than he had three years ago, older, the baby fat gone from his face, his
body more developed than it had, his chest broader. He wore a white blouse
and gray slacks, the first button on his collar undone. She supposed the
same changes were true of herself. Her face was certainly thinner than
it had been, and softer. She had lost a little weight from her political
efforts this year, projects that required too much travel and hardly any
time to eat. Her legs were more slender and shapely than the had been,
and the pale yellow dress she wore with the strap sleeves and loose skirt
were certainly a style for a young woman rather than a girl. Her eyes had
not changed. Neither had Heero's.
She studied Heero's blank expression out
of the corner of her eye, a tumble of emotion rolling in her gut. They
were not good emotions. They had not spoken a word to each other in nearly
four hours. The time they spent together was growing tenser by the day.
Nothing romantic had ever happened between them, and she was not sure she
really would, or should now. Though she hid it, a heaviness consumed her
more every day, like lead blocks weighing her down.
Without thinking about it, she slammed
down the brake. The car halted with a jolt.
"Get out of the car, Heero."
He turned to her, silent, dark blue eyes
troubled. "Relena," he began in those quiet tones she was used to now.
She knew them; they never went anywhere.
"Just get out." She managed to keep the
choke out of her voice, but it had been stronger the first time. He was
looking at her point blank now, staring at her face. She knew he would
search her eyes, so she hardened them, harder than she ever had when facing
a room full of stubborn politicians, most of them weathered, old men.
She did not have to say it again. The look
was enough. He opened the door and flung one leg out, but he still looked
over his shoulder at her, questioning. She tightened her mouth and leveled
her eyes at him in such a way that she must almost look angry. For a second,
she thought she saw something like horror cross his face, quickly supressed.
The barest minimal amount of confusion replaced it, and had she not spent
hours studying his expressions, she probably would not have been able to
detect it.
"Relena?"
She did not cut him off. He would never
say more than that to her. He always trailed off by his own accord. Heero
could not, would not talk about himself, or her, or anybody that might
be close to him in a personal way. He would not even try.
She turned, keeping her features concentrated.
"Yesterday..." no, that was no way to begin. Calmly. "It has been nearly
three years, Heero, since the end of the war. For three years you have
visited me, and we have talked. We talked about politics, about the war,
about school, about whatever you wanted to talk about or what I had on
my mind. You have supported me in any number of political councils, have
appeared with me in the public view, have helped me write speeches, organize
my notes. We have taken walks together, read the same books, gone to a
few plays. But never, not once, have you spoken to me about you, or about
me. I'm not talking about us, Heero, I'm talking about the simple act of
saying what you feel. You make me guess at everything and you brush me
off whenever I ask something a little too personal. Yesterday," she swallowed,
hard. She would not cry. "Yesterday I was thinking about you. I think a
lot about you. I thought I loved you, Heero; you were the most important
person in the world to me. But then you came in the room..." He had been
so beautiful. She had been so glad to see him, sitting up from the couch
in delighted anticipation, but... "and like always, you ignored me until
I spoke to you first. And for the first time I was so angry." Tears were
welling up in the back of her eyes now, but she refused to let a single
one fall. "I was angry with you and I knew if I tried to talk to you about
it, you would brush me aside." Her voice was shaking now, but she felt
cold inside. An ice cube was sitting in her stomach. Her whole body was
shaking. "I can't do it, Heero! I can't be whatever it is you want.
For so long I have watched you on the brink of destroying yourself, desperately
trying to hold you back. That desperation is wearing me out. I can't do
it anymore. I can't devote my life to supporting you in such a way that
you might fall if I let go. You want me to stand beneath you and on a pedestal
at the same time. I can't do it. I can't!" She dashed tears angrily from
her eyes. Her voice was picking up speed now, even though her throat felt
choked. His mouth parted slightly as he stared at her in shock, eyes as
bewildered as she had ever seen them. "You are strong, Heero," she said
powerfully. "I have seen it in you, that strength, but it disappears when
you deal with yourself. In these years that we have known each other I
have wanted nothing more than to give you my life. I don't mean my schedules
and my duties, but my childhood, my attitude, my personal stability." It
was impossible. It sounded so vain and so stupid anyway, but even her insecurities
were better than his darkness. "But I can't do that, Heero.
It tears me up inside to you as you are, but I can't fix it. I can't make
you love me. I can't support you forever. . I can't give you my life.
I can't make you whole. You have to do it, and until you do, if you
ever can, I can't bear to see you. I can't help loving you, but I'm
giving you more than I can afford to spare. I'm leaving you here,
Heero. I'm too weak; I can't do it." How Wufei would scoff.
She pulled back in the car, rebuckling
her seatbelt. She felt calm now, with tears dried on her face and a hollowness
in her heart. "Get out," she said fiercely. And he obeyed, shutting the
door softly behind him. His whole face looked as if it might crumble at
any second, but she refused to see it.
Mechanically, she turned on the car, shifted
gears, and drove away, leaving her love on the roadside a good half mile
from the city. She was not worried about him, not Heero. If he wanted to
survive, he would. If he didn't, she knew all too well how little
she could do to stop him.
It took maybe forty seconds on the road
before the tears began to flood out of her eyes, welling up from a heart
that seemed more empty and more hollow than it ever had before. Her whole
body shaking, her tears obscurring her vision, and she was forced to pull
over on the roadside. Numbly, she keeled over on the passenger's seat,
tears ripping out her body in a downpour she could not stop. Her chest
convulsed brokenly as she cried. The tears came from anger, fear, pity,
but most off all from that overwelming sadness that seemed to be the only
thing inhabiting the emptiness in her heart. Whether he knew it or not,
Heero
had hammered a signpost in her heart with his name on it, and everything
she ever stored there by rights belonged to him. Now that he was gone,
the sighpost ripped away, it seemed he had taken that everything with him.
She had left all of it, and him, at the roadside just a little ways back
on the road in the gathering darkness. How long before she could heal?
The tears slowed to a trickle. Her whole body, though shuddering occasionally,
felt very heavy and completely weightless at the same time. She was still
sad, but she had no more tears left with which to cry. Even so, she could
feel a second flood gathering force.
Suddenly a knock came at the window.
She gasped, sitting up hurriedly, scrubbing
tears from her cheeks. It was Heero, staring in through her window, expression
grim. His eyes were white hot fury.
"H...Heero?" she breathed, and choked.
Her body had not recovered from her sob session. She must look a fright.
Automatically she lowered the window. "You..."
"Be quiet," he said sharply, not meanly,
but expecting compliance. She was too shocked to protest. His eyes
seemed to study her face forever before he finally spoke in slow, steady
tones, pushing out the words with force and effort. "You want to
know how I feel?" he said raspingly, and the pain in his eyes was almost
too much for her to bear. "I am terrified." He stopped, breathing,
gathering himself, and he could see he was angry by the way his jaw clenched.
"I stood without moving for a long time when you left me back there. What's
worse is that I understand why you did." She opened her mouth to say something,
but he forestalled her. "I'm not giving up on you, Relena. I need
this," he shouted it in a whisper, his knuckles white as he clutched at
the door to the car. His shoulders shook with the effort. "I
need you, here, in my life, or I will go mad. You can't get
rid of me like that." His eyes began to shimmer, and he stammered with
something not quite like tears, but like enough to make her heart jump
in fear and worry. He clenched his eyes shut and opened them again.
"I've been lost for a long time," he choked, "but I was sure you would
never abandon me." He breathed, the wetness in his eyes drying.
"Heero..." she began, wanting to reach
for him, and couldn't stop the love in her heart from filling up her eyes.
"I'm not done," he said, cutting her off.
He was leaning in through the window now, staring at her face. Determination
had replaced anger, and the same hardness she had tried to set in her own
eyes. "You had every right to do what you did back there. I'm..." he took
a deep breath, "angry at you for it, but that changes nothing. I
was not being fair to you. I don't know how to be fair. In either case,
it seems it is time for something more anyway. You deserve better."
I don't want better, she cried in
her heart. I want you. But she couldn't say it out loud.
Her heart fluttered in her chest like a trapped butterfly. Her hands
began to shake, and she uncomprehendingly leaned forward to hear better.
She knew her eyes must be as wide like a little girl's, but she couldn't
fix it. She felt like a little girl.
"I want you to...be with me, Relena," Heero
said slowly, his deep voice accenting her name as she had never heard it
said before. It sounded possessive. It was more than she had ever hoped
to hear from him.
"Be with you," she repeated numbly. She
couldn't seem to jerk her eyes from his. They consumed her vision like
beakons, drawing her in.
Heero shut his eyes tightly, drawing his
head back some, hands clenching tightly against the window frame. "I can
try. If you'll help me, I can try. I will take you dancing this weekend,
if you can...if you want to go. I will buy you flowers. I will take
you out to dinner if you like, and a hundred other things I don't know
how to do. I can match your strength, Relena."
"I've always tried to match yours," she
said dumbly. "And I would like that, all of it, very much. I want
to take care of you, Heero, if you want me to. You bring me hope even when
I don't ask for it. Do you want a ride home?"
This was getting ridiculous. She had just
asked him to get out of the car ten minutes ago.
"No," he replied, surprising her. "I think
I'll walk back."
She nodded, looking down at her hands.
"Relena?"
She looked up. He had leaned in a little
further. "Wha..?" she began.
And suddenly she was being kissed. If she
hadn't known it was impossible, she would have thought her heart had flown
out of chest on sprouted wings. Warmth flooded the emptiness in her soul,
suffusing everything with a yellow light brighter than her dress. Her whole
body seemed to glow. Heero had just replaced the signpost in her heart
with a house. He was taking up residence in more than name only. She...
couldn't think about anything but kissing him. It wasn't a light, innocent
kiss either. She'd never had a perfect first kiss before, though she hadn't
had many kisses, but this was close to perfect. It was close enough anyway!
She had her hands on his face and in his hair before she knew it, and his
fingers were threading through her hair and brushing her chin too. When
he released her she found herself gasping for breath and full of energy.
She couldn't even manage to open her eyes.
"I'll see you later," she heard him murmur.
He sounded breathless too, almost happy, but when she opened her eyes,
he was gone.
She drove home in a stupor, as close to
giddy as she had ever felt, laughing at nothing and reliving over and over
what had happened in her mind. She was not a girl any longer, and Heero
seemed more of a man than he ever had. He was beautiful. He was... She
surprised with a giggle.
"My Heero," she finished dreamily, smiling
softly. She felt light as a feather.
Reviews? Reviews? This is just a one-shot deal.
I wrote it a long time ago, but it was an attempt at a tear-jerker.
Please tell me what you thought.
What Can't Be Done
By: Zapenstap