*****

Back at the Keep, the legions of people stuffed into the main dining hall were murmuring worriedly amongst themselves as, above their heads, the crystal clear dreamdrop image of the four in the Ring barely changed. Every chair and bench had been pulled up to the long tables and filled, while the tables themselves seethed with bodies trying not to be jostled off. Others had to be content with leaning on the walls, while the rest had to deal with sitting crowded together on the floor. The atmosphere was tense as everyone there tried not to imagine what could happen next.

"How long has it been?" asked Declan. His arms were full of slumbering Bhaarliad baby, for the child's mother was off looking for her husband in the boiling mass of people. Cathy sat next to him, leaning her head against his shoulder. Her face was haggard and pale, as it had been for the duration of the tournament. The months-long wait to see her surrogate brother had taken its toll on her, and the last hour had been like slow torture. Gaelin sat on the young woman's other side, a calming hand against the small of her back and his comforting arm tight around her waist.

Relena glanced at her watch and sighed. She shifted, kicking her legs off the table she and the others sat on. "There's still another twenty minutes left to go."

Beside her, Dulcet sighed and shook his head. Balanced on his lap was the laptop computer he used to monitor Walker and Darien's physical conditions. He gave the dreamdrop image a fleeting glance before looking back down again. "God. They haven't moved since Walker gave his ultimatum." The lynx-hybrid's ears twitched nervously as he talked. Furry fingers worried the keys. Luminous green eyes widened as a new screen was reflected in them. "Oooh, shit…."

"'Oh, shit?' " Declan frowned dangerously. The baby shifted and cooed in his arms, still sleeping "What do you mean, 'oooh, shit'?"

"This is bad. This is very, very bad."

"What is it? Is there something wrong?" Cathy sat up straight, absolute terror flooding her violet eyes. "Will Trowa be okay?"

"I can't tell you that, Cathy. I'm sorry, but I'm talking about the twins." Dulcet pointed to the screen. "Look. See this number here?"

Relena, Cathy and the bards leaned in. Across the table, Tama and Ria broke off their terse conversation and craned their necks to see better.

"This is the measure of the hormone Darien and Walker's bodies secrete to speed up their healing process. It's called thertosine, not that it matters. See this? It's Darien's numbers. Those numbers approximately represent the normal rate of thertosine secretion into the bloodstream at any time."

"Your point being?"

"I'm getting to it, Tama. Be patient. Now, see Walker's numbers?"

Ria squinted at the screen. "They're way lower."

"Very good." Dulcet reached out and patted the red-haired Healer on the head, earning himself a black look. "Now what does this mean?"

"It means…that he's saving his energy for other things?" Relena said slowly.

"Correct. But what else does it mean?"

Gaelin sucked in a sharp breath. Unconsciously his arms tightened around Cathy's body. "It means that Walker doesn't plan on needing a reason to heal himself." He pulled Cathy closer. "He's going to eliminate all potential threats."

"Oh, my God." Declan's eyes widened as his brother's words sunk in. "Walker's not going to let anyone on the base live, is he?"

Slowly, sadly, Dulcet nodded. "Black Hood bases are almost entirely automated to save the hassle of having too many witness around, so there shouldn't be too many people to evacuate, but there's always a few who are to damn sure of Black Hood's abilities to solve each and every threat that comes their way. As sure as I live, they're going to ignore the evacuation order and if Walker finds them, he'll kill them without question."

"Was there ever a doubt?" All heads turned to regard the black-haired man as he strode towards the table, heavy booted feet making no concession for the limbs of others who held the misfortune of ending up below them, his long coat slapping at their faces. Roth faced the small group, the silver pendant at his throat winking nastily, his black currant eyes gazing hatefully at nothing. Mackie trailed meekly behind him, nervously apologising to those who were stepped on for the actions of his apparent associate. The younger man flipped a greasy lock from his shoulder and spat on what little amount of floor was still left bare. "Black Hood killed all those other innocent hostages without a second glance, so why wouldn't one of their own return the favour? An eye for and eye is all it is." He sniffed. "Let the freak kill them all. Let him drink all the blood he wants. Maybe if we're lucky, someone will end up killing him and all this crazy shit'll end." Roth laughed raucously and abruptly left, all eyes staring hatefully at his back, leaving Mackie to cry a stuttered apology before trotting after him.

A clatter caused the people surrounding them to stare as Tama wordlessly stood and left the table, bloody murder playing dangerously in each step. Ria stayed where she was, her shoulders hunched, her eyes haunted. From where she sat, Relena could all but see the Healer relive every memory of her brother; every ball game, every practical joke, every hug and kiss before bedtime, and hold them up one by one against the newly-made profile of an indifferent killer. Obviously Roth's pointless mission to arouse their anger had been carried out without a hitch.

The group was silent a while.

"We can't stop him from here, can we?" Declan asked finally, jiggling the now-fussing baby with little success of comforting her.

"I don't even think Mira and the wizards can stop him now." Her head in her hands, Ria's voice was hollow and dry. "Walker's always been a stubborn ass that way. He'll not stop until either Misty and the boys are returned or the people responsible are dead."

Relena consulted her watch. "Fifteen minutes left."

"Look!" a bodiless voice cried from the mass of people, barely reaching above the combined voices of everyone else there. "The wizards and the girl are entering the Ring!"

His head in his hands, Dulcet moaned. "Of course. They're going to help him."

Declan shook his head. "I doubt that. They're going to try to keep Walker under control. Gaelin and I are required to do that sort of thing if ever Walker got out of control with his powers. It's a simple plan, but simple plans tend to be the most effective sometimes. This is the first time it's ever been carried out, though. They're going to serve as distractions rather than helpers. They'll try to pull in what little rein they still have on him."

"We're really going to see them again, aren't we?" Cathy said wistfully. Gaelin moved her into his lap and hugged her close. "They're going to be here soon."

"Yeah." Relena bit her lip and hugged her knees to her chest. They were really going to come back. Her friends were going to be back and everything would be okay. Relena was sure it would be. She had seen the ex-pilots endure capture after capture and watched as every time they bounced back before the bandages came off. Misty would be upset, and understandably so, but the pilots would be able to bring her around and being home again would do her a world of good. Everything was going to be okay. Relena consulted her watch again. Ten minutes left to go. Sighing, Relena let her memory wander, allowing her mind to reacquaint itself with her lost companions….

"What are you doing?"

Relena looked up from her ice cream at the sound of Heero's voice. They were sitting at a table at the very same ice cream parlour Walker, Amy, Misty and Duo had visited on their first day at St. Mark's school. A scoop each of Rollo and coffee ice cream sat before Relena and she stirred it with the air of a girl on a vitally important mission. Heero had –of course- ordered nothing, save for an untouched paper cup of water, contenting himself with keeping the place under constant watch. Even as he spoke, the Perfect Soldier's eyes did not remain on any one spot for more than a moment. The question was unabashed, but not asked unkindly.

Relena put down her spoon. "What?"

Heero glanced at her, then let his eyes rove on. "I thought you would have been trained out of playing with your food at an early age, princess."

"Vice foreign minister, thank you very much," Relena sniffed jokingly. "I've done this since I was a kid. You get two flavours and mix them together so they sort of mesh. It's good almost every time."

Heero gave her a Look and went on scanning the area.

Sighing, Relena dipped up a creamy spoonful and stuffed it into Heero's mouth. The Perfect Soldier's eyes went wide and stopped on a point over his girlfriend's shoulder. For over a minute, he sat, stock still, eyes trained over her shoulder so hard, Relena was sure she could feel the heat from his burning gaze. Finally, after watching him for longer than she could bear, she turned and looked at what held Heero's gaze so raptly. The sight of the front ice cream counter greeted her, announcing over the flavour board that Tuesday was free topping day. She looked back at Heero, who gave her a slow and –could it be?- shy smile.

"Do you think mint chocolate chip would go with black cherry?"

They spent the next hour buying kiddie cups to see what would taste best. They came to no conclusions, but it soon became clear that no matter what the combination, vanilla ice cream seemed to go with everything, and that the mere notion of pistachio ice cream was a bad idea to begin with. Nervously, Relena checked her watch. Seven minutes. Around her the rest of the Keep inhabitants were getting noticeably antsy.

"What's all the noise for?" Relena poked her head into Duo and Heero's room, wincing as another whining squeal offended her ears. A squeal of a different sort sounded somewhere else in the house. Relena withdrew her head and watched as a terrified grey streak shot past her and rocketed down the hall. She poked her head in again. "Xiao's going ape shit out here!"

Duo smirked at her. He and Misty were sitting on his bed, a poor, defenceless acoustic guitar lying between them. Judging by Misty's pained look and Xiao's frightened yowls, which now came echoing in from the kitchen area, Duo's guitar lessons were not going well.

"You know if Belle was home right now, she'd kill you for using that kind of language." The braided boy shot her a saucy grin.

"Yeah, true," Relena conceded. "But if Wufei was home right now, he'd kill you twice as fast for turning Xiao into a cute fuzzy torpedo."

Duo shrugged, only mildly hurt by being shot down so quickly. "Misty's teaching to play the guitar."

"Trying to, anyway." Misty picked up the guitar and idly began picking out scales. "See, it's like that. Nothing to it."

The Great Shinigami took the guitar and promptly botched it on the first note. He actually snarled at the offending instrument and thrust it away like a dead fish. "Forget it. Maybe I'd have better luck with the ocarina or slide whistle or something." He suddenly perked up. "Heyyyy! D'you think I could play one of those moonshine type jugs with the three X's on the side?"

Relena giggled. "Oh, yeah. You'd be a real hit at hoe-downs."

"You think so?"

"Not really."

Sighing, the red-haired bard finagled her way into her boyfriend's lap and took up the guitar again. "Once more from the top, Duo. I'm not leaving this spot until you get this right."

Strong arms wrapped around the tiny frame while nimble fingers worked their way under her arms. Over her laughter, Duo murmured into Misty's ear so that Relena had to strain to hear him –not that she was trying to, of course.

"You act as though that's a bad thing, baby."

Five minutes.

"You guys haven't got any shame, you know that?"

Trowa and Kari surfaced just long enough to give Relena a pair of distracted looks before getting back to the business at hand. The former Vice Foreign Minister rolled her eyes and moved to the armchair, leaving the pair to dominate the couch as much as they damn well pleased. Which they promptly did.

"You're blocking the TV!"

Kari gave her a sweet smile. Can I help it if we still have lipgloss to test out?

"Oh, my lord, not that again!" Relena moaned, putting her head in her hands. "You guys wore that little joke out days ago. Can't you just let it die?"

Trowa's lips wore a slight raspberry sheen, which flashed slightly as he spoke. "You're just jealous because Heero didn't think of it first." He licked his lips thoughtfully. "I think I like this one."

You sure?

"No."

More testing, then.

"You guys are really enjoying yourselves aren't you?" Relena huffed. She moved to take a sip from an unguarded Coke can on the coffee table, looked at the tangle of lips and limbs on the couch and thought better of it. "Do you guys plan on evolving gills or something to facilitate your little marathon?"

"Mock me not," Trowa brought his head up again, breathing hard. This sort of prolonged activity was a lot more strenuous than it looked, apparently. "I am merely doing my part in the name of research."

Yes. Kari looked over her shoulder at Relena and treated her to one of her feral grins. Research. Very…exhaustive research. It's a lot of fun. You should try it.

"Oh, yeah?" Relena raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, go for it." Trowa shot her a decidedly roguish look. "If anything, you'll end up with a great workout."

"I'll bet," Relena said, suddenly getting up walking thoughtfully from the room in search of Heero, a small smile creeping onto her lips.

As much as she hated to admit it, they had been so right. Another watch consultation was performed. Three minutes and a bit left.

"Wanna go higher this time, buddy?"

"Yeah!" Shinigami-kun's eyes grew wide as the blond Arab executed an exaggerated wind up and gently tossed the little reaper into the air.

With a minuscule "fwp" Shinigami-kun's wings snapped open and he drifted smoothly onto Trowa's bed. Immediately he was up and about three inches from Quatre's nose.

"Again! Again!"

Quatre grinned and picked the reaper up. Then, he stopped and turned suddenly to Relena who sat next to him on his bed, watching the performance.

"Care to try?" He offered the tiny body, which grinned winsomely at her.

Reflexively, Relena shied back. "Oh, no, I couldn't. I'd just end up throwing him too hard or bouncing him off the wall or something horrible like that."

A sceptical pale eyebrow rose at her. "May I remind you about Wufei's trusty flyswatter, Relena dear?"

"C'mon, pleeeeeease!" Shinigami-kun had now taken to wriggling like a four-year-old with an abnormally small bladder. "I can take it! Really!"

"You sure?"

Both man and reaper nodded.

"Okay, fine." Relena picked up the tiny, warm body and watched him tuck into a tiny ball. "Ready?"

Shinigami-kun mumbled something into his shirt, which Relena took to be a "yes". She wound up and threw, hurling the tiny bundle into a graceful arc that ended with him landing on the bed and bouncing a few times. Abruptly he rolled over and clutched at his stumpy little leg

"Agghh! You broke it! My ankle! You broke my ankle!"

Relena was off the bed like a shot. "Don't move, Shi-kun!" She looked over and wondered wildly why Quatre was still just sitting there.

Shinigami-kun unfolded himself and grinned a jack'o'lantern grin at her. "Gotcha."

Relena sat heavily down again. "Don't do that to me!"

Sighing, Quatre ruffled her hair. "I would have felt if he'd hurt anything. He's just trying to scare you. Kids love to do that sort of thing to people." He grinned and rolled his eyes. "That would be why I'm glad I never had any younger siblings."

"You're a liar," Relena teased. The children at the Keep –human and otherwise alike- adored Quatre, who regaled them with silly stories from his childhood and was always up for a wild, breathless game of tag. Also, due to his empathic talents, he was always able to find the sad kid in the group and gently steer the their activities into something that would make him or her smile, guaranteed.

"Maybe." Quatre put his knees to his chin in thought. "But I probably wouldn't have met you guys if I did."

"Huh?"

A small, sad smile crept onto Quatre's face as he wound up and tossed a squealing Shinigami-kun at Trowa's bed again. "I would have never done the things I did during the war if I knew there was someone so innocent watching them."

Trust Quatre to be prosaic in the middle of a nice thought. Still, Relena had been forced to admit he was sadly correct. She risked another glance at her watch, afraid of what it would tell her. Less than two minutes.

"Hey, Wufei," Relena chirped, popping her head into the Chinese boy's room. It was the smallest in the house, save for the mudroom and a few of the smaller closets. Actually, it had once been a closet, but Gil and Belle used to take in borders a frighteningly long time ago and the closet had been converted into a passable bedroom which simply hadn't changed over the years. Luckily, Wufei's Spartan ways befitted the room perfectly, so there weren't any complaints from his end.

As Relena poked her head in, Wufei had been shaking loose the last few drops tea from a large teapot into his cup. Casually, he laid the pot down and let his hands drape over what looked to be his philosophy homework.

"How good are you at history?"

The Chinese boy smiled. "It was my major on L5. What kind do you want? Chinese? European?"

"Roman."

He snorted. "You could have at least bothered me with a challenge."

"Yeah, yeah." Relena pulled up and chair and sat down close to Wufei. It still surprised her that he did not pull away like he would have before. Apparently he was relaxing here more than she realised. "The order of the day is the reign of Emperor Caligula."

"Crazy and paranoid. He had the earmarks of every great leader. Present company excluded." He said it with a minute smile, but paper crinkled beneath his hands as his fingers tightened at the memories of death, destruction and arrogant politics.

"Hey, hey, stop that. You'll wreck your homework." Risking instant wrath, Relena placed a comforting palm over the back of Wufei's hand and squeezed gently. As she did, his fingers shifted, showing part of a rough pencil sketch of what looked like a girl's face. "What's this?"

"Nothing," With that, the Solitary Dragon crumpled up the paper and dropped it into the trash. "Now are you going to tell me what you want or shall I just get back to my homework?"

"I had no idea you were such an artist Wufei." Indeed, though the lines were hurried and rough, the overall picture was actually quite good.

"Don't be foolish. I said it was nothing. Now either crack the books or get the hell out."

Sighing, Relena plopped her book in her lap and flipped to the appropriate pages. Wufei grabbed a pencil, which he stuck absently in his ponytail and they began to study. Eventually, though, the recently emptied pot of tea decided to come back into the picture and Wufei quickly left the room. Before his footsteps had even died down, Relena was up and uncrumpling the sketch.

The subject was a girl of no more than fourteen years, though she seemed younger because her hair was clubbed into tight pigtails. Her clothing was unadorned, almost drab and from her dress and features Relena could tell she was Chinese.

"Her name was Meiran." The sudden sound Wufei's voice forced Relena to bite back a scream. When had he come back? The Chinese boy took the sheet from her and began to finger the edges. "She was my wife."

"I know."

He shook his head. "Enough of this. Back to work."

"Have you ever spoken about her to anyone?" Relena asked, mesmerised by the almost tender way Wufei touched the picture. Why wasn't he getting angry?

"No." He spat the word, clenching his fists. Then, in a move that shocked Relena to the very core, the Solitary Dragon threw himself onto his bed and covered his face with shaking hands. "No. I haven't."

Quietly, Relena neatly stacked the textbooks and sat next to the silently shaking boy. Only the picture remained in the open now, staring defiantly at them from behind the faint blue lines stamped into the loose-leaf. Relena's hand was warm as it came up and gripped Wufei's shoulder in a comforting way and her breath was soft as she leaned over to whisper in his ear, lest others walking the halls should hear.

"Tell me about her."

And, haltingly at first, but not without a measure of pride, Wufei did.

"Time's up!" someone shouted, snapping Relena from her reverie. Around her, people were scrambling to see Walker Broman slowly, methodically snapping the collars from the throats of Mira and the wizards. The metallic tings echoed in the now silent dining room. In the stands, barely any people remained. Relena's stomach tugged in relief and horror as she saw a witness woodenly holding a video camera to his face, capturing the event as Walker drew his finger vertically through the air, slashing an opening in the fabric of time and space and calmly walked through.

*****