A/N: Thanks for reading! Many reviewers have expressed confusion about the writing style. You have my deepest apologies for the confusion and I hope this chapter is clearer. And for those who asked, the chapter title of chapter two referred to the blurred line between the conscious and subconscious.

There have been several reviews thanking me for my working but also asking about my WIPs. As I said before, those WIPs will not be finished. This fic is my good-bye to 1xR writing, as I no longer have the time to write for the fandom. The chapters have already been written; I am spending time between chapters tweaking the new material for the next update.

Thanks to Morrighan, Laura, Vchanny, Minako-hime, and Duo's American Boxers for reviewing last chapter.you are all very inspiring!

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing. I am making no profit through the online distribution of this fic.

Chapter Rating: PG-13; for mature content

Categories: Drama, Angst, Romance

"An Ideal Match" By: Moonkitty

Chapter III "Rose Light"

"If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection." [1]

--Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

Heero comes to the slow realization that his eyes are open. He blinks blearily, wondering why everything around him is white. He does not know how long his body has been awake while his mind slept. He is lying flat on his back with his arms and legs spread out like a doll that has just been pushed over. His heart feels heavy. It's so heavy that he doubts he can sit up. He wonders if he is actually dead.

But he is not dead. He always believed death to be emptiness. There is no emptiness here, so he wonders if he could be alive. But he is not alive. He always believed life to be an overflowing of joyful feeling, where every sense is stretched to its limit and every emotion flutters in his chest like the wings of a hummingbird. He does not feel this either.

He hears something. A mutter. He turns his head. Heero sees a man lying beside him. The man does not move, but he stares at Heero with confused and curious eyes. He has placed one hand on his stomach and one on the floor beside him. There is a pink scar tracing a diagonal across the man's left cheek. His clothes have the cut of hospital clothing and rise and fall with every breath he takes. He looks like he has neglected to take care of his appearance for quite some time (his chin is unshaven and his hair is an uncombed mess) and his eyes are wide The light reflects off of those eyes strangely. There are oddities in his appearance as well. There are long scratches down the sides of the man's arms that appear self-inflicted. Heero looks to the likely cause of the scratches and finds that the man's finger and toenails have been recently trimmed very short. The pieces fall together. Heero realizes that he is sharing his room with a madman.

Heero sighs, and so does the man.

And then Heero realizes that he is looking at himself.

There isn't another person in this room, just a large mirror stretching across one whole wall. Heero unfocuses his eyes and looks at the glass of the mirror itself instead of his reflection. He sees shadows moving behind the glass. It is a one-way mirror. He is being observed.

I'm not being tortured like I thought, he tells himself, still staring into the mirror.

I've gone insane.

.

Doctor Inquiz, the man with a head like an unhatched egg, was working hard to find the elusive man named Doctor J, but what he found out so far about the man he sought was not to his liking. Doctor J, it seemed, was a scientist accredited for some of the most terrible inventions of the past three decades. He had become involved in the creation, design, and implementation of planet-destroying guns, the most advanced of mobile suits, bionic technology, and the latest genetic splicing break-throughs. Mixing that horrifying genius with strong political views and a lifelong determination to fix the problems in the world-well, Doctor Inquiz was not pleased with the result.

He sat at his desk shuffling the papers and making notes. The case of Heero Yuy had begun to consume the mild-mannered doctor. How could a boy raised by such a brilliant and terrifying scientist see the world? What could have happened to a person who had endured so much to have finally dragged him over the edge?

Doctor Inquiz expected to spend weeks searching for Doctor J. He believed he would need professional help to eventually locate and question the scientist.

He wasn't expecting the focus of his hunt to knock on his door one Sunday morning four days later.

.

I buy a paper at the local newsstand before I head out to visit the House of Commons, where Relena has been scheduled to give a speech on the virtue of strengthening economic ties with the colonies. The main page is splashed with news of talks, treaties, negotiations, disagreements, a murder, three robberies.and a suicide.

I stop flipping through the paper when I catch that headline. Dorothy Catalonia committed suicide last night. The article is brief, suggesting the motivation was related to Catalonia's shame of her family's military heritage and noting that the Foreign Minister was canceling a week's worth of business appointments to spend some time in mourning for her friend. There is going to be memorial service at a local church and Relena will be attending. I decide to go as well. I had known Catalonia during the war, and, even though I can't admit to ever liking her very much, her death does affect me. Dorothy had hated peace, but through her relationship with Relena, she changed.

It takes two buses and one long walk to finally reach Rose Chapel, but I manage to arrive just in time for the ceremony to begin. I feel pretty secure that I won't be recognized; I know that none of my war friends have the ability to shuttle down in time to attend the memorial. Relena will be the only one to recognize me-if I let her see me.

I file into the back row and listen to the priest give a short biography of Catalonia's life: her involvement in the war and White Fang, her atonement and instrumentality in the defeat of the Barton coup in AC 196, her constant regret of her naivety and the heritage of her family, and the lessons we all could learn from her. I soon find that I am more intent on examining the surreal quality of the light in the small chapel than listening to an old man who never knew Dorothy speak about her life.

Rose Chapel is named for its sole stained glass window above the chapel's heavy wood doors. The window is a rendering of a delicate blush-colored rose coming into blossom. The entering light, filtered by this window, paints the entire room with a spectrum of blood colored reds and subtle pinks.

"Dorothy's life and tragic death can serve as a reinforcement to the lesson you all should know. Your past can either be the weight that drags you down or the wings that set you free. Dorothy refused to let go of her guilt about her life before, and the only result of that was her early demise. Learn from you past so you won't end up repeating it."

I know I should be looking up at the priest, but my eyes are stuck on the slender white jar of Dorothy's cremated remains. My thoughts are interrupted when a slender blonde woman crosses my line of vision and stands, for a moment, between the jar of Dorothy's remains and myself. It is Relena, and she's crying. There's a paper in her hand, and I realize that she's about to deliver the eulogy. She doesn't go to the pulpit, as I expected, but stands close to Dorothy's jar, her fingers gently touching the lip. Her long hair is the color of sand and her eyes are the color of the sea, but under the light of the window the reds and pinks tangle in her hair and glow like the shifting wavelengths of light during a sunset over the ocean.

Crying doesn't make Relena more beautiful, but it does help her seem more human. It overpowers the ethereal quality of her face that makes her appear so much more mature than others her age. She now looks like what she is: a broken-hearted girl, "Dorothy Catalonia," she says softly, folding up the paper and putting it into her pocket, "was my friend. I." Relena trails off. Her brow furrows. Troubled thoughts dart across her mind like dragonflies skimming over a pond. Several people shift their weight in their chairs as the usually loquacious foreign minister struggles for words. Suddenly, the confusion drops from her face and she looks boldly out into the crowd, her chin tilted up and t defiant, "I want to say more. I want to deliver the praise Dorothy deserves, but I simply don't have the strength. Dorothy was my friend," Relena repeats with great conviction, her sea-colored eyes daring the crowd to look away, "and I will miss her."

Even more tears pool up in those eyes and then spill over, cutting a crystal path down the smooth curve of her cheeks. I watch Relena duck her head to hide them and return to her seat. I am not surprised that I did not spot her before. Her dress is modest, black with a tapered waist and a slightly flared out skirt ending at mid-calf, and her posture is very unassuming. But the image of her eyes, so soft and glittering when she spoke, sticks in my mind.

I think she has sensed the weight of my eyes upon her. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear in a nervous gesture. She turns slightly, glancing back into the farthest row away from the pulpit. Her eyes widen. She has seen me. She looks back to the altar, but contact has been made. We will meet later. All I have to do now is wait.

The funeral is brief and to the point. Few people cared for Dorothy in any way besides a person of power, so, while most are genuinely polite in conveying their condolences, there are very few tears except for Relena. Sometimes I think she is more alive than any other person in the universe. She feels more deeply than anyone I have ever known, and that depth of love and caring has pulled many people over to her side.

The chapel is small and old, and as we file out of it, a strange procession in black, I glance up at its sole window one more time The image of the rose is much less powerful on this side of the wall. Inside the chapel, its existence changes the entire room into a paradise of red. Outside of the chapel, it has no more significance than any other window to any other building.

I spot Relena speaking to several men in dark black business suits. She seems upset. She shakes her head once or twice, and then lifts her eyes in a seemingly cursory glance over the area as one of the men speaks. She spots me and nods imperceptibly. I make sure she sees me turn the corner and sink onto a park bench. The little crowd of people in black slowly drifts apart as taxis are summoned, appointments are remembered, and the memory of Dorothy begins to lose its power. I doubt that any of them will really remember today with any interest. Perhaps a funeral is actually a dead person's final attempt to be remembered, to imprint themselves on the living so that a little of them are left behind in the world they knew.

I let my eyes close for a moment as I try to summon up an image of Dorothy's face: the long white-blond hair, the ruthless ice-colored eyes, the peaked eyebrows, and smug expression. I wonder if her face had softened over the years after the war, if those cold eyes had melted like snow during the spring and if her hair had darkened as she left adolescence. I try to think of a Dorothy without a calculating grin, who could smile with joy instead of triumph, but my imagination comes up short.

"I couldn't believe you had come when I saw you." Relena says suddenly. I open my eyes and find her sitting beside me on the bench, small and tired in her modest black dress with eyes glittering like stars. She doesn't look like she's about to cry though. She's thinking, but I don't know what she's thinking about. She's not wondering why I am here; the only times I have ever visited her since the war ended have been spontaneous meetings such as these. Her next words have been chosen carefully, " Did you have a good shuttleflight?"

"As well as can be expected, I suppose," I say, but I know she's not listening to the answer, "What's wrong?"

She looks up at me, startled that I have seen through her. A blush touches her cheeks for an instant, "I'm sorry. There have been so many things happening lately and I-"she trails off, looking at me like she has seen me for the first time, "Heero," she says in a curious tone of voice, "Are you doing anything terribly important on Earth?"

"Not particularly."

"How long are you staying?"

"I don't know, why?"

"Heero, I need your help. Dorothy did not commit suicide. She was murdered."

Footnotes

[1] De Profundis was written in prison by England's greatest playwright of his time, Oscar Wilde, who had been imprisoned for his love of another man. The excerpt I included at the top of the chapter captures Heero's state of mind. I have included an extended quote of the passage for further reference. I think you will find the description of Wilde's friend to be very similar to Relena.

"I remember talking once on this subject to one of the most beautiful personalities I have ever known: a woman, whose sympathy and noble kindness to me, both before and since the tragedy of my imprisonment, have been beyond power and description; one who has really assisted me, though she does not know it, to bear the burden of my troubles more than any one else in the whole world has, and all through the mere fact of her existence, through her being what she is - partly an ideal and partly an influence: a suggestion of what one might become as well as a real help towards becoming it; a soul that renders the common air sweet, and makes what is spiritual seem as simple and natural as sunlight or the sea: one for whom beauty and sorrow walk hand in hand, and have the same message.

On the occasion of which I am thinking I recall distinctly how I said to her that there was enough suffering in one narrow London lane to show that God did not love man, and that wherever there was any sorrow, though but that of a child, in some little garden weeping over a fault that it had or had not committed, the whole face of creation was completely marred. I was entirely wrong. She told me so, but I could not believe her. I was not in the sphere in which such belief was to be attained to. Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world. I cannot conceive of any other explanation. I am convinced that there is no other, and that if the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. Pleasure for the beautiful body, but pain for the beautiful soul. "

I appreciate all comments and criticisms.