Dear Readers,

Thank you for all of the reviews so far; you've been a great help to me, especially Silence! I personally want to thank you for being so upfront and honest with what you think of my work, it really means a lot to me, I didn't even realize that I had that one typo in there! Ravaging, ravishing… the spelling was so close I didn't even notice it when I read through it! Also, I promise that I won't butcher the spellings of words when Mrs. Jones is talking anymore. The only reason I did it to begin with was to poke fun that the people who do shorthand writing with their fics all of the time. Basically, I was just adding fuel to the Pet-peeve fire. I would also like to thank Chelsea (forgive me if I got your name spelled wrong!) for aiding me in the more technical terming of the NON-EXISTENT (as of yet, GW is, after all, set over 400 years in the future so it could possibly still be created) drug in this chapter.

Anyway, without further ado! The next chapter of "Never, Ever, After."

~Prinder

Never, Ever, After

By: Prinder

Warnings: Slight swearing and the not-yet-invented-drug usage.

Rating: PG-13 just to be safe.

Summery: Relena really should be more careful about what she wishes for…

Disclaimer: *Grumble, grumble* *sigh* …I do not own Gundam Wing, nor will I ever own it. I am just a poor, pitiful wannabe-author that isn't worth suing, so, if you please, just don't.

"Denotes speech."
'Denotes thought.'

Denotes writing.

"Denotes over a phone or any other form of com-system"

(Denotes my interruptions.)

Chapter Three

While Heero and Duo were spending the rest of their day at the Cinq Preventer base, Relena was spending hers in her room, in bed, or, at lest she was trying to.

"Elena, please, I'm tired, I'm moody, and I have a headache like you wouldn't believe, I just can't do it today…" Relena whimpered as her secretary peeled the soft, comforting, down blankets off of her sleep-deprived body and hauled her out of the bed and into the bathroom to take a shower.

"Come on now Miss Relena, you don't really expect me to fall for that one, do you? My little Leroy, whose only six years old mind you, could come up with a better lie then that!" Came Mrs. Jones drawled reply from the other side of the door.

"That's not surprising, seeing as I'm not lying!" Relena grumbled as she stripped out of her sleep-shirt and shorts before turning on the hot water.

"Don't think that I didn't hear that young lady! You've got ten minutes and then you have to be downstairs for breakfast or I'll be coming back up here to get you!" Mrs. Jones shouted before closing Relena's bedroom door and going to help Pagan set the table.

Relena let out a sigh of pure bliss as the steaming hot jets of water from the showerhead attacked her tired and sore muscles for a moment before she reached for the liquid soap and sponge and began to lather up when her videophone rang, making her drop the two objects, jump out of the shower, grab her magenta colored bathrobe and make it over to the ringing annoyance by the time the answering machine picked up, saying: "Hello, this is Relena's fridge, her answering machine is broken and so I'm standing in for it until she gets it fixed so, if you please say your name and number really slowly, I'll write it on this paper and leave it under one of my magnets, thank you." Relena rolled her eyes and made a silent mental note to change that before the end of the week as she pressed the 'Call' button. "Hello?"

"Relena, Darling, there you are! I was starting to get worried about you! How are you feeling today?" Joshua asked as his face appeared on the screen.

"Like hell." Came her reply as she turned and went back to the bathroom to finish her shower.

"Well, yes, I would say so, what with the attitude that you just gave me! Care to define just how you feel like hell?" he asked as he watched her go, somewhat grateful that the volume control on her end was still set at its highest from last night.

"I'm tired, moody, cranky, and have a migraine the size of L4," she shouted back.

"Haven't you been taking the painkillers that my doctor proscribed for you?" Joshua asked.

"I ran out." She replied as she shut off the water, remembering when the migraines first started; her doctor, Kayla Conner, was on vacation and Relena had no desire to visit some unknown doctor that could quite possibly poison her with god-knows-what, all without her realizing it and Joshua had offered to take her down to his doctor, whom, he assured her, was as safe as mother hen is to her egg, prescribed the medication to her and she had been taking it ever since.

"Why didn't you tell me before? I could have easily gotten more for you! I'll be right over later today with a refill, got it?"

"Yes, thank you Josh, you're being very sweet." she said softly as she walked out of the bathroom, her bathrobe tied securely around her waist and a towel wrapped around the top of her head.

"Now don't you worry about a thing, Relena, I'll take good care of you. I have to leave now for work and whatnot, I'll stop by your office later, alright?" he asked as he stood up and began to put various different kinds of papers into what looked to be his briefcase.

"Okay, I'll see you then Joshua."

"Okay dearest, I love you, bye."

"Bye." she replied before disconnecting the line just as Mrs. Jones opened her bedroom door and walked in without knocking.

"ELENA! Don't you knock? What if I was getting--"

"What are you doing, Miss Relena? You're going to be late, you aren't even dressed yet!" Mrs. Jones scolded, effectively cutting the youth off, as she stalked over to Relena's closet and pulled out the first suit she saw, a peach colored dress suit with matching high heels, and shoved it into the younger woman's hands and pushed her into the bathroom, again, along with pantyhose, white blouse, underclothes and her makeup bag. "You have exactly five minutes before you have to be at the front door to your office, I suggest that you hurry up and get ready!"

"I'm hurrying, I'm hurrying!" Relena replied as she fumbled with the fine, silk covered, buttons on the blouse while and groaned aloud, thinking, 'It's going to be one of those days, isn't it?'

Three minutes later, Relena and Elena rushed out to the waiting pink limo and finished the last minute makeup job in the ride over to the office and got into the Vice-foreign Minister's waiting room at exactly Five-fifty-nine AM, one minute early.

"Elena," Relena began, after catching her breath, "Remind me shoot the person that invented Mondays the next time I see him?"

"Not," Elena gasped, "Not, if, I, don't, get him first."

That evening, after three hours of paperwork, at least eight hours of meetings, lunch, and the usual dose of morons and stupid questions later, Joshua stopped in at close to nine-thirty to drop off Relena's medication and to give Mrs. Jones a migraine of her own; the poor old woman was never fond of her employer's boyfriend, in fact, every few of the Vice-foreign Minister's loyal employees were fond of Mr. Joshua Muller, it wasn't that he ever did anything wrong, that they knew about, or that his personality grated on their nerves, he was actually quite pleasant to be around, it was more like they felt as if something just was not right about the young man that demanded so much of Miss Relena's time and attentions.

"Now, Sweetheart, I have to get home and get some sleep; I have a busy day tomorrow! Goodbye!" Joshua said as he skipped his way merrily out of the office and closing the door behind him.

"Goodbye Josh!" Relena called out just before his silhouette disappeared from the textured, smoky, glass window that was set within the solid maple door that led back out into the hall.

"Miss, we should be leaving soon ourselves; it's already after hours." Mrs. Jones said as she reached under her desk and pulled out her umbrella; it was starting to rain outside and she didn't want either of them to get wet.

"Yes, yes of course, let's go right away." Relena said as she tucked her prescription into her briefcase and helping her secretary carry some of her things, mainly her purse, coat, and notebook, out to the limo where Pagan was waiting.

"Did you have a good day today ladies?" He asked kindly.

"Sure did, but, right now, nothing would be better in the world then to be back home with some of your famous beef and vegetable soup." Relena replied in a whisper as she climbed into the back seat of the limo behind Mrs. Jones and shut the door behind them.

"Right away, Miss Relena." he replied with a smile, wondering how she knew what was what he was making that night, and sped off to the Peacecraft mansion where dinner awaited.

*****

"So, how do you plan on pulling it off?" Duo asked as he munched loudly on some sour cream and onion favored potato chips as he sat on the top bunk, looking down at the young man with greenish-moss brown hair as he typed away at the laptop in front of him that he had set up on the desk. Duo got no response.

Heero looked up and behind him at the digital clock above the dorm-room's front door, it read: Ten-twenty-one. Heero stood up, shut off his computer, grabbed his blue denim jacket and made his way to the door.

"You're going already? Don't you think it's kinda risky?" Duo questioned as he jumped down from his bunk to join his friend.

"I can handle it."

"I sure hope so man, 'cause, let me tell you, getting yourself captured by Preventer Guards isn't exactly a great way to impress a lady, ya know?" Duo said jokingly as Heero left the Preventer dormitories in a slow jog, leaving Duo behind to have some quality time with his subconscious.

While Duo was busy thinking, Heero had made it out into the parking lot and used the keys that he had skillfully smuggled out of the dormitory, without Duo noticing, to start Preventer Two's car and speed off to "Valley road" where the estate in question was located.

After having parked two blocks away from the target, Heero shut off the engine and locked the SUV up before pocketing the keys and sprinting over to the twelve-foot-high brick wall that lead into the Peacecraft estate and, after checking to be sure he wouldn't land right in the middle of a dozen well-armed soldiers on the other side, he scaled the stone structure and grabbed for an ironically well-placed tree branch that just so happened to have been within jumping distance. Heero made a note to have the tree cut down later; it made things way to easy for someone to get past the two, sleeping, guards at the bottom of the wall.

Upon ensuring that the two men wouldn't be waking up anytime soon, Heero quickly bypassed the mansion's gardens and had soon made it to, what Preventer Intelligence reports had said was at least, Relena's southern bedroom window. 'Stage one complete.' Heero thought with a smirk when he had confirmed that Relena was in the downstairs dinning room, eating with her secretary, Mrs. Elena Jones, and her butler, Pagan Fuller before silently making his way up the rose-and-thorn-covered trellis and into her bedroom where he would wait.

He wouldn't have to wait long because, not much more then an hour later, Relena opened her bedroom door and, after telling Pagan how much she enjoyed the meal, she walked into her room and reached for the small lamp that was on her writing desk, which stood nearby the door, and turned it on, sending forth a low, faded, yellow glow. Fortunately for Heero, he had chosen one of the few places in the Relena's sanctuary that the light didn't penetrate, the bathroom, right behind linen "closet" which was really not much more then a large, cream colored, dresser.

"Well, what's taking you? I'm sure that if you managed to get this far, my guards wouldn't be able to stop you. So, why haven't you pulled the trigger yet?" Relena said as she sat down in front of her vanity and began to calmly run a soft bristle brush through her hair.

Apparently, it didn't matter how well he was hidden, she could still tell when someone else was in here. Heero stepped from out of the alcove and into the light of the room, the bright green of his colored contracts looking strangely off to him somehow in the reflection of Relena's vanity mirror.

"At least you aren't afraid to show your face, some are just to cowardly to at least let me know who my would-be killers are." She said, as she turned to face him before standing up and walking closer.

He had nothing to say in reply.

"So, who are you? No, wait! Let me guess…" she said, raising her hand to silence him when he opened him mouth in an attempt to reply. "Let me see here… tall, muscular but still lean, straight back, perfect posture, calloused hands… you used to be a soldier." she said as she walked around him, inspecting every inch of his body with her eyes as she continued with, "You weren't from Oz or the Alliance; you look too young, and you couldn't have been training because then you wouldn't have as many scars… so that means that you must have been one of the rebels, it's either that or there was another Gundam Pilot that I wasn't aware of," she paused to laugh at her small joke, "You dye your hair so that means you either like to, or, you have something to hide and, if that is the case, it makes me wonder if that is even your real eye color… I think I know who you are, Heero Yuy."

Her answer was only met with an intensely nerve-wrecking silence.

"Hum… I must have guessed wrong, very well, who are--"

"How did you know?" He said, cutting her off.

"…What? How did I know? You mean I was right? Oh I already knew that it was you; you're the only person in the universe that can make the hairs on my head stand on end." She joked before turning serious and adding, "So, what do you want?"

"Nothing."

"Come now, you don't really expect me to believe that, do you? Out with it, I know better then anyone that you and the others only come out to see me in person when one of you wants me to do, see, or hear, something, so what is it?" she demanded.

"I don't want anything."

"So why are you hear? Oh, wait, never mind, I already know…" she glared before turning around and going back to her vanity and returning to her seat in front of it, saying, "Don't waste your time; it really doesn't matter if I live or not, in fact, I almost wished you came here to finish me off, it would be just about par."

"What?" He said, his eyes narrowed as his eyebrows went up, a sign that he confused.

"Don't you get it? If you aren't here to kill me yourself, then just do me a favor, go. Home. Heero. I don't where your home is, and frankly, I just don't care anymore. You have your life, I have mine, and I'm getting very sick and tired of them crossing." she said as she reached into her briefcase and pulled out the bottle of pills; her headache was starting to come back, and in full force.

Heero managed to catch a glimpse of the label and had the bottle snatched out of her hand before she could even get the lid off. "What's this?" He demanded.

"Gee, Heero, it looks like medicine to me!" Relena replied in a sarcastic tone.

"A narcotic?"

"What?" she gasped as she grabbed Heero's hand that held the drug in question and read the label: Serin. In the year Doctor Phillip Crofter, a resident scientist at D.M.F Technology, stationed on L4, created AC One-twenty-seven a drug. Serin, also known as the "Haber Drug", named after Fritz Haber, the creator of Hitler's Mustered Gas that would have won the war of the Pre-colony Nineteen-thirties. Was originally used to calm out-of-control patents that, after being taken off of the drug, became "moody" and "uneasy". Most subjects killed themselves after being under the influence of it for too long. It was banned from usage in the year AC One-thirty-six.

"Who gave you these?" Heero questioned, snapping Relena out of her, shock induced, daze.

"What…? Oh… Joshua's Doctor proscribed them to me for my Migraines…" she said as she slowly dropped back down into her the backless, cushioned, chair in front of the vanity.

"How long have you been taking them?"

"I started taking them a month ago but I've been out of them for a week now; the only reason I have them now is because Joshua had just given me the refill today... Oh god! I can't believe I didn't realize it before hand, I have to tell Joshua, he doesn't know what happened!" she cried as she jumped up and ran for her videophone on her nightstand to call the man in question but was stopped when Heero grabbed her wrist just as she hand was about to press the "speed dial". "Heero! Let go!" she said as she attempted to yank her arm free, "Joshua might be in grave danger, you have to let me tell him!" she cried.

"Relena stop it! Think for a moment; he was the one who sent you to this person to begin with. For all we know he could have been in league with the 'doctor' all along!"

"Shut up! You don't know what you're talking about! Joshua might not be perfect but he would never try to poison me!"

"How can you be so sure, Relena, how? Tell me, how do you know for sure that he didn't just drug you so that you would fall into some scheme of his? One of Haber's side affects is the inability to think clearly. How can you be sure that he hasn't brainwashed you into believing him to be everything that you've said?" He demanded only to receive a slap to the side of his face, courtesy of Relena's hand.

"How dare you accuse him of anything? You don't have any proof! He could merely be an innocent pawn in all of this and you're already condemning him for something that he may not have known about!" Relena seethed as she rubbed the slightly tingling flesh on the palm of her hand, glaring up at him angrily.

"Why aren't you listening?" Heero asked in a deathly quiet tone as he turned his head to slowly face her again, his cheek held a red palm print where she had struck him. "Can't you see that I'm trying you get you to at least think about your actions before you do something stupid?"

"Like what? Trust someone that I don't know? I think I already learned that with the drugging episode! Why don't you just go crawl back into whatever hole you came out of and stay there this time? I'm finally starting to get my life in order, I have a steady boyfriend, work is running smoothly, my brother and his wife are doing well in dome three… and, until five days ago, right when I start thinking that everything is going right in the world, the dome gets attacked, five of my coworkers, all of which I thought I knew well, are arrested and charged with being with the Titans, the ones responsible for the attack, and I end up not only assisting in their capture, I end up picking up their paperwork and find out that they had been at it for years! Years of dirty dealings and god-knows what else! Then you show up, after almost three years of having no contact with you, you appear in my bedroom and tell me that the man, that tells me that he loves me every day, is out to control and KILL ME! If you think that I haven't learned anything from this then you are sorely mistaken! I've learned that whenever things seem to be at their worst, you always show up to rub salt into the wound even more then it already has!"

"Relena, I'm not--"

"Oh stuff it Heero!" she said as she pushed him away roughly and managing to make it into her closet and slam the door shut behind her in an effort to keep herself from crying in front of him.

"Relena? Relena! Open the door!" Heero said as he tried to turn the knob, only to find it locked from the inside. To say that he wasn't curious as to why she had a lock on the inside of the door was an understatement.

"Just leave, Heero, leave and never come back!" she said, sounding surprisingly calm, considering that she was ruining her makeup, again.

"No. You can't stay in there forever Relena." came Heero's muffled, but still very clear, reply from the other side of the door.

"Do you want to bet on that?" Relena challenged.

Heero blinked in mild surprise at that statement, not because it was unusual for her, but more because of the fact she had locked herself in a room where there was no water or food and she sounded as though she could survive in there. With a sigh that signaled that he was more then just a little bit annoyed, though, he had to admit, he did find it rather amusing on some level, he said, "Seeing as you are in a closet, yes, I would bet on it."

"I don't care! I don't want to see ever again!"

"Relena you aren't making things easy for me!"

"TOUGH!"

"Relena, fine, if this is what you want then fine, you can stay in there all you want; I'm not leaving until we talk." he said as he walked away from the door and found a comfortable place to sit on Relena's bed to wait her out. 'All she need is some time to get her frustrations and what is left of the drugs out of her system and then she'll be back to normal.' he convinced himself when he heard her start screaming and what sounded like ripping her wardrobe into shreds.

After two hours of hearing nothing but the sounds of her having one of the worst tamper tantrums he had ever known, which wasn't really that many when he thought about it, the closet suddenly went quiet after the sound of something going "thump" onto the carpeted floor. Slowly, Heero got up from his place in the center of her bed and, after crawling over to the edge of it and getting off, walked over to the closet door and began to pick the lock, silently thanking Duo for showing him how to do it without the use of dynamite.

Upon opening the door he felt his ribs tighten painfully at the sight; Relena was curled up into the fetal position on the floor, fast asleep, with practically every outfit torn and ripped up beyond recognition, most of them he vaguely recalled seeing her wearing in TV while others he had never thought he would have expected her to wear, such as a pair of faded blue jeans and lose fitting lama-wool sweater.

Looking more closely at the exhausted girl, he discovered that she must have been crying the whole time she was in there as her whole face was a puffy tearstained red, even in her sleep she looked upset; as her lower lip was jutted out in a sorrowful pout, in one of her hands she held what looked to be a piece of glittery-gold cloth, also marred beyond any form of identification.

Carefully, after assuring himself that she wouldn't wake up on him, he tucked one of his arms under her upper back and the other under her legs and slowly maneuvered her out of the walk-in closet and into her bed where she was sure to sleep more comfortably and then set himself to work with cleaning up the mess.

"But, but why?" was a question that was heard an hour or so later as Heero was silently tying up the last trash bag.

"You didn't mean it." Came his reply once he had finished his task and walked over to the right hand side of the bed.

"You don't know that… for all you know I could have meant every word of what I said…" she murmured, turning her face so as to hide it in her pillow.

"You're right." He replied, making her gasp and look up at him with watery eyes, "But I think you know differently." he added.

"I don't know what to think anymore, I honestly don't, I don't even know what got into me… well, actually I do know what got into me, but that's not what I mean what I mean… what I mean to say is, I didn't know what was going on with me until was too late… I can't do this alone anymore, truth be told, I never could to begin with; that's why I started seeing Joshua to begin with. That was always what it was about in a way, I needed someone to be there, someone who would help me… just goes to show how poor a judge of character I am!" She explained, "He has a violent temper you know, when he doesn't like what he hears, I thought that all he needed was someone to care, someone to love him unconditionally, like the way that I am with--" she cut herself off and shook her head, "it's nothing… forget it… He never hit me, no, he never did that, if he had I'm sure that I would have left long ago; he would hurt you with his words, beat you down with them, try to dominate… unfortunately I think that's the only thing that hurts me anymore; I don't like to belittled, I can't stand it when people assume that just because I'm blonde it means that I'm stupid, or that because I was born rich I'm spoiled." She let out a bitter laugh, "Would you believe that there are people that hate me? That hate me so much just because they can? What they don't understand is that they don't know me, nobody really knows me, know just Relena, not Dorlain, not Peacecraft, not the Queen. Just, plain, simple, average-everything, Relena."

"That's not true." Heero said after a moment of silence.

"What?" she asked, snapping her head up to look at him in the eyes.

"I know who you are."

"Oh really?" Relena laughed, "What makes you say that? What's my favorite color? Who was my best friend in school? What was my birthday wish this year? How fast can I read? What's my stuffed teddy bear's name?" she questioned.

"Because I do, you like Aqua-blue, you only had groupies and none of them were your friends, you didn't make one, not fast enough to keep up with all of the paperwork that you have to do, and you call him 'fluffy'."

Relena began to laugh as she looked up at him, her eyes shining with mirth, "You know, you look really strange with green hair!"

________________________________________________________________________ Hum… Should I be worried that this is going so fast? Let me know if I need to take more time on these chapters okay? Well, today I'm going to be off babysitting, for those of you who care to know, and so, hopefully, I'll have some more cash on me to buy the next DVD that for Gundam Wing, well, here's hoping! *crosses fingers* I want to thank everyone again who all reviewed for me! It really means a lot to have people tell me EXACTLY what they think about my fics, for better or for worse, even if it can be a bitter pill to swallow! Byes!