Disclaimer:  Characters do not belong to me.

Author's Notes:  Muchos gracias, mi amigos!!!  I always appreciate the kind comments and helpful feedback. 

****

Your Wildest Dreams

by Kristen Elizabeth

****

"We're closing in on her, sir. She's with someone, presumably her bodyguard; we're tracking two sets of footsteps. It's not easy, but we're making progress."

"When do you think you'll have her?"

"Tomorrow. The Foreign Minister will be dead before the sun goes down again."

****

He was awake a long time before she opened her eyes, but for the first time in his life, he didn't feel the need to get up, get going, or stay focused on his mission. She was his mission, and all Heero wanted to do was to keep holding Relena in his arms and watch her sleep.

She was beautiful, but he'd always known that. What he hadn't known was how soft and sweet her mouth was, and how when he was kissing her, he couldn't even remember his own name. Now she was securely tucked up in his lap, sleeping peacefully with her cheek resting on his collarbone, the same position she'd been in all night.

Heero looked down at her as though he were really looking at her for the first time. Why had he fought so long against this? Why had he denied himself the warmth she'd been silently offering for years? Suddenly, he wanted to be out of the tree and in a more comfortable location…like a bed…where they could finish what they'd barely begun.

"Heero," she murmured in her sleep. She was smiling, lost in some dream of him.

In the midst of pressing a kiss into her tangled hair, Heero was suddenly, irrationally and inexplicably mad at himself.

What right did he have to think such a thing? His hands had shed too much blood to ever touch her as a lover. To be with her was to defile her; he'd come dangerously close last night when he'd felt her delicate breasts pressing against his chest. How he'd wanted to feel her, to stroke her, to give her pleasure even in such an unsuitable location. But he'd stopped himself, and settled for just being allowed to kiss her. Anything else was beyond his reach.

She deserved a man whose hands were clean enough to leave no stain behind on her. But now that he'd let go of what was in his heart, not in words, but in action, it was going to take a lot more than silence to dissuade her…and to convince her that he was not the man
she should be dreaming about.

So when Relena stirred a few minutes later and lifted her head from his chest, he turned a cool cheek to her when she went to kiss him.

"Heero?" The second time she said his name was a question, and a worried one at that.

"This was a mistake," he heard himself tell her.

He didn't have to look at her to know she'd gone completely pale. "A mistake?"

"That's right." Heero turned his head and met her pained expression with a blank one. "Life threatening circumstances often lead to extremely inappropriate situations between two people."

Relena's eyes lowered and darted back and forth as she tried to process his words. "Our kissing was…an inappropriate mistake?"

He looked away again before twin tears slipped down her pink cheeks. "I'm your bodyguard. And you're my assignment. There isn't anything else between us."

"That's not…that's not what you said last night."

"I didn't say anything last night."

"But…"

"Could you move off my lap so we can get going?"

Relena pushed away from him, shaky with shock. Her tears were steady rivers down her face. How could she still be alive when her heart had just been ripped from her chest? It was a mystery. At the same time she wanted to scream at him, to hit him, to make him hurt, she desperately wanted to crawl into a hole and bury herself in it, to never see him again, to be allowed to die in peace.

Heero landed on the ground and stood still for a moment. "Are you coming?" She was silent as she came down the tree, making no noise as she slipped off the lowest branch. He reached into the now worn and torn plastic bag for their last full bottle of water. "Drink some of this."

"I'm not thirsty." Her voice was nothing more than a whisper, but there was steel behind it.

"Relena, just drink the damn…"

"No." Straightening her shoulders, she walked ahead of him and turned around to look him straight in the eye. "You don't get to give orders to me. Never again." She started walking again, but stopped after only a moment to address him one last time, "The mistake wasn't yours. It was mine…for thinking that if I loved you enough, you'd learn how to love me back. So, thank you, Heero." Relena swallowed. "For making me grow up."

She continued on her way, desperately trying to convince herself that she no longer cared if he was behind her or not.

****

It took only until the morning after their discovery for Quatre to have the search party back out on the savanna with two additional guides and enough supplies to last for a month. Starting from the water hole, they made their way north in a caravan of three safari vehicles. The tracks weren't hard to follow; whoever had made them obviously wasn't worried about being tracked.

Speculation as to who left the tracks behind ranged from the practical (Wufei's theory that another search party had found the raft and taken the logical path towards the mountains to catch up to any survivors who were on foot) to the ridiculous (Duo's suggestion that Heero might have built a car out of parts salvaged from the jet and could be currently driving himself and Relena to safety). They wouldn't know until they caught up, and for that reason, they pushed the Jeeps to the limit, stopping only when absolutely necessary.

They took sleeping shifts at night, with at least two men awake at all times, perched on top of the vehicles to keep the watch with a high-powered search light and an automatic weapon. Duo's first shift was at three a.m., and he was not at all happy with Trowa when the taller man woke him up at 2:55.

"Five minutes is sacred sleeping time," he mumbled, crawling out of the SUV's backseat.

Trowa shrugged and took his place, curling up in the blanket Duo had just occupied. "There's still some coffee up there. Goodnight." He closed the door as soon as Duo had hoisted himself onto the car's hood.

Duo sat Indian-style on the metal roof, fighting a serious urge to bounce up and down and make sleeping as difficult for Trowa as possible. It would be immature, he told himself. But oh so much fun.

The other two cars formed a miniature circle with his; he swung his light over to them to see the other man on shift. It was one of the guides, Njanu. Duo nodded at the man and waved. "Anything out there?" he asked

"Quiet," the guide told him in very British English. "In Africa, we are never alone."

Duo blinked. "Right. Of course."

The man's smile was wide and white in the moon's weak light. "Keep your gun handy, muzungu."

This effectively ended the conversation, leaving Duo to wonder what exactly he had just been called. He didn't have much time to ponder this, however, as his training-enhanced senses picked up on movement behind him. Whipping around, he moved the light back and forth, up and down, searching for the source of it.

The beam of light illuminated something huge and grey. Duo kept the light moving across more haze-colored flesh until he found huge, triangular ears, beady black eyes, two tusks, and finally, a long, curved trunk.

"Holy crap!"

"Tembo," the guide identified the creature in his own language, laughing when Duo leaned back, startled. "Turn off the light. It is a male, and it may see you as a threat."

Duo did as he was instructed; the last thing he wanted was to get into a territorial match with a bull elephant. "They just walk around like that at night?"

"They have no fear of predators. They are safer than us with our guns."

He kept watching the huge, dark blob as it moved towards their circle of cars.  "Um…should I be worried that it's coming over here?"

"Do not panic."

"I'm not panicking, I just…" Duo stopped. The elephant was now no more than five feet away from him. "Okay, wow…that's some seriously funky smell it's got." He waved his hand in front of his face.

"Musk," the guide explained, clearly very amused. "The Masai believe it has magic, the magic to help conceive babies."

Duo's nose crinkled up. He and Hilde had talked about wanting children in the future, but he couldn't even imagine wanting one badly enough to involve elephant musk in an otherwise pleasurable process. "That's just…wrong."

"Perhaps. Perhaps not. It is not for us to judge, yes?"

The elephant moved off awhile later, having lost interest in the cars and the men perched on top of them. Duo released a breath. He'd be smelling that scent for the rest of his life, but it had been a close experience that probably very few people ever got to have.

A moment later, the SUV's door opened and Trowa poked his head out. "Tell me I just didn't see an elephant ass outside my window."

Duo leaned over the side of the car and grinned down at him. "Welcome to Africa. Muzungu."

****

Heero was trapped in a hell he had created for himself.

He had wanted to discourage her love, to make it easier for her to forget about him. He just hadn't expected it to happen so swiftly.

She walked like a woman possessed without a word about her feet or the hot sun. She said nothing about the baby antelope feeding from its mother a dozen yards away from them; the day before, it would have delighted her.

Relena had shut down. He had shut her down. And now he would have given away their last bottle of water to hear her voice.

This was his hell. And he had no one but himself to blame for it.

She tried to keep a good distance between them, but he wasn't so far gone into his self-loathing to allow that. He would allow her to walk ahead, but he was no more than five feet behind her at any given time, ready to be at her side if she needed his assistance.

Not that she'd ever voluntarily ask for it again. She'd made it quite clear that it was time she put him out of her thoughts. That's what he had wanted. Wasn't it?

When they had been walking for a good five hours, Relena stopped. "We'll rest there," she said in a neutral tone that left no room for him to argue, pointing to a shady place underneath a scraggly tree.

He followed her over to the place she had picked out and watched her sit down on a large, flat rock. She reached into her bag, pulled out the nearly empty bottle of sunscreen, and began to reapply.

"Relena. Will you drink now?"

She smoothed lotion onto her face and throat. "Save the water."

"You're going to make yourself sick." Heero bit his tongue to keep from adding a quiet, *I'm not worth it.*

"Then so be it." With her feet still on the ground, Relena lay back on the rock, using their blanket as a pillow, and closed her eyes.

Completely frustrated, he threw the supply bag onto another, smaller rock, and folded his arms, looking off into the distance to avoid watching the swell of her breast rise and fall. How was he ever going to rectify the damage he'd done in one careless moment? If it even needed to be rectified at all.

Something deep inside told him that it did. It was a gut instinct. Hadn't he been trained to follow his instincts?

Heero sighed and after a long moment, glanced back at Relena. What he saw made his blood nearly stop pumping.

"Relena." He forced himself to take a breath. "Don't move a muscle. There's a snake at your feet."

She lifted herself up onto her elbows. "How stupid do you think I am to fall for your snake-humor twi…" She stopped when she felt the length of the snake slide across the exposed flesh of her foot. "Oh my god. Heero…"

"Stay still." He reached for his gun, a cold sweat breaking out along his forehead and stubbled upper lip. The eight-foot snake, a cobra as he could tell from the extra flaps of skin on either side of its head, seemed to find Relena as attractive as he did; it dipped
down to explore around her ankle.

He had to get its attention elsewhere if he was going to get a clear shot at its head. But if he annoyed it enough, it wouldn't hesitate to bite Relena. Heero licked his lips. "Don't move, no matter what happens."

She nodded tightly. Her entire body was completely frozen.

With a stray branch in one hand and his gun in the other, Heero approached the snake from Relena's right side. "Have you ever heard the story of Rikki Tikki Tavi?" he asked her.

"Not the right time…to get chatty," Relena whispered.

"It's about a mongoose in India who takes on two cobras to protect his owners." Heero slowly moved the branch along the ground, closer and closer to Relena's feet, where the snake seemed content to curl up forever. At least the damn thing had good taste. "And he wins. Do you know why?"

"No." Her voice was barely audible.

"Because…" The branch hit the sole of Relena's shoe and the snake flicked out its tongue, sensing it. "Riki Tiki Tavi was smarter…" The cobra slowly began to slide towards the branch, until its head cleared Relena's foot by several inches. Heero cocked his gun. "And
quicker."

He took his shot with all the confidence of a trained assassin, and under any other circumstances, it would have worked. But no man is perfect. The bullet missed the cobra's head and instead grazed one of its hood flaps.

Relena screamed when the snake hissed in pain and rose up, extending those flaps into a broad hood. Heero had no time to react to this sudden change before the snake lunged for him.

The cobra's fangs broke through the material of his uniform shirt and sank into the arm he instinctively threw up to protect himself. Heero grunted; the grunt turned into a strangled cry of pain when the snaked backed off, tearing the bite wound further.

Relena was on her feet by then, watching the whole thing as if it was in slow motion. In reality, it happened within the space of few seconds. And she was helpless to stop it. The snake hissed again, but retreated, still standing up right nearly two feet in the air, posed for another strike.

And then, just as quickly as the attack had happened, a second shot cracked through the air, and the cobra's head exploded. Its body writhed for a few moments before curling up in death.

Heero sat on the ground, clutching his bleeding wound. Already he could feel painful, burning stings, as sure sign that the bite hadn't been superfluous. He ignored it, however, and followed Relena's startled gaze to see who exactly had come to their rescue.

Five native men in western clothes had snuck up on them without notice; one man's gun still smoked. A sixth man approached, unarmed, but clearly in charge.

"Foreign Minister Peacecraft?" he addressed Relena.

She squinted in the glare of the sun and blinked back the fine sheen of tears in her eyes. "There isn't any time for formalities!" She ran to Heero's side. "He needs help!!"

"I'm sorry, Foreign Minister." With a snap of his fingers, the five men raised their guns and pointed them all at Relena. "We're not on a rescue mission."

****

To Be Continued