Disclaimer:
Sanae: HA HA HA HA!!! I DO! I OWN GUNDAM WING! I ACTUALLY OWN ALL THE GUNDAMS!!! THEY'RE ALL MINE!!!
Nurse: Doctor! Poor thing…she thinks she owns the Gundams…
Doctor: Oh gosh! Not another one! Put her with the rest and give her a dose of Valium…What the heck is going on? It just looks like an endemic!
Author note (Post-Valium): Well, as promised, there you go with the first chapter of 'Once is Enough' 's sequel. I hope you will like it! You will see that the chapters are a bit longer than the first part…just to please the nice people who suggested longer chapters…Well, read and enjoy! (I hope :-) )
Once is Enough II
Chapter One
Relena was leaving yet another conference. This one had been particularly boring. Yes, discussing farming treaties was definitely not the best think a girl could do on a Saturday morning. The latest topic of discussion was the quantities of milk each colony and Earth itself were allowed to produce. Relena did not really understand why this could be a matter of discussion at all. In any case, she was happy that she had been able to convince everybody to agree with the figures she had proposed.
She was almost by her car when someone called her.
"Minister Yuy…Minister Yuy…".
It took a couple of seconds for Relena to realise the person was actually calling her. Yuy. Of course, that was her married name. She was still getting used to it. Well, it had been only a couple of months. Is not like she had had too many chances to hear herself being called by her surname anyway, most people just called her Relena. She preferred it to Minister, Representative, Highness, Princess and all of those horrible titles she hated so much.
She turned around and found a short woman walking towards her. The woman informed her that she had forgotten to pick up the minutes from the meeting and, with a nice smile, handled her the dossier.
After thanking her and returning the smile, Relena got inside the car. Sitting down, she looked at her left hand. Seeing her wedding band she started thinking of all the events that lead to her wedding day.
After almost two years of treatment, the doctors had managed to achieve an almost complete recovery of Heero's memory. He now remembered everyone and everything that happened before the Mars incident. Well, almost everything. Heero still did not know about the baby's loss. Relena had decided then not to tell him and now that he was back to normal, she did not want to upset him.
In any case, a few months ago, the doctors had decided that Heero was well enough to start a normal life. After a careful consideration, Heero decided that he wanted to start his own business and had opened a flying school. He was now training the future civil shuttle pilots and was also helping the ex-soldiers to convert their skills from the military to the civil aviation.
He refused the help that Relena and the others offered him and, with a lot of effort from his side, managed to set up his business. After not too long, he started doing really well, in fact there were lots of people that wanted to become shuttle pilots, specially now, in this peaceful world, lots of ex-soldiers were trying to get back to the civil life as quickly as possible. This, combined with the fact that Heero was probably the best pilot on ESUN, made him extremely popular and his school was getting to be very famous with many students enrolling every day. So famous that Heero ended up hiring some staff to help him with the training.
After seeing his business in such a good shape, Heero decided he was worthy enough to ask Relena to marry him. The way he'd asked her had been almost hilarious. Relena would have got offended if it had not been Heero popping the question.
He had just come back from a seminar and Relena had just been in another of her endless meetings and was pretty tired. They still lived together but Heero had moved to another section of the palace so he would have a bit of privacy.
He went to meet her in her office and, standing there, started his 'monologue' as she liked to remember:
"Relena. I need to speak to you but I do not want you to interrupt till I am finished. This is because I am useless with words and if you interrupt me I will forget what I want to tell you and then I will mess things up again. Is that ok?".
"Sure…go ahead, please…" replied Relena getting a bit concerned.
"Well. I have been thinking. We have been going out for a while and I don't think we have been doing so as friends. I really think you are the only person I have allowed to be as close to me as you are. I haven't asked before because I wanted to have a certain amount of independence but, now, I think I have so, I think we should get married…" said Heero.
Relena just sat there not knowing what to say. It was true that they had been going out for a while. They had kissed a few times and the odd demonstrations of affection for each other were not entirely missing from their relationship but Relena had seen it the whole thing as a mere experiment, as part of the treatment to get Heero back to normal. She thought that, since he had never told her that he loved her, Heero just saw her as some kind of very close friend. Relena was still madly in love with him but had prepared herself for this kind of bizarre friendship to last forever. Hearing this 'proposal' she was just shocked. It probably was the least romantic marriage proposal ever but Relena was so happy she just did not know what to say.
Heero, not seeing any reply started getting worried. He was about to say something when Relena replied.
"Yes Heero. I agree with you. I will be very happy to be your wife…" said trying to be as calm as he was. Of course, she did not succeed as much as she wanted but again, Heero was still very much the Perfect emotionless Solider so it was normal no one could beat him at being calm.
Heero's mouth curved in some kind of smile.
"Ok then. It's decided…" he said and then he left the room leaving Relena even more shocked. 'That was it? Nothing more?' Relena thought. Then she reminded herself that this was Heero and that was the way he behaved.
She was about to get back to her papers when Heero came in the room looking almost embarrassed.
"Sorry. I forgot this…" said Heero walking towards her, bending and kissing her. Then he gave her a black little box and said, "Now, this is what I am supposed to give you, isn't it? If you don't like it, let me know, we can go and change it…".
Relena opened the box to reveal a beautiful diamond solitaire. Heero stared at her as in waiting for a reply.
"It's perfect. Thank you Heero…" said Relena feeling that her voice was beginning to fade from the sheer load of emotions she was feeling.
"Good. Glad you like it…Now, this evening I have to go back to my office to check a few things so don't wait for me for dinner…" Heero said like they had just had another of their normal, every day conversations.
Once she recovered from the shock, she stared at the diamond solitaire and decided to put it on. It looked really nice on her. If something, Heero had a nice taste with jewellery. Relena smiled to herself.
As soon as she could, she told Lucrezia and Milliardo about the engagement. Lucrezia and Milliardo were concerned about the whole thing since they saw how strange Relena and Heero's relationship was. Milliardo, not knowing how to tackle the problem, decided to ask Lucrezia to speak to her.
Lucrezia had to laugh at Milliardo's inadequacy when it came to simple things like feelings and all, in fact Milliardo was very much like Heero in some ways but, of course, Lucrezia was not about to tell him that. In any case, Lucrezia called Relena that same night.
"Lu! What's wrong? We just spoke this morning!" said Relena when she replied to the videocom's buzz.
"I'm sorry!" replied Lucrezia pretending to be offended.
"I was just teasing you! Is everything alright? Zach? Is he alright? " asked Relena getting worried about her almost year old nephew.
"Yes Zach is ok, Is just that…Milliardo and I are a bit worried about what you told us this morning…you know about you and Heero getting married…I mean, we are just not too sure that it may be good for you to take such step…I mean, Heero is…" said Lucrezia trying be as tactful as possible.
"I know what you mean. Lucrezia, I appreciate your concern and I realise how odd it may seem to you but, although Heero may not speak about his feelings very often, not even to me, I am sure we will be able to make each other happier than anyone else can. I love him and I am absolutely sure of that. And, I am sure that Heero loves me in his own way. Lucrezia, I rather have Heero loving me 50 than anyone else loving me 100, I know you all consider me crazy for loving him so much but, I feel that we do belong to each other…I am very happy that he has asked me to marry him and that he wants to spend the rest of his life with me. This is a dream coming true for me. I only ask from you that, if you are not going to be happy about it, at least let us be. Please…" Relena said getting obviously emotional about it.
"Ok…I see how you feel…at the end of the day, I should be the last person to criticise you…I followed your brother all around ESUN and I even accepted moving to Mars so I could be with him. I fully understand your point of view…I just would like to say that, please be careful…I don't want you to get hurt…" said Lucrezia with a motherly smile.
"Thanks for your help…Please help me to make understand the whole thing to my brother, will you?" asked Relena hopeful.
"Sure…" replied Lucrezia.
After a quick chitchat they finished the conversation.
Three months later, Relena was walking up the aisle. She was wearing a beautiful wedding dress that had been designed using the same pattern used for the Queen of Sank's. She was also wearing the tiara that two years ago had tried to give to Lucrezia. She was quite a sight. Everyone of the guests, specially the male ones, thought that she was the prettiest thing they had ever seen. To Relena though, the best compliment came from Heero himself.
"You look like an angel".
Those five words meant the world to Relena. A few hours later they were taking off for their honeymoon in the Caribbean.
Relena woke up from her daydreaming. Paygan had been calling her since they had been parked outside the Peacecraft palace for quite a while.
"Mrs Relena? Are you ok? I have called you several times…" said Paygan getting worried.
"Sorry…I was just distracted. I was thinking of my wedding day…" replied Relena honestly.
Relena went into the house hearing Paygan saying something about how sweet newlyweds could be. That made her smile.
She found Heero in their living room and, after greeting her, said:
"Relena, you should call Hilde. She called you a few minutes ago and I think she looked a bit upset…".
END OF CHAPTER ONE