"Are you still there?" Kiro glanced up at Heero, who was sitting perfectly still in the large, leather chair, his back as straight as bored. His blue eyes watched her and gave no indication of what was going on in the mind behind them. He was a silent as he had been when he had walked into her office and sat down, while she talked with the anxious French girl on the phone.
"Oúi," answered the girl, her voice tighter than usual. "Kiro, I'm afraid to even call the police. There is no way in hell that Kai was taken by the three that tried to intimidate us. I will not give them that much credit for spine."
"Danae, we have to consider all options," said Kiro, pulling out the leather executive chair that hunkered against her cherry wood desk. She sat down, toeing her shoes off and tucking her stocking feet underneath her. Heero smirked at something and leaned back in the chair, the smirk hovering on his face. Kiro narrowed her blue eyes at him and frowned, but said nothing.
"Kiro, all we wanted was a normal life - between her family and mine, and all of the media, there was no escaping them, except for here. And they found us!!" Danae's voice hit a higher pitch and broke, almost as if she was attempting to control a sob. "What in the hell happened to the guard you were sending?!" Heero's smirk faded and his face became completely still, empty as an unpainted wall. Kiro looked up at him, but kept her face a schooled calm.
"There were complications, Danae," she said levelly, resting her elbows on the desk. She looked at the phone as if she was looking at Danae herself. "That is beyond the point right now. I need you to think for me, love. Has anyone else strange visited you recently?"
"Visited?" repeated Danae, "visited, non. Although…" She was silent another moment and Kiro straightened in her chair. Heero leaned slightly forward in his own chair. "Kiro, I have Kai's cell phone and there are phone calls on here from a number I have never seen - and Kai was calling back. Do you want the number?"
"Tell me," agreed Kiro, pulling a perfectly sharpened pencil from the sleek black cup on her desk. Danae read off the numbers in careful, clipped English, and Kiro wrote them down in a large, loopy scrawl. She set tip of the pencil underneath the whole set when Danae was finished, underlining what was, by far, the best clue she had received since Akairo had gone missing.
"All of the other numbers are recognizable," continued Danae, her words accenting by a repetitive beeping in the background. "My cellular phone (beep), your office (beep), your home (beep) - Kai was calling you a lot." There was more than a hint of supposition in her voice, but Kiro managed to look innocent, even though Danae could not see her at all.
"We were talking about her interview," she said easily, but her eyes glanced at Heero when she said it. "Danae, I want you to do a few things for me - for one, pack up the shop." There came a squawk of protest, but Kiro continued through it. "No, Danae, listen to me. If obviously isn't safe for you down there. I'll get your contract extended until the end of next year - that should be long enough. I want you to come up here at the first chance you get. Hibari's roommate just moved out and she needs someone to keep her in line." Danae snorted and some clattered in the background.
"It would take the entire of the United army to keep that child in line," she remarked flatly. "All right, Kiro, I'll see you in a few days."
"Call me if there's any trouble!" Kiro ordered quickly, before the phone clicked. She heaved a sigh and rolled her eyes as she turned the speaker phone off. "I have no idea what do with that girl. She doesn't even remember, but she's still the same person."
"She'll remember," said Heero quietly. "Hibari has - that's why she took that sabbatical, right?" Kiro's eyes snapped to his and after a moment of blank shock, she scowled angrily, rising from her chair.
"I bring him here, to her, and she leaves before she even sees him," she muttered, pacing in front of the long plate glass window that started at the floor and rose straight to the ceiling. It dwarfed her tiny figure, but her pacing was long in stride and quick in pace. "Heero, I knew the why as soon as I remembered - I knew why I had remembered, who I had remembered, and what I was remembering for. It was only fate that all five of the Silver went to the same boarding school - we knew each other and I knew them when I knew me." Heero stood from his chair as her pacing slowed and she stopped to turn and face the outside world that spread before her. "The thing I remembered, first, though…" She trailed off as he stood behind her, a good head taller than she, but when he stepped closer, and wrapped his arms around her waist, it was as if they were perfectly matched. She lifted on of her hands and intertwined her fingers in his.
"I remembered her face," she said quietly. "I remembered watching… I remembered watching Gehshi die in her arms, because… because I had been so stupid and…" Her voice failed her on the last thought, a thin wavering of emotion marring her perfect accent. "Heero, I'm so sorry…" Heero stared only at the horizon, even as Kiro trembled in his arms, so close to tears brought on by memories years older than she herself was.
"I can only stay mad at you for so long," he said quietly, drawing her as close to him as he possibly could. A dry laugh escaped her lips as she tucked her head under his chin and turned her cheek against his neck. They stood in silence, for an endless amount of time, Heero watching the thin line of grey clouds that sat at the far reaches of his vision like a thread stretched across the sky, and Kiro existing in only the places where she was needed - the depths of her mind, where something hunted in the shadows of her psyche, and in Heero's arms, where she was his comfort as much as he was hers.
"You told her about me," he stated finally, marring the silence with his monotone words.
"She knew before I told her," came the subdued answer. "It was her suggestion, the whole thing. Now with everything that has happened… I think, ultimately, she's known all along." She lifted her head and turned so that she could look up at his face. "That is part of it, is it not? 'To know what may be and has been, and to know what will be again'." He nodded slowly, almost thoughtfully, as he continued to gaze at the threaded sky. Kiro watched his face for what she knew would never show and finally just shook her head. "I hope these ex-pilots are as good as you say they are," she said, letting her eyes follow his line of sight until they, too, rested on what lay beyond the tops of the building across the street. "Maxwell's already made one connection, and Barton already knows more than he's letting on - do you think that, maybe, he…"
"Hn," was the only reply, a noncommittal sound issued from deep within the throat of the ex-pilot. "If he does," he continued, "it will make this easier on all of us - him and Tsuyuno especially."
"If he doesn't, he will soon enough," stated Kiro flatly, with more than enough annoyance in her voice for Heero to consider her really pissed off. "Before the shit hits the fan, that's for fucking sure." Heero shook his and reached up with one of his hands to brush the curling tendrils of wheat blonde from the petite woman's neck. He let his lips fall to the exposed skin, a very chaste, very gentle motion that caused Kiro to turn around in his arms. She looked up at him, her eyes wide and searching - for what, Heero had no idea. He had lately been affectionate with her, because she was his and he cared about her, but never to this reaction, this blatant confusion on her face.
"Six months ago…" she started quietly, still searching. "Six months ago, you never would have even come close to considering doing something like that," she finished, narrowing her eyes at him. He said nothing again, but this time, he released her and reached up to cup her face in his hands. Her hair fell over his fingers, tickling the edges of his skin in such a way it was almost funny, but when he kissed her, he was a serious as he had once been. She let him kiss her, but was tentative in returning the romantic motion. Something in the tightness of her shoulders held her back, even she overcame the worst of her uncertainty and reached one hand up to brush his cheek.
"Six months ago," he whispered, somewhere in the long moment that he held her and kissed her, "six months ago, there was less of me and more of the other. Do you want him back, now, with all that's being laid before us?" She pressed her forehead into his shoulder and said nothing. She had no idea.