Disclaimer: Characters do not belong to me.
Author's Notes: Thanks for feedback. I hope everyone keeps on reading!! Take care 'til next time!
****
Be My Downfall
by Kristen Elizabeth
****
**Madam President,
Read this very carefully. Your life depends on it. A poison has been introduced into your body, one half of an agent potent enough to kill you within a matter of hours. The first half is innocuous; it will stay in you for the rest of your life without effect. It is only when the second half is introduced that the poison will take its deadly effect. We hold the strings, and if you wish to never be introduced to the second half, you will do what we want, when we want it done.
We will be in touch.**
Heero read the words once, twice, then once more. Every time, he could actually feel the temperature of his blood rising. Ignoring his own instinctual reaction, he read the note a final time, committing it to memory. With only half an ear, he listened as Relena began to speak.
"My doctor's tests confirm that there is an unknown pathogen in my body," she said clearly, but quietly. "They claim to have never seen anything like it, although they do seem to think that whoever did this isn't lying. It doesn't seem to be adversely affecting me."
"Yet," Wufei added, earning a dark look from his superior officer. "How do they think the poison was administered?"
Relena shook her head. "They have no idea. I was thoroughly examined for even the finest of needle marks, but there were none. It could have been something I touched, something I ingested, something I inhaled." She paused. "There's no way to tell."
"So the same can probably be said for the other half," Heero mused, still staring at the letter. "It could come at any time, without warning."
"Probably," she whispered.
Lady Une glanced back and forth between the two men. "Your assignment is self-explanatory, gentlemen. You will investigate, find out who did this and how, and stop them before they make any demands on the President." Her stared landed on Heero. "In addition, one of you will be at her side twenty-four hours a day, in case anything should happen."
He carefully replaced the letter in its folder. "Doesn't she have her own bodyguards for that?"
Relena fought a valiant battle to keep her chin from trembling. He'd been cool once upon a time, but now Heero was nothing short of deliberately cold. Maybe this was what she needed. Hearing him say these things, and witnessing how little regard he held for her could help her finally move on. It wasn't too late to start a new life.
"He's absolutely right, Lady Une," Relena said before the other woman could reply. "That is what my bodyguards are for."
"Forgive me, Madam President, but the security forces you currently rely upon cannot compare to the Preventers. If I'd had my way, the responsibility of keeping you safe would have never been taken out of our hands." The glare she gave Heero grew harder. "We *will* protect you. And we'll do it with the same dedication and service that we swore when we first joined up. Won't we?"
Heero finally glanced up, very obviously swallowing his pride even as he replied, "Like we have a choice."
Wufei gave him a sideways look. "He means that it won't be easy to find the party or parties behind this. And it'll be even harder if we have to do someone else's job."
"This is your job, Commander Chang," Une reminded him. "You do what I tell you to do. And I'm telling one of you to watch the President at all times. If you take up issue with that, you are free to leave. But you won't just be leaving this office; you'll be leaving this organization. Is that clear?" Neither man answered, and the matter seemed settled.
Relena stood up on weak knees, but kept that fact concealed with a brave front. "I feel safer already." She forced a smile. "I should be getting back to my office; I have a lot of work waiting for me."
"Perhaps you should take a few days off, Madam President," Une suggested.
"Thank you, but I don't think that will accomplish anything. I don't intend to let this alter my life in any way."
Heero snorted softly. "You're kidding yourself."
With her eyes on the ceiling, Relena counted to ten. "Really, Commander Yuy? And why is that?"
"Someone's got control over you. If they want, they can kill you at any moment. Everything you do from now on, and I'm not just talking political moves, but everyday things like eating and going outside, everything you do is a potential threat. Your life won't ever be the same." He folded his arms. "And if the day comes when they want something from you, and it happens to be a day before we track them down, you might just have to rethink some of those morals of yours if you want to save your own life."
It was the most she'd ever heard him say at once. Relena swallowed heavily and put her hand on the back of Lady Une's chair to keep steady. Heero was right about the first part…but not about the second. "We don't know each other that well, so it's understandable that you may not know one important fact about me." She looked at him with a blank face. "I do not give in to terrorist threats. No matter what."
"Even if your life is on the line?" Wufei asked, highly doubtful.
"Especially if it's only my life." Relena started for the door. "Lady Une, thank you for everything. Commanders…I look forward to seeing you again." With that, she left the office.
Once she was gone, Une turned on her subordinates. "The next time you have a problem with my orders, you will wait until the appropriate time to voice it, or else," she snapped. A second passed. "Well, what the hell are you waiting for? One of you will go with the President back to her office. The other will organize the best scene unit we've got. I want her office, her residence, her car, basically every place in which she's spent any significant amount of time in the past two weeks thoroughly examined. I want to know exactly how the most guarded person in existence was poisoned. And when you know that, I want to know who thought they could get away with it."
"Anything else you'd like while we're at it?" Heero muttered.
"Smart-ass doesn't work for you, Yuy. Get moving before she leaves the building." Une walked around behind her desk as the men stood up. "Oh, and one more thing," she called out before they left. "She might be the President, but she's also a human being. I don't give a damn about your personal feelings. You will treat her as such. Got it?"
Wufei flicked a salute. Heero just yanked the door open and departed without a word.
****
Relena had just settled into the plush backseat of her private limousine when the car door was pulled open once again. She glanced over, and found herself immediately on guard as Heero ducked into the limo like he'd been there a million times before.
"Madam President," he said, closing the door behind him.
She studied him for the briefest of seconds. To say that four years had aged him to perfection would have been silly, but true. He'd grown into his long limbs and filled out to flawless proportions. His face hadn't lost its youthful beauty, but had adopted a rugged handsomeness that completed the ideal picture.
Suddenly feeling quite like an old maid with her plain suit and librarian hair-do, Relena looked away. "Lady Une underestimates my bodyguards," she said. "Your time would be better spent on investigation rather than my protection."
"I have my orders."
"Of course." She smiled as the car lurched into motion. "Well, I suppose we'll just have to make the best out of this." Glancing back at him, she asked, "How are you, Heero?" He had no reply. "Forgive me. That was entirely too personal. I should have known better."
"Hn."
Relena massaged her aching head with two fingers at her temple. "At least I won't have to worry about you distracting me from my work."
"I'll need a copy of your schedule immediately," he said abruptly. "Down to the last minute. I'll need to formulate a security plan."
"I already have a security plan."
He gave her a look. "You obviously need a better one."
She sighed softly. "You'll have it as soon as we get to my office. Should I try to schedule bathroom breaks, as well? Because those generally tend to come when they will."
"This will never work if you're going to be difficult."
"What's difficult is having a bodyguard who…" Relena stopped herself just in time. "I know you didn't have any choice in this, Heero, and for that, I'm sorry. No one should be forced to care about another person when they wouldn't do it willingly on their own. But I do hope that we can work out a comfortable existence for as long as we're in this situation. I get along well with my other guards; it helps to count them amongst my friends."
Heero shook his head. "They're a liability, then, and should have been replaced a long time ago."
Her temper sparked. "Just what gives you the right to say that? Is it too much for you to imagine that *someone* might value me as more than the President? I may not have many of them, but I do have friends. And I don't care what you think, I'm not about to send any of them packing."
"When a bodyguard becomes personally involved on any level with his client, it's a dangerous situation. Relationships blur the lines, and blurred lines are a liability."
Relena took a breath. "You might see it that way, but I don't. But you shouldn't be worried, Heero. I'm not asking you for a personal relationship. Do your job, and I'll do mine, and hopefully this will all be over soon. Then you'll never have to see me again. I promise."
"Whatever you say, Madam President."
She returned her attention to the window and closed her eyes. "I didn't ask for this, you know. Any of this."
Heero watched her; somehow, even in the darkness of the tinted windows, her hair managed to shimmer, a gold that was decidedly forbidden.
****
The first day passed quickly. Heero was like a shadow, present, but silent, throughout her daily slew of meetings, as well as the monotonous hours of paperwork. His laptop was delivered to him at lunch, and he spent the rest of the day typing away at it.
At the end of the day, he was given a state room in her mansion, only two doors down from her own bedroom. She wasn't terribly comfortable with the idea, but Heero accepted without comment. And really, she thought, where did she suppose he'd stay? Une had him on twenty-four hour duty, but it wasn't as though he could actually be with her all the time.
So she prepared for bed with a small amount of trepidation. Somehow, it felt odd getting undressed with Heero just down the hall. Her night routine was the same as the rest of her day, orderly and efficient. Changing clothes, brushing her teeth, braiding her hair so it wouldn't tangle in her sleep…she finished each quickly and turned down the covers, anxious to spend a few blissful hours unaware of Heero's sudden presence in her life, to say nothing of the poison coursing through her body.
But once in bed, she found that sleep wasn't going to come at her beck and call. With a sigh, she turned on the lamp next to her bed, flooding the room with light again. Relena lay back against the pillows and stared at the ornate molding on the ceiling over her bed. Eventually, sleep came around, and she drifted into it.
At least that night she knew for certain that Heero was sleeping alone, too.
****
He might have been alone, but he wasn't sleeping. Heero sat at an oak writing desk in the room he'd been assigned, his laptop open and on in front of him. It cast an eerie glow over his face. It hadn't taken a lot of time or effort to hack into the video signal coming from the security cameras that were strategically placed around the mansion. Was Relena aware of the one that recorded all activity in her bedroom? Probably not, given the careless manner in which she moved about it.
His lap still throbbed simply from having watched her undress. Her slender fingers had undone each little button on her suit, and it took all of his strength not to come undone, too. She wasn't the plain princess he'd first met, but she wasn't the regal queen he'd once defended. When her clothes came off, she was just a woman. Beautiful. Desirable.
Heero swore under his breath. It was pathetic how quickly his body had reacted to hers, although in his defense, she could put the girls in Duo's dirty magazines to shame. There wasn't a thing about her that was faked, though. And that made it all the more appealing. However, she was on the thin side, not a surprise considering how little she'd eaten at dinner. He made a mental note to order her to eat more.
All too quickly, she'd covered up, hiding herself in a white cotton nightgown. But no amount of shifting kept his arousal at bay when she began brushing out her hair. It reached to her back now, softly waved from a day spent in a tightly coiled braid at the base of her neck. It occurred to him right then that all the women he'd sought out for a quick, satisfying release had been blondes, most of them owing the color more to a bottle of bleach than their genes.
He couldn't get rid of the disturbing thought as she fixed her hair into two loose braids and climbed into bed. The screen went dark when the lights went out and he paused to catch his breath. Had he been seeking out women who reminded him of Relena for four years?
Her light came back on and he watched her as she slowly fell asleep, his erection now a shameful annoyance. It had to be a coincidence. The sort of women who would go along with a one-night stand were generally the sort of women who did everything possible to be blonde, he reasoned.
Heero kept the camera link open on his laptop, but refused to look at it as he searched for a solitary release that turned out to be anything but satisfying.
****
To Be Continued
Author's Notes: Thanks for feedback. I hope everyone keeps on reading!! Take care 'til next time!
****
Be My Downfall
by Kristen Elizabeth
****
**Madam President,
Read this very carefully. Your life depends on it. A poison has been introduced into your body, one half of an agent potent enough to kill you within a matter of hours. The first half is innocuous; it will stay in you for the rest of your life without effect. It is only when the second half is introduced that the poison will take its deadly effect. We hold the strings, and if you wish to never be introduced to the second half, you will do what we want, when we want it done.
We will be in touch.**
Heero read the words once, twice, then once more. Every time, he could actually feel the temperature of his blood rising. Ignoring his own instinctual reaction, he read the note a final time, committing it to memory. With only half an ear, he listened as Relena began to speak.
"My doctor's tests confirm that there is an unknown pathogen in my body," she said clearly, but quietly. "They claim to have never seen anything like it, although they do seem to think that whoever did this isn't lying. It doesn't seem to be adversely affecting me."
"Yet," Wufei added, earning a dark look from his superior officer. "How do they think the poison was administered?"
Relena shook her head. "They have no idea. I was thoroughly examined for even the finest of needle marks, but there were none. It could have been something I touched, something I ingested, something I inhaled." She paused. "There's no way to tell."
"So the same can probably be said for the other half," Heero mused, still staring at the letter. "It could come at any time, without warning."
"Probably," she whispered.
Lady Une glanced back and forth between the two men. "Your assignment is self-explanatory, gentlemen. You will investigate, find out who did this and how, and stop them before they make any demands on the President." Her stared landed on Heero. "In addition, one of you will be at her side twenty-four hours a day, in case anything should happen."
He carefully replaced the letter in its folder. "Doesn't she have her own bodyguards for that?"
Relena fought a valiant battle to keep her chin from trembling. He'd been cool once upon a time, but now Heero was nothing short of deliberately cold. Maybe this was what she needed. Hearing him say these things, and witnessing how little regard he held for her could help her finally move on. It wasn't too late to start a new life.
"He's absolutely right, Lady Une," Relena said before the other woman could reply. "That is what my bodyguards are for."
"Forgive me, Madam President, but the security forces you currently rely upon cannot compare to the Preventers. If I'd had my way, the responsibility of keeping you safe would have never been taken out of our hands." The glare she gave Heero grew harder. "We *will* protect you. And we'll do it with the same dedication and service that we swore when we first joined up. Won't we?"
Heero finally glanced up, very obviously swallowing his pride even as he replied, "Like we have a choice."
Wufei gave him a sideways look. "He means that it won't be easy to find the party or parties behind this. And it'll be even harder if we have to do someone else's job."
"This is your job, Commander Chang," Une reminded him. "You do what I tell you to do. And I'm telling one of you to watch the President at all times. If you take up issue with that, you are free to leave. But you won't just be leaving this office; you'll be leaving this organization. Is that clear?" Neither man answered, and the matter seemed settled.
Relena stood up on weak knees, but kept that fact concealed with a brave front. "I feel safer already." She forced a smile. "I should be getting back to my office; I have a lot of work waiting for me."
"Perhaps you should take a few days off, Madam President," Une suggested.
"Thank you, but I don't think that will accomplish anything. I don't intend to let this alter my life in any way."
Heero snorted softly. "You're kidding yourself."
With her eyes on the ceiling, Relena counted to ten. "Really, Commander Yuy? And why is that?"
"Someone's got control over you. If they want, they can kill you at any moment. Everything you do from now on, and I'm not just talking political moves, but everyday things like eating and going outside, everything you do is a potential threat. Your life won't ever be the same." He folded his arms. "And if the day comes when they want something from you, and it happens to be a day before we track them down, you might just have to rethink some of those morals of yours if you want to save your own life."
It was the most she'd ever heard him say at once. Relena swallowed heavily and put her hand on the back of Lady Une's chair to keep steady. Heero was right about the first part…but not about the second. "We don't know each other that well, so it's understandable that you may not know one important fact about me." She looked at him with a blank face. "I do not give in to terrorist threats. No matter what."
"Even if your life is on the line?" Wufei asked, highly doubtful.
"Especially if it's only my life." Relena started for the door. "Lady Une, thank you for everything. Commanders…I look forward to seeing you again." With that, she left the office.
Once she was gone, Une turned on her subordinates. "The next time you have a problem with my orders, you will wait until the appropriate time to voice it, or else," she snapped. A second passed. "Well, what the hell are you waiting for? One of you will go with the President back to her office. The other will organize the best scene unit we've got. I want her office, her residence, her car, basically every place in which she's spent any significant amount of time in the past two weeks thoroughly examined. I want to know exactly how the most guarded person in existence was poisoned. And when you know that, I want to know who thought they could get away with it."
"Anything else you'd like while we're at it?" Heero muttered.
"Smart-ass doesn't work for you, Yuy. Get moving before she leaves the building." Une walked around behind her desk as the men stood up. "Oh, and one more thing," she called out before they left. "She might be the President, but she's also a human being. I don't give a damn about your personal feelings. You will treat her as such. Got it?"
Wufei flicked a salute. Heero just yanked the door open and departed without a word.
****
Relena had just settled into the plush backseat of her private limousine when the car door was pulled open once again. She glanced over, and found herself immediately on guard as Heero ducked into the limo like he'd been there a million times before.
"Madam President," he said, closing the door behind him.
She studied him for the briefest of seconds. To say that four years had aged him to perfection would have been silly, but true. He'd grown into his long limbs and filled out to flawless proportions. His face hadn't lost its youthful beauty, but had adopted a rugged handsomeness that completed the ideal picture.
Suddenly feeling quite like an old maid with her plain suit and librarian hair-do, Relena looked away. "Lady Une underestimates my bodyguards," she said. "Your time would be better spent on investigation rather than my protection."
"I have my orders."
"Of course." She smiled as the car lurched into motion. "Well, I suppose we'll just have to make the best out of this." Glancing back at him, she asked, "How are you, Heero?" He had no reply. "Forgive me. That was entirely too personal. I should have known better."
"Hn."
Relena massaged her aching head with two fingers at her temple. "At least I won't have to worry about you distracting me from my work."
"I'll need a copy of your schedule immediately," he said abruptly. "Down to the last minute. I'll need to formulate a security plan."
"I already have a security plan."
He gave her a look. "You obviously need a better one."
She sighed softly. "You'll have it as soon as we get to my office. Should I try to schedule bathroom breaks, as well? Because those generally tend to come when they will."
"This will never work if you're going to be difficult."
"What's difficult is having a bodyguard who…" Relena stopped herself just in time. "I know you didn't have any choice in this, Heero, and for that, I'm sorry. No one should be forced to care about another person when they wouldn't do it willingly on their own. But I do hope that we can work out a comfortable existence for as long as we're in this situation. I get along well with my other guards; it helps to count them amongst my friends."
Heero shook his head. "They're a liability, then, and should have been replaced a long time ago."
Her temper sparked. "Just what gives you the right to say that? Is it too much for you to imagine that *someone* might value me as more than the President? I may not have many of them, but I do have friends. And I don't care what you think, I'm not about to send any of them packing."
"When a bodyguard becomes personally involved on any level with his client, it's a dangerous situation. Relationships blur the lines, and blurred lines are a liability."
Relena took a breath. "You might see it that way, but I don't. But you shouldn't be worried, Heero. I'm not asking you for a personal relationship. Do your job, and I'll do mine, and hopefully this will all be over soon. Then you'll never have to see me again. I promise."
"Whatever you say, Madam President."
She returned her attention to the window and closed her eyes. "I didn't ask for this, you know. Any of this."
Heero watched her; somehow, even in the darkness of the tinted windows, her hair managed to shimmer, a gold that was decidedly forbidden.
****
The first day passed quickly. Heero was like a shadow, present, but silent, throughout her daily slew of meetings, as well as the monotonous hours of paperwork. His laptop was delivered to him at lunch, and he spent the rest of the day typing away at it.
At the end of the day, he was given a state room in her mansion, only two doors down from her own bedroom. She wasn't terribly comfortable with the idea, but Heero accepted without comment. And really, she thought, where did she suppose he'd stay? Une had him on twenty-four hour duty, but it wasn't as though he could actually be with her all the time.
So she prepared for bed with a small amount of trepidation. Somehow, it felt odd getting undressed with Heero just down the hall. Her night routine was the same as the rest of her day, orderly and efficient. Changing clothes, brushing her teeth, braiding her hair so it wouldn't tangle in her sleep…she finished each quickly and turned down the covers, anxious to spend a few blissful hours unaware of Heero's sudden presence in her life, to say nothing of the poison coursing through her body.
But once in bed, she found that sleep wasn't going to come at her beck and call. With a sigh, she turned on the lamp next to her bed, flooding the room with light again. Relena lay back against the pillows and stared at the ornate molding on the ceiling over her bed. Eventually, sleep came around, and she drifted into it.
At least that night she knew for certain that Heero was sleeping alone, too.
****
He might have been alone, but he wasn't sleeping. Heero sat at an oak writing desk in the room he'd been assigned, his laptop open and on in front of him. It cast an eerie glow over his face. It hadn't taken a lot of time or effort to hack into the video signal coming from the security cameras that were strategically placed around the mansion. Was Relena aware of the one that recorded all activity in her bedroom? Probably not, given the careless manner in which she moved about it.
His lap still throbbed simply from having watched her undress. Her slender fingers had undone each little button on her suit, and it took all of his strength not to come undone, too. She wasn't the plain princess he'd first met, but she wasn't the regal queen he'd once defended. When her clothes came off, she was just a woman. Beautiful. Desirable.
Heero swore under his breath. It was pathetic how quickly his body had reacted to hers, although in his defense, she could put the girls in Duo's dirty magazines to shame. There wasn't a thing about her that was faked, though. And that made it all the more appealing. However, she was on the thin side, not a surprise considering how little she'd eaten at dinner. He made a mental note to order her to eat more.
All too quickly, she'd covered up, hiding herself in a white cotton nightgown. But no amount of shifting kept his arousal at bay when she began brushing out her hair. It reached to her back now, softly waved from a day spent in a tightly coiled braid at the base of her neck. It occurred to him right then that all the women he'd sought out for a quick, satisfying release had been blondes, most of them owing the color more to a bottle of bleach than their genes.
He couldn't get rid of the disturbing thought as she fixed her hair into two loose braids and climbed into bed. The screen went dark when the lights went out and he paused to catch his breath. Had he been seeking out women who reminded him of Relena for four years?
Her light came back on and he watched her as she slowly fell asleep, his erection now a shameful annoyance. It had to be a coincidence. The sort of women who would go along with a one-night stand were generally the sort of women who did everything possible to be blonde, he reasoned.
Heero kept the camera link open on his laptop, but refused to look at it as he searched for a solitary release that turned out to be anything but satisfying.
****
To Be Continued