Disclaimer: Characters do not belong to me.
Author's Notes: Thanks for all the sweet reviews! I hope you keep enjoying!!
****
Be My Downfall
by Kristen Elizabeth
****
A week later, Heero and Wufei presented their first report to Lady Une. It took exactly five minutes.
"This is it?" She searched through the contents of the file they'd presented to her, in case she'd missed something. "Seven days of active investigation and this is all you've managed to come up with?"
"The perps are smart. However they got the poison into the President, they didn't leave a trace of it behind. And we had everything tested." Wufei crossed his arms, indignant. "I personally interviewed over fifty people who have come into contact with her over the past two weeks, with nothing to show for it. Now, you do realize that number could have been doubled if my partner hadn't been otherwise occupied."
Une flashed him a deadly look. "Watch it, Chang." She looked at Heero. "How is the President holding up?"
Heero lifted one shoulder. "She's keeping to her normal routine. Not eating much. Not sleeping much either."
"You're watching her sleep?" Wufei asked.
"She looks tired," he shot back.
"That's to be expected, I suppose. She carries so many burdens already. This might prove to be one too heavy for her." The older woman stood up and looked out her window for a long moment. "Keep talking to her people. Re-interview anyone who has anything to do with her mail service. Go over the security tapes one more time. Someone put that letter on her secretary's desk; it didn't just appear out of thin air." She turned back to them. "As for you, Yuy, make sure she takes care of herself."
"With all due respect…"
Lady Une cut him off. "Whatever history you two have, get over it. She is your mission right now, and your mission needs your attention. End of discussion. You're both dismissed. And next time we talk, I expect there to be a lot more to talk about."
Wufei waited until they were in the elevator to let out a string of curses in rapid, angry Chinese. After a long moment, he switched back to English. "Did she really expect me to have solved the problem in one week all by myself? I'm good, but even I'm not *that* good!" Heero said nothing. "Don't tell me you're not more than a little sick of playing babysitter for the President."
"We follow our orders. Nothing more, nothing less."
The other man continued to shake his head. "It's not like there's a clear and present threat against the woman. It could be years before there is! Are you going to have to guard her for the rest of your life?"
"I don't know."
"It's ridiculous," Wufei grumbled. "She's wasting your time and not giving me enough."
The elevator doors opened on the main level of the building. "The safety of the President is never a waste of time. If you need more help doing your job perhaps you should talk Une into assigning us a third partner."
"I don't *need* any help." Still, despite his emphatic words, Wufei lingered in the elevator. "Who would you suggest?"
"I know he's not on active status, but Trowa did go through all the necessary training." Heero held the doors open with one hand. "Take it up with her. I have to get back to my post."
****
The headache started as a dull throb at her temples. By midday, it had escalated into acute pain across the breadth of her forehead and down into the back of her neck. Two aspirin taken at lunch hadn't even made a dent in it. Relena sat at her desk, holding her head between her hands to keep her brain from exploding. A tear trickled down her cheek.
Fortunately Heero wasn't there to witness her weakness. He'd been called into a meeting at headquarters, and for the first time in a week, not counting her sleepless nights, Relena found herself alone. It would have been a welcome release, but for the headache from hell.
Someone rapped lightly on her office door, but it sounded to her like the person on the other side was hitting the wood with a sledgehammer. Her fist balled up. "What?" she shouted.
"Madam President?" The door opened inch by inch; she wiped at her cheek. It wouldn't be Heero because he never bothered to knock, and the voice was far too soft to be his, but it still wouldn't do to be caught crying. Quatre Winner's head poked into her office. His blonde hair was brilliant against the dark blue of his expensive suit. But the warm smile he gave her was the most wonderful thing about him. "Am I disturbing you?"
Her entire face lit up. "Quatre!" Relena stood and met him halfway across the office. Unsure of whether to hug him or just break down on his shoulder, she reached out for his hands. "You could never disturb me. But you have surprised me!"
He drew her knuckles up to his mouth for a quick kiss. "Have I? Didn't you receive my letter? I sent it over a week ago to tell you I'd be stopping by."
"Oh…" Relena hesitated. In the wake of everything, she'd completely forgotten to open his letter. "I'm so sorry. It's been…well, it's been a very bad week."
Quatre's ocean eyes grew worried. "Is everything all right, Relena?"
Her temples throbbed steadily as she began to nod, then suddenly she changed her mind. Shaking her head, she gently pulled away from him. "Things are definitely not right."
"Would you like to talk about it?"
She walked to a brocaded loveseat and sank down onto it. "I'm not even sure where I'd begin." After a moment of staring off into space, she looked back at him. "Heero's come back into my life."
If Quatre was shocked by this, he didn't show it. "Not in the way you would have liked?"
"No." Relena snapped herself out of her momentary trance. "You just got here and already I'm using you for my private therapist. Tell me everything that's new with you. It's been far too long."
"Relena…" Quatre made his way to the loveseat, hands in his pockets. "I didn't just come to Earth on business. I came because I sensed that you needed a friend." He sat next to her. "I'm here for you."
She couldn't stop the cascade of tears that his gentle, genuine words prodded out. "He hates me so much, Quatre. I don't know what I did…but he does." Relena buried her face in her hands.
"Oh, Relena." He pulled her into a warm embrace. It didn't take her long to relax in his arms; it was human contact, something she was usually denied. With her body tucked against his, Quatre rubbed her back, his hands soothing away her sobs. "I don't believe he hates you. He hates being vulnerable. And caring about someone makes you vulnerable."
Relena closed her eyes. Her cheek was pressed against his shoulder; Quatre was the very essence of comfort. "He doesn't care about me," she whispered.
"That's certainly what he'd like you to believe."
"I play so many games, Quatre. Every day of my life is another round." Her tears wet his shirt; he drew her even closer. "I can't play them in my personal life, too."
"I know." Keeping one hand on her back, Quatre brought his other up to cup the back of her neck. He pressed a soft kiss against her aching forehead. "I know."
There was nothing sexual in the embrace as far as they were concerned. But all Heero saw when he entered the President's office without announcing himself was Relena in Quatre Winner's arms.
And it was like a punch straight to his gut.
"If you're done groping each other, the President has a meeting to get to."
His cold voice cut through Quatre's warmth. Relena's eyes flew open. Instinct compelled her to pull away, and Quatre released her with a gentle squeeze on her hand. While she smoothed down her suit, he looked at his old co-pilot. "Hello, Heero. You're as polite as ever, I see."
"Winner." Heero's eye twitched. "I don't remember seeing your name in the President's appointment book."
Having recovered from the shock, anger crept up in Relena's chest. "The President can see whomever she chooses," she told him. "Whenever she chooses." She looked back at Quatre; his smile of encouragement prompted her to go on. "I suggest you learn how to knock, Commander Yuy." Her expression turned apologetic. "Quatre, I am so sorry, but I do have a meeting. Can we have dinner tonight?"
"Of course." He stood up and took her hands in his once more. "I look forward to it."
The smile she gave him was warm; the look she turned onto Heero was frozen. "Let's go, Commander." She walked out of the office, quite proud of herself for not collapsing under the pressure of her headache.
Heero glared at Quatre for a long minute before the blonde man had enough. "Don't you give me that look, Heero. Don't you dare." He pointed at the door through which Relena had just disappeared. "I care about her very much. Any *sane* man would get down on his knees for the chance to have her say the same about him."
"Leave her alone."
"No, that's your department." Quatre crossed his arms. "There's something wrong with her, and it's more than just your usual cruelty. She needs help…she needs friends right now. And I'm going to be here for her in any way that she might want me." He paused. "And I mean *any* way."
"Touch her like that, and I will kill you."
The other man could only shake his head. "Just a little over the top, Heero. Take it down a notch or you might just give yourself away. You're not half as frightening as you think you are."
Heero wanted to blink, but wouldn't give Quatre the satisfaction of seeing him do so. The once timid boy had grown a sharp tongue to defend his gentle spirit. "I thought you were gay."
"Duo used to say the same thing about you."
"He should talk."
Quatre raised his shoulders. "Out of all of us, who is married with a child on the way?"
Without acknowledging that truth, Heero started for the door. "Don't test me where my mission is concerned. And she is *my* mission."
"She can't be just that, Heero. She deserves better."
"This is what I have to give her." He opened the door.
"Then don't be surprised when someone offers her everything else."
Heero slammed the door shut with far more force than necessary. He wanted to slam it so hard that it would erase Quatre's words…and his very existence. The man was a genuine threat. And threats were usually eliminated.
At the far end of the hallway, Relena sat on a small, but ornate chair, waiting for him. She didn't notice his approach as she was doubled over at the waist.
He frowned. "What's wrong with you?"
She raised her head quickly and stood up. His attention narrowed in on the pale hand she put on the chair's arm to steady herself. "Nothing," she replied, shortly. "I'm fine."
"I don't believe you."
"I don't really care what you believe."
He caught her arm before she could walk away. "Why do you always have to test me, Relena?"
"Let go." She leveled him with her blank stare. "If you want to touch me again, you make damn sure you keep it in the context of the boundaries you yourself set up. Either that or…" The pain in her head tripled; Relena's knees dropped out from under her.
Heero caught her before she collapsed to the ground; he couldn't help but recall, for the briefest of seconds, how she'd done the same for him so many years earlier. "Relena!" She screamed in reply, grabbing her head between her hands. "Tell me what's wrong!"
Although restrained by his body, she thrashed about, fighting some invisible assailant. A low moan rose from her throat, but she was unable to form any words.
"Put your arms around my neck," he ordered, and picked her up. She was unbelievably light; he was reminded of all the dinners she hadn't been eating…the dinners he hadn't been insisting she eat. "Hospital. Now."
His warmth was different than Quatre's, but there was too much pain to dwell on the variations between the two men. Heero's arms had always been the ones she wanted to be in, but right then, being so close to him was too much for her to bear. "Put me down," she whimpered. "Don't rescue me…anymore."
He was already carrying her down the wide steps of the grand staircase. "I haven't got anything else," she heard him say just under his breath before the pain blacked out everything else. "Let me at least do this for you."
****
"One thing you'll soon learn about living on Mars is that the metals at the core of the planet make it exceedingly difficult to communicate with the outside world. Transmissions get jammed, signals rarely go through." Millardo Peacecraft, once known as Zechs Marquise, looked around at the recent crop of construction workers who'd come to help colonize the desolate world. "We're on our own out here, but then again, that's probably what most of you are searching for. Work starts tomorrow morning at seven sharp. Don't be late."
The rag-tag group of men disbanded, going in every different direction as they headed off to their new homes, the cramped, make-shift apartment buildings, or into the even more make-shift town that boasted a fairly disreputable bar. Millardo watched them go, and he could almost feel sorry for them. If not for the presence of one amazing woman in his life, he'd be just the same as them.
The woman in question was waiting for him back at the home they'd built together out of nothing but scrap metal and a belief in each other that had come through war and death. Getting back to her at the end of the day was what kept him going throughout it.
He walked through the door twenty minutes later, and straight into Lucrezia Noin's arms. "You're home." She hugged him harder. "I was getting worried about you."
Millardo stroked her dark hair. She shouldn't worry about him, although it was perfectly all right for him to worry about her, especially now that they'd found out she was nearly two months pregnant. There had been babies before this one, two of them, both lost early on. He wanted to put her on a plush pillow for the next seven months, to protect the child, but also to save her from another heartbreak. "We had new arrivals. God, you smell good."
She laughed. "That's oven cleaner, sweetie."
"Should you be doing that?"
"I cleared it with Sally."
Millardo was mildly surprised. "You got through to Earth?"
"For about an hour today the communicator was working. We had about fifteen messages waiting for us; Sally's was just one." She paused. "And there was one from Relena."
"Relena?" He took a step back. "How is she?"
Noin nibbled on her lower lip for a second. "You should just watch the message, Zechs. I recorded it for you." Taking his hand, she led him over to the communicator station, and quickly called up the saved file.
Relena's face appeared on the screen. "This isn't an easy message to record. I'm not even sure you'll ever get it. But my first reaction was to contact you, Millardo. You are my brother by blood. The only family I have left." She took a breath. "There's been a threat against my life; I now live with one half of a deadly poison in my body. And there is no telling when the other half will be administered, or how, or what I will be asked to do to prevent it. There really isn't anything you can do about this, I know. You have your own life to live. Still, as I said, I just felt the need to…" Her composure broke; her shoulders hunched over as her tears began to flow. "I'm sorry. I just…I'm so alone right now. I can't ask you to abandon your life to come to my side, but if you get this, I would really like to talk to you and Miss Noin." She looked straight at the recording device. He saw his own eyes staring at him, wet with tears. "I need my big bro...."
The recording ended abruptly and there was a long moment of silence. "I'm sorry," Noin murmured into her lover's ear. "That's all that I got before everything jammed up again."
He backed away from the communicator like it was a bomb about to explode. As she watched him, he began to pace back and forth, his unconscious habit when there were too many thoughts running through his head. After a few minutes, he stopped and looked at her. "I want to go to her."
"There's nothing stopping you," she reminded him.
"But you and the baby…"
She touched her belly. "We have every intention of going with you."
Millardo reached for her. "It's more than that."
"I know." Noin cupped his face in her hands and gave him a light kiss. "But your mistakes are in the past, Zechs. You're a different person now. And she needs us."
"I used to think that my whole purpose in life was to protect Relena. And now here I haven't even seen her in, what, eight years?
"It's not too late."
He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against hers. "It might be. Poisoned…how?! Why??!"
Noin kissed him again. "I have a feeling there's at least one man who is doing everything in his power to answer those questions already."
"Unless he's the one who gave her the poison." Millardo drew back, a dark scowl on his handsome face. "He's nothing but a hired assassin."
"Maybe. But everyone's got personality quirks."
Laughter was something she had taught him. He wrapped her up in his arms for another long minute. "Pack us up. I'll book passage to Earth on the next shuttle out."
****
To Be Continued
Author's Notes: Thanks for all the sweet reviews! I hope you keep enjoying!!
****
Be My Downfall
by Kristen Elizabeth
****
A week later, Heero and Wufei presented their first report to Lady Une. It took exactly five minutes.
"This is it?" She searched through the contents of the file they'd presented to her, in case she'd missed something. "Seven days of active investigation and this is all you've managed to come up with?"
"The perps are smart. However they got the poison into the President, they didn't leave a trace of it behind. And we had everything tested." Wufei crossed his arms, indignant. "I personally interviewed over fifty people who have come into contact with her over the past two weeks, with nothing to show for it. Now, you do realize that number could have been doubled if my partner hadn't been otherwise occupied."
Une flashed him a deadly look. "Watch it, Chang." She looked at Heero. "How is the President holding up?"
Heero lifted one shoulder. "She's keeping to her normal routine. Not eating much. Not sleeping much either."
"You're watching her sleep?" Wufei asked.
"She looks tired," he shot back.
"That's to be expected, I suppose. She carries so many burdens already. This might prove to be one too heavy for her." The older woman stood up and looked out her window for a long moment. "Keep talking to her people. Re-interview anyone who has anything to do with her mail service. Go over the security tapes one more time. Someone put that letter on her secretary's desk; it didn't just appear out of thin air." She turned back to them. "As for you, Yuy, make sure she takes care of herself."
"With all due respect…"
Lady Une cut him off. "Whatever history you two have, get over it. She is your mission right now, and your mission needs your attention. End of discussion. You're both dismissed. And next time we talk, I expect there to be a lot more to talk about."
Wufei waited until they were in the elevator to let out a string of curses in rapid, angry Chinese. After a long moment, he switched back to English. "Did she really expect me to have solved the problem in one week all by myself? I'm good, but even I'm not *that* good!" Heero said nothing. "Don't tell me you're not more than a little sick of playing babysitter for the President."
"We follow our orders. Nothing more, nothing less."
The other man continued to shake his head. "It's not like there's a clear and present threat against the woman. It could be years before there is! Are you going to have to guard her for the rest of your life?"
"I don't know."
"It's ridiculous," Wufei grumbled. "She's wasting your time and not giving me enough."
The elevator doors opened on the main level of the building. "The safety of the President is never a waste of time. If you need more help doing your job perhaps you should talk Une into assigning us a third partner."
"I don't *need* any help." Still, despite his emphatic words, Wufei lingered in the elevator. "Who would you suggest?"
"I know he's not on active status, but Trowa did go through all the necessary training." Heero held the doors open with one hand. "Take it up with her. I have to get back to my post."
****
The headache started as a dull throb at her temples. By midday, it had escalated into acute pain across the breadth of her forehead and down into the back of her neck. Two aspirin taken at lunch hadn't even made a dent in it. Relena sat at her desk, holding her head between her hands to keep her brain from exploding. A tear trickled down her cheek.
Fortunately Heero wasn't there to witness her weakness. He'd been called into a meeting at headquarters, and for the first time in a week, not counting her sleepless nights, Relena found herself alone. It would have been a welcome release, but for the headache from hell.
Someone rapped lightly on her office door, but it sounded to her like the person on the other side was hitting the wood with a sledgehammer. Her fist balled up. "What?" she shouted.
"Madam President?" The door opened inch by inch; she wiped at her cheek. It wouldn't be Heero because he never bothered to knock, and the voice was far too soft to be his, but it still wouldn't do to be caught crying. Quatre Winner's head poked into her office. His blonde hair was brilliant against the dark blue of his expensive suit. But the warm smile he gave her was the most wonderful thing about him. "Am I disturbing you?"
Her entire face lit up. "Quatre!" Relena stood and met him halfway across the office. Unsure of whether to hug him or just break down on his shoulder, she reached out for his hands. "You could never disturb me. But you have surprised me!"
He drew her knuckles up to his mouth for a quick kiss. "Have I? Didn't you receive my letter? I sent it over a week ago to tell you I'd be stopping by."
"Oh…" Relena hesitated. In the wake of everything, she'd completely forgotten to open his letter. "I'm so sorry. It's been…well, it's been a very bad week."
Quatre's ocean eyes grew worried. "Is everything all right, Relena?"
Her temples throbbed steadily as she began to nod, then suddenly she changed her mind. Shaking her head, she gently pulled away from him. "Things are definitely not right."
"Would you like to talk about it?"
She walked to a brocaded loveseat and sank down onto it. "I'm not even sure where I'd begin." After a moment of staring off into space, she looked back at him. "Heero's come back into my life."
If Quatre was shocked by this, he didn't show it. "Not in the way you would have liked?"
"No." Relena snapped herself out of her momentary trance. "You just got here and already I'm using you for my private therapist. Tell me everything that's new with you. It's been far too long."
"Relena…" Quatre made his way to the loveseat, hands in his pockets. "I didn't just come to Earth on business. I came because I sensed that you needed a friend." He sat next to her. "I'm here for you."
She couldn't stop the cascade of tears that his gentle, genuine words prodded out. "He hates me so much, Quatre. I don't know what I did…but he does." Relena buried her face in her hands.
"Oh, Relena." He pulled her into a warm embrace. It didn't take her long to relax in his arms; it was human contact, something she was usually denied. With her body tucked against his, Quatre rubbed her back, his hands soothing away her sobs. "I don't believe he hates you. He hates being vulnerable. And caring about someone makes you vulnerable."
Relena closed her eyes. Her cheek was pressed against his shoulder; Quatre was the very essence of comfort. "He doesn't care about me," she whispered.
"That's certainly what he'd like you to believe."
"I play so many games, Quatre. Every day of my life is another round." Her tears wet his shirt; he drew her even closer. "I can't play them in my personal life, too."
"I know." Keeping one hand on her back, Quatre brought his other up to cup the back of her neck. He pressed a soft kiss against her aching forehead. "I know."
There was nothing sexual in the embrace as far as they were concerned. But all Heero saw when he entered the President's office without announcing himself was Relena in Quatre Winner's arms.
And it was like a punch straight to his gut.
"If you're done groping each other, the President has a meeting to get to."
His cold voice cut through Quatre's warmth. Relena's eyes flew open. Instinct compelled her to pull away, and Quatre released her with a gentle squeeze on her hand. While she smoothed down her suit, he looked at his old co-pilot. "Hello, Heero. You're as polite as ever, I see."
"Winner." Heero's eye twitched. "I don't remember seeing your name in the President's appointment book."
Having recovered from the shock, anger crept up in Relena's chest. "The President can see whomever she chooses," she told him. "Whenever she chooses." She looked back at Quatre; his smile of encouragement prompted her to go on. "I suggest you learn how to knock, Commander Yuy." Her expression turned apologetic. "Quatre, I am so sorry, but I do have a meeting. Can we have dinner tonight?"
"Of course." He stood up and took her hands in his once more. "I look forward to it."
The smile she gave him was warm; the look she turned onto Heero was frozen. "Let's go, Commander." She walked out of the office, quite proud of herself for not collapsing under the pressure of her headache.
Heero glared at Quatre for a long minute before the blonde man had enough. "Don't you give me that look, Heero. Don't you dare." He pointed at the door through which Relena had just disappeared. "I care about her very much. Any *sane* man would get down on his knees for the chance to have her say the same about him."
"Leave her alone."
"No, that's your department." Quatre crossed his arms. "There's something wrong with her, and it's more than just your usual cruelty. She needs help…she needs friends right now. And I'm going to be here for her in any way that she might want me." He paused. "And I mean *any* way."
"Touch her like that, and I will kill you."
The other man could only shake his head. "Just a little over the top, Heero. Take it down a notch or you might just give yourself away. You're not half as frightening as you think you are."
Heero wanted to blink, but wouldn't give Quatre the satisfaction of seeing him do so. The once timid boy had grown a sharp tongue to defend his gentle spirit. "I thought you were gay."
"Duo used to say the same thing about you."
"He should talk."
Quatre raised his shoulders. "Out of all of us, who is married with a child on the way?"
Without acknowledging that truth, Heero started for the door. "Don't test me where my mission is concerned. And she is *my* mission."
"She can't be just that, Heero. She deserves better."
"This is what I have to give her." He opened the door.
"Then don't be surprised when someone offers her everything else."
Heero slammed the door shut with far more force than necessary. He wanted to slam it so hard that it would erase Quatre's words…and his very existence. The man was a genuine threat. And threats were usually eliminated.
At the far end of the hallway, Relena sat on a small, but ornate chair, waiting for him. She didn't notice his approach as she was doubled over at the waist.
He frowned. "What's wrong with you?"
She raised her head quickly and stood up. His attention narrowed in on the pale hand she put on the chair's arm to steady herself. "Nothing," she replied, shortly. "I'm fine."
"I don't believe you."
"I don't really care what you believe."
He caught her arm before she could walk away. "Why do you always have to test me, Relena?"
"Let go." She leveled him with her blank stare. "If you want to touch me again, you make damn sure you keep it in the context of the boundaries you yourself set up. Either that or…" The pain in her head tripled; Relena's knees dropped out from under her.
Heero caught her before she collapsed to the ground; he couldn't help but recall, for the briefest of seconds, how she'd done the same for him so many years earlier. "Relena!" She screamed in reply, grabbing her head between her hands. "Tell me what's wrong!"
Although restrained by his body, she thrashed about, fighting some invisible assailant. A low moan rose from her throat, but she was unable to form any words.
"Put your arms around my neck," he ordered, and picked her up. She was unbelievably light; he was reminded of all the dinners she hadn't been eating…the dinners he hadn't been insisting she eat. "Hospital. Now."
His warmth was different than Quatre's, but there was too much pain to dwell on the variations between the two men. Heero's arms had always been the ones she wanted to be in, but right then, being so close to him was too much for her to bear. "Put me down," she whimpered. "Don't rescue me…anymore."
He was already carrying her down the wide steps of the grand staircase. "I haven't got anything else," she heard him say just under his breath before the pain blacked out everything else. "Let me at least do this for you."
****
"One thing you'll soon learn about living on Mars is that the metals at the core of the planet make it exceedingly difficult to communicate with the outside world. Transmissions get jammed, signals rarely go through." Millardo Peacecraft, once known as Zechs Marquise, looked around at the recent crop of construction workers who'd come to help colonize the desolate world. "We're on our own out here, but then again, that's probably what most of you are searching for. Work starts tomorrow morning at seven sharp. Don't be late."
The rag-tag group of men disbanded, going in every different direction as they headed off to their new homes, the cramped, make-shift apartment buildings, or into the even more make-shift town that boasted a fairly disreputable bar. Millardo watched them go, and he could almost feel sorry for them. If not for the presence of one amazing woman in his life, he'd be just the same as them.
The woman in question was waiting for him back at the home they'd built together out of nothing but scrap metal and a belief in each other that had come through war and death. Getting back to her at the end of the day was what kept him going throughout it.
He walked through the door twenty minutes later, and straight into Lucrezia Noin's arms. "You're home." She hugged him harder. "I was getting worried about you."
Millardo stroked her dark hair. She shouldn't worry about him, although it was perfectly all right for him to worry about her, especially now that they'd found out she was nearly two months pregnant. There had been babies before this one, two of them, both lost early on. He wanted to put her on a plush pillow for the next seven months, to protect the child, but also to save her from another heartbreak. "We had new arrivals. God, you smell good."
She laughed. "That's oven cleaner, sweetie."
"Should you be doing that?"
"I cleared it with Sally."
Millardo was mildly surprised. "You got through to Earth?"
"For about an hour today the communicator was working. We had about fifteen messages waiting for us; Sally's was just one." She paused. "And there was one from Relena."
"Relena?" He took a step back. "How is she?"
Noin nibbled on her lower lip for a second. "You should just watch the message, Zechs. I recorded it for you." Taking his hand, she led him over to the communicator station, and quickly called up the saved file.
Relena's face appeared on the screen. "This isn't an easy message to record. I'm not even sure you'll ever get it. But my first reaction was to contact you, Millardo. You are my brother by blood. The only family I have left." She took a breath. "There's been a threat against my life; I now live with one half of a deadly poison in my body. And there is no telling when the other half will be administered, or how, or what I will be asked to do to prevent it. There really isn't anything you can do about this, I know. You have your own life to live. Still, as I said, I just felt the need to…" Her composure broke; her shoulders hunched over as her tears began to flow. "I'm sorry. I just…I'm so alone right now. I can't ask you to abandon your life to come to my side, but if you get this, I would really like to talk to you and Miss Noin." She looked straight at the recording device. He saw his own eyes staring at him, wet with tears. "I need my big bro...."
The recording ended abruptly and there was a long moment of silence. "I'm sorry," Noin murmured into her lover's ear. "That's all that I got before everything jammed up again."
He backed away from the communicator like it was a bomb about to explode. As she watched him, he began to pace back and forth, his unconscious habit when there were too many thoughts running through his head. After a few minutes, he stopped and looked at her. "I want to go to her."
"There's nothing stopping you," she reminded him.
"But you and the baby…"
She touched her belly. "We have every intention of going with you."
Millardo reached for her. "It's more than that."
"I know." Noin cupped his face in her hands and gave him a light kiss. "But your mistakes are in the past, Zechs. You're a different person now. And she needs us."
"I used to think that my whole purpose in life was to protect Relena. And now here I haven't even seen her in, what, eight years?
"It's not too late."
He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against hers. "It might be. Poisoned…how?! Why??!"
Noin kissed him again. "I have a feeling there's at least one man who is doing everything in his power to answer those questions already."
"Unless he's the one who gave her the poison." Millardo drew back, a dark scowl on his handsome face. "He's nothing but a hired assassin."
"Maybe. But everyone's got personality quirks."
Laughter was something she had taught him. He wrapped her up in his arms for another long minute. "Pack us up. I'll book passage to Earth on the next shuttle out."
****
To Be Continued