Disclaimer: Characters within do not belong to me.
Author's Notes: I apologize for the delay. I had some surgery, nothing major, but I no longer possess a gallbladder...it's kind of cool. Anywho, enjoy this chapter! And that's all I'm going to say.
Be My Downfall
by Kristen Elizabeth
"Well, Relena, I think the two of you have it worked out already."
The new mother's face glowed as she looked down at her newborn daughter. After only one try, Gisele had latched onto her breast, and was currently taking her important first feeding with ease.
"She's got her father's will," Relena murmured. "Accept no failures." She shook her head in amazement. "It's the oddest feeling."
Sally smiled. "I've heard other mothers say that. I hope to find out myself someday."
The President leaned back against her pillow. "I wasn't sure I'd ever get to do this. And I know I wouldn't have if not for you, Dr. Po. Thank you, so much."
"Truly, it was my pleasure." Sally cleared her throat. "You're not out of the woods yet, though. As soon as she's asleep, I have a whole battery of tests I'm afraid I'll have to put you through."
"It's all right." Relena cuddled her baby closer to her body. "Whatever it takes, I'll gladly do it."
There was a knock on the door just then. Sally frowned. "Doesn't anyone pay attention to the nursing mother sign?" she asked out loud. "Who is it?"
"Heero," was the short reply.
Relena's face lit up. "Come in, Heero!"
He let himself in tentatively and froze for a second when he saw Relena topless, feeding their daughter from her bare breast. "Should I come back later?"
"Don't be silly." She waved him over with her free hand. "It's nothing you haven't seen before. Look…she's feeding with no problem. Dr. Po says that's a really good sign."
"It means she won't have to be in the PICU for much longer than a couple more days," Sally informed him. "You might even be able to take her home at the end of the week."
"Home." Relena savored the word. "Isn't it wonderful, Heero?"
Cupping her face in his broad palm, he looked at her with tenderness Sally never would have believed if she hadn't seen it, but said nothing. It didn't seem like he needed to. Somehow, Relena just knew, and it was obvious to anyone from the way her eyes closed in pure bliss.
Gisele broke the moment by letting go of Relena's nipple and whimpering slightly. Relena instantly looked down at her. "Should I burp her now?"
"I'll see that she's burped," Sally said. "You need to rest for a moment before we get started on those tests."
Relena glanced up at Heero. "Heero needs to hold her. He still hasn't…" She stopped short.
Heero's eyes grew wide. "Relena…what is it? Are you all right?"
"Just tired." She gave him a weak smile, but even her weakest smiles were brilliant to him. "I'll be all right. It's just been a crazy couple of days, you know."
Sally nodded, understanding, but she still reached for Gisele. "As soon as we're done, I'll bring her back. I promise."
"And then Heero can hold her." Relena let her baby go with even more reluctance than she had before. "Bye-bye, angel. Mommy and Daddy love you so much."
Carefully cradling Gisele in her arms, Sally left them alone. Heero grabbed a chair and pulled it closer to Relena's bed. "Are you really all right, or just saying so? You can understand my concern; you kept me in the dark about your condition the whole time we were away."
"And I hated every moment of lying to you. But I knew you'd bring me back here, and I couldn't bear the thought of us being forced apart again."
"You still should have told me you were in pain. I would have…I don't know." He ran a hand through his tousled hair. "Taken better care of you."
Relena took his hand in her cool one. "Heero, no woman has ever been better cared for than I have been for the past few months. So, yes, I really am all right. I have the man I love beside me and my daughter is going to be healthy and beautiful…and I'm not going anywhere."
"Good." He leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss against her mouth. "I intend to hold you to that."
Relena kissed him back, savoring the warmth of his lips. "I love you, Heero."
He pulled back and looked her straight in the eye. "Marry me," he said suddenly.
She studied his face for a long moment, searching for any signs that he might be kidding around. He never blinked as he sat, waiting for her response.
"All right," Relena replied, her voice hoarse with emotion. "I will."
Duo had once said that Heero probably hadn't even been born with the capacity to genuinely smile. Well, Relena was happy to report that Duo was very wrong.
After Gisele was burped, changed and laid down in her warmed bassinet, Sally paused for a jolt of caffeine at the nurse's station just down the hall from the President's guarded room. She listened to the chatter around her as she poured herself a strong cup of coffee. Most of the gossip centered around their very important patient, or more specifically, her secret, illegitimate pregnancy. Sally was tempted to put an end to the rumors, but she wasn't sure what she would say to do so. Relena was unmarried and she had hid her condition from the entire world by disappearing with her lover for five months. And that lover was her Preventer bodyguard. There wasn't much being whispered that wasn't the truth.
She sipped from her cup as she flipped through a few charts. Just when she was about to flag down a nurse to begin the preparations for Relena's tests, the chatter grew even louder. Curious, Sally looked up from her paperwork.
A massive arrangement of flowers blocked her view of anything else. The female nurses were gathered around it, admiring the beautiful blossoms. Roses, lilies, snapdragons, and irises…it was classic and unique and truly breathtaking.
"They just arrived," one nurse answered the doctor's unspoken question. "They're for President Peacecraft."
"How lovely," Sally murmured. "I'll take them to her; I'm on my way to her room." Tucking a chart under one arm, she struggled to lift the heavy glass vase. "Anyone want to lend a hand?"
It took two grown women to carry the flowers down the hall, past the posted guard, and into Relena's room. It was worth the trip though to see Heero perched on the edge of the bed, one arm wrapped securely around the President's shoulders, not to mention seeing the misty tears of happiness in the woman's blue eyes.
"Special delivery for you, Madam President," Sally said from behind the blooms.
"Oh!" Relena looked at Heero. "Did you…?"
"I wish I could take credit for it," he said, regretfully. "Here." He stood up and took the vase from the women. "Was there a card? Has it been thoroughly examined?"
"I'm sure it has been," Sally replied. "Nothing gets past the lobby without being screened, down to the very last rosebud."
"Can you put them near the window, Heero?" He did as Relena asked; she admired the results for a moment. "It brightens up the whole room there, but I think I'd rather have them closer to me. I imagine they smell heavenly. They're certainly beautiful enough."
Heero carried them back over to her. "They've got nothing on you." Relena's cheeks colored with pleasure. He set the vase down next to her bed, close enough to her that she could reach out and touch the soft petals.
"I wonder if Millardo sent them?" she mused, leaning over as much as she could to inhale the combined perfumes of the various flowers. "I was right…heavenly."
Although he could have stayed by her side and watched her all day, Heero's beeper suddenly went off. His hand flew to his belt to check it. "Damn," he muttered. "Chang. Relena, I should…"
"It's okay," she told him, honestly. "Go take the call."
Heero leaned over her bed and gave her a long, soft kiss. "I'll be back."
"I know." Relena gave him a little wink when he reached the door and looked back at her. "I love you, Heero."
He almost said it back, but something stopped him at the last minute, and all he did was lower his head in acknowledgement. It was such a small moment, such a relatively insignificant event, but later, he would hate himself for it.
Because communicator calls were not permitted within the hospital, Heero had to go outside in order to get a secured line through to Preventer headquarters. Once he had, Wufei's face appeared on the tiny screen.
"Yuy. About time," he said without further greeting.
"This had better be good, Chang," Heero replied roughly. "Relena needs me."
In the past, his partner would have snorted or made some sort of derisive remark about women, so Heero was almost taken aback when Wufei nodded. "Yes. She does. Especially now."
"What's going on?"
"I just received a message from Trowa." Wufei paused. "He's figured out how Relena was poisoned."
Heero's eyes narrowed in thin slits. "Tell me. Now."
"I went back over all the files, all the people we interviewed, especially her secretary, and I didn't find anything…but then I dug just a little bit deeper."
"I said now, Chang."
His partner took a breath. "On the night before she received the letter, Relena had a dinner date with Karen Wynstock's ex-husband. According to the finance check we did on him, on that day he had flowers sent to her office."
"Flowers," Heero repeated.
"It's the only thing we never checked, because we never found them. She probably dumped the evidence the minute she got into the office the next day. At the same time she planted the letter in the President's mail. It fits, Heero. The poison was in the flowers. And Relena inhaled it." He paused for another breath. "Yuy? Hello? Are you there?"
He never got a reply. Heero had dropped the communicator and taken off back into the hospital.
He reached Relena's room at the same time as a rushing group of doctors and nurses, three of whom were pushing a bright red crash-cart.
"No," he said between heavy, frightened breaths. "No…Relena…please."
Heero began bypassing nurses, pushing them out of the way if they were stubborn. "Sir!" one of the more stubborn ones called out. "Sir, you can't go in there." She went for his arm to pull him back from the door. "The doctors need room to…"
He effectively silenced her with the sheer power of his glare. "I'm going in."
The petrified woman nodded. "Okay." Heero pushed past her and flung the door open.
"I don't understand," Sally was in the middle of saying to her nurses. "She was just fine two minutes ago!"
"Doctor, she's hypotensive. BP's 70 over 40."
"Shit!" Sally rubbed her arm across her forehead. "Um…get the paddles ready. 100 setting." Another nurse reached for the crash cart and grabbed two metal handles attached to cords and handed them to Sally. Yet another nurse adjusted something on a small computer screen. "Clear."
Heero closed his eyes when Relena's body jumped from the shock. He couldn't watch. Bile rose up in his throat.
"65 over 40," a nurse called out.
"Again," Sally ordered.
Heero put a hand over his mouth, backing up all the way to the wall. With his eyes still closed, all he could do was listen.
"C'mon, Relena," Sally said. "Please don't make me open you up."
"She's not breathing!"
"Intubation kit, 35 French." A moment passed. "I'm in. Bag her."
"Still nothing, Doctor. Heart rate's down, BP still crashing."
"Please, Relena. C'mon…don't do this." Sally's tone turned from pleading to commanding. "Get surgery down here. We're going to have to open her up."
A machine went off, emitting a shrill series of beeps. "Asystole!"
"Vasopressin, 100 cc's."
Minutes dragged by. Heero's heart beat at the base of his throat, fast and hard. So ironic. His heart wouldn't slow down and Relena's wouldn't start up. The voices turned in a muted blurb of noise, muffled and distant. For a long time, he heard nothing specific. Until Sally said, "No, no adrenaline. We'll overload her systems. Any rhythms?"
"Nothing, doctor."
Sally paused. "How long has it been?"
"Twenty minutes."
"Stop compressions." Heero's eyes flew open just in time to see Sally look up at the clock, blinking rapidly. "Time of death, 1445."
"No. No…no…no…NO!" On autopilot, Heero reached into his hip holster for his weapon. With clammy, shaky hands, he raised the gun at the nurses. "Keep going. Give her whatever you have to…get her back!"
The nurses froze, staring at the madman holding them at gunpoint.
Sally licked her dry lips. "Heero, put down the…"
"Shut up," he spat out, coldly. "Do your fucking job, or I swear I will kill you."
"Relena wouldn't want this."
"Relena would want to live." He cocked the trigger. "And if you want to do the same, I suggest you get to work."
With all the bravado she could muster, Sally walked straight for him. He flinched when she touched his hand. "You're not a killer anymore. Don't disappoint her."
His fingers relaxed as his knees grew weak. She took the opportunity to gently pry the gun away from him. Heero's arms flopped to his sides. "Bring her back to me," he whispered. "Please. God, Sally, please." He choked back hot tears. "Please, please…I need her."
"Heero." She swallowed heavily. "She's gone."
Just then, the door opened and a nurse entered with a pink cotton bundle in her arms. "Dr. Po, it's time for her next feeding." Seeing the chaos, and the very still body of the baby's mother on the bed, the woman stopped short.
Heero couldn't keep himself from looking over at the nurse carrying Gisele. He could see a tiny bit of the baby's face in the sea of pink, the tuft of dark hair on her forehead that would never be Relena's golden blonde.
"Take her, Heero," Sally urged him. The nurse approached them and held the baby out to its father. "She needs you."
He couldn't make his arms work. And he wasn't entirely sure he even wanted them to. Taking the baby, holding her, feeling her warmth and life while Relena grew colder…he couldn't do it.
Shaking his head, Heero backed away from his daughter. "I can't."
Without another word, he bolted out of the room. He didn't stop until he was outside in the fresh air. He gulped in huge breaths, his stomach rolling and churning. A bird chirped in a nearby tree and several people passed him by with strange looks. He couldn't fight his stomach anymore, and Heero vomited into the bushes.
Bent over at the waist, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as crushing sorrow broke down every single one of his emotional barriers. "Relena," he cried out. "Relena!!"
"…the procession starts from the gates of the Presidential Mansion and takes a two-mile path through the center of what was once the Sanq Kingdom, the country of her birth, and will end up at the Old City Cathedral. After the ceremony and an unprecedented five day's viewing, it will be taken to the church's ancient cemetery and Relena Dorlian Peacecraft, President of the Earth-Space United Nations, the people's Queen, will be laid to rest amongst her ancestors. A proper, yet untimely end to a beautiful life."
The nurse changing Quatre's IV bag shook her head sadly. "Mr. Barton, would it be all right if I turned the television off? It's just so horribly sad."
Trowa shook his head. When he spoke, his throat was raw. "Leave it on. He'd want to see it." He looked down at his sleeping love. "They were friends, you know."
"I didn't. Did you know her, too?"
He thought for a moment. "No. Not really." A second passed. "I should have, though. The things she did…gave my life purpose again. And I never thanked her. None of us ever thanked her."
The nurse looked back up at the screen. "I voted for her. She's about my age. Was." She shook her head. "I'll never understand why the good ones die young."
"Me neither," Trowa whispered when the nurse was gone. On the television, a group of fifty children marched solemnly just behind the carriage that bore Relena's coffin. But just in front of them, the pallbearers, the men who would carry the President from the carriage to the cathedral walked along. Three unidentified Preventers, and next to them, three familiar faces. Chang Wufei, Duo Maxwell, and Millardo Peacecraft.
"We should be there," he told Quatre's still body. Something struck him. A missing face. "He should be there."
But no matter how hard he scanned the crowds that lined the streets for a final glimpse at their fallen princess, he did not see Heero Yuy's face.
He didn't have time to think much more on it. Something touched his wrist and he jumped, instantly on guard.
Quatre's fingers reached out to him; his blue-green eyes slowly began to open. Upon seeing Trowa, he gave him a dry smile. "Hey." He tried lick his lips to wet them. "What have I missed?"
To Be Continued
Author's Notes: I apologize for the delay. I had some surgery, nothing major, but I no longer possess a gallbladder...it's kind of cool. Anywho, enjoy this chapter! And that's all I'm going to say.
Be My Downfall
by Kristen Elizabeth
"Well, Relena, I think the two of you have it worked out already."
The new mother's face glowed as she looked down at her newborn daughter. After only one try, Gisele had latched onto her breast, and was currently taking her important first feeding with ease.
"She's got her father's will," Relena murmured. "Accept no failures." She shook her head in amazement. "It's the oddest feeling."
Sally smiled. "I've heard other mothers say that. I hope to find out myself someday."
The President leaned back against her pillow. "I wasn't sure I'd ever get to do this. And I know I wouldn't have if not for you, Dr. Po. Thank you, so much."
"Truly, it was my pleasure." Sally cleared her throat. "You're not out of the woods yet, though. As soon as she's asleep, I have a whole battery of tests I'm afraid I'll have to put you through."
"It's all right." Relena cuddled her baby closer to her body. "Whatever it takes, I'll gladly do it."
There was a knock on the door just then. Sally frowned. "Doesn't anyone pay attention to the nursing mother sign?" she asked out loud. "Who is it?"
"Heero," was the short reply.
Relena's face lit up. "Come in, Heero!"
He let himself in tentatively and froze for a second when he saw Relena topless, feeding their daughter from her bare breast. "Should I come back later?"
"Don't be silly." She waved him over with her free hand. "It's nothing you haven't seen before. Look…she's feeding with no problem. Dr. Po says that's a really good sign."
"It means she won't have to be in the PICU for much longer than a couple more days," Sally informed him. "You might even be able to take her home at the end of the week."
"Home." Relena savored the word. "Isn't it wonderful, Heero?"
Cupping her face in his broad palm, he looked at her with tenderness Sally never would have believed if she hadn't seen it, but said nothing. It didn't seem like he needed to. Somehow, Relena just knew, and it was obvious to anyone from the way her eyes closed in pure bliss.
Gisele broke the moment by letting go of Relena's nipple and whimpering slightly. Relena instantly looked down at her. "Should I burp her now?"
"I'll see that she's burped," Sally said. "You need to rest for a moment before we get started on those tests."
Relena glanced up at Heero. "Heero needs to hold her. He still hasn't…" She stopped short.
Heero's eyes grew wide. "Relena…what is it? Are you all right?"
"Just tired." She gave him a weak smile, but even her weakest smiles were brilliant to him. "I'll be all right. It's just been a crazy couple of days, you know."
Sally nodded, understanding, but she still reached for Gisele. "As soon as we're done, I'll bring her back. I promise."
"And then Heero can hold her." Relena let her baby go with even more reluctance than she had before. "Bye-bye, angel. Mommy and Daddy love you so much."
Carefully cradling Gisele in her arms, Sally left them alone. Heero grabbed a chair and pulled it closer to Relena's bed. "Are you really all right, or just saying so? You can understand my concern; you kept me in the dark about your condition the whole time we were away."
"And I hated every moment of lying to you. But I knew you'd bring me back here, and I couldn't bear the thought of us being forced apart again."
"You still should have told me you were in pain. I would have…I don't know." He ran a hand through his tousled hair. "Taken better care of you."
Relena took his hand in her cool one. "Heero, no woman has ever been better cared for than I have been for the past few months. So, yes, I really am all right. I have the man I love beside me and my daughter is going to be healthy and beautiful…and I'm not going anywhere."
"Good." He leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss against her mouth. "I intend to hold you to that."
Relena kissed him back, savoring the warmth of his lips. "I love you, Heero."
He pulled back and looked her straight in the eye. "Marry me," he said suddenly.
She studied his face for a long moment, searching for any signs that he might be kidding around. He never blinked as he sat, waiting for her response.
"All right," Relena replied, her voice hoarse with emotion. "I will."
Duo had once said that Heero probably hadn't even been born with the capacity to genuinely smile. Well, Relena was happy to report that Duo was very wrong.
After Gisele was burped, changed and laid down in her warmed bassinet, Sally paused for a jolt of caffeine at the nurse's station just down the hall from the President's guarded room. She listened to the chatter around her as she poured herself a strong cup of coffee. Most of the gossip centered around their very important patient, or more specifically, her secret, illegitimate pregnancy. Sally was tempted to put an end to the rumors, but she wasn't sure what she would say to do so. Relena was unmarried and she had hid her condition from the entire world by disappearing with her lover for five months. And that lover was her Preventer bodyguard. There wasn't much being whispered that wasn't the truth.
She sipped from her cup as she flipped through a few charts. Just when she was about to flag down a nurse to begin the preparations for Relena's tests, the chatter grew even louder. Curious, Sally looked up from her paperwork.
A massive arrangement of flowers blocked her view of anything else. The female nurses were gathered around it, admiring the beautiful blossoms. Roses, lilies, snapdragons, and irises…it was classic and unique and truly breathtaking.
"They just arrived," one nurse answered the doctor's unspoken question. "They're for President Peacecraft."
"How lovely," Sally murmured. "I'll take them to her; I'm on my way to her room." Tucking a chart under one arm, she struggled to lift the heavy glass vase. "Anyone want to lend a hand?"
It took two grown women to carry the flowers down the hall, past the posted guard, and into Relena's room. It was worth the trip though to see Heero perched on the edge of the bed, one arm wrapped securely around the President's shoulders, not to mention seeing the misty tears of happiness in the woman's blue eyes.
"Special delivery for you, Madam President," Sally said from behind the blooms.
"Oh!" Relena looked at Heero. "Did you…?"
"I wish I could take credit for it," he said, regretfully. "Here." He stood up and took the vase from the women. "Was there a card? Has it been thoroughly examined?"
"I'm sure it has been," Sally replied. "Nothing gets past the lobby without being screened, down to the very last rosebud."
"Can you put them near the window, Heero?" He did as Relena asked; she admired the results for a moment. "It brightens up the whole room there, but I think I'd rather have them closer to me. I imagine they smell heavenly. They're certainly beautiful enough."
Heero carried them back over to her. "They've got nothing on you." Relena's cheeks colored with pleasure. He set the vase down next to her bed, close enough to her that she could reach out and touch the soft petals.
"I wonder if Millardo sent them?" she mused, leaning over as much as she could to inhale the combined perfumes of the various flowers. "I was right…heavenly."
Although he could have stayed by her side and watched her all day, Heero's beeper suddenly went off. His hand flew to his belt to check it. "Damn," he muttered. "Chang. Relena, I should…"
"It's okay," she told him, honestly. "Go take the call."
Heero leaned over her bed and gave her a long, soft kiss. "I'll be back."
"I know." Relena gave him a little wink when he reached the door and looked back at her. "I love you, Heero."
He almost said it back, but something stopped him at the last minute, and all he did was lower his head in acknowledgement. It was such a small moment, such a relatively insignificant event, but later, he would hate himself for it.
Because communicator calls were not permitted within the hospital, Heero had to go outside in order to get a secured line through to Preventer headquarters. Once he had, Wufei's face appeared on the tiny screen.
"Yuy. About time," he said without further greeting.
"This had better be good, Chang," Heero replied roughly. "Relena needs me."
In the past, his partner would have snorted or made some sort of derisive remark about women, so Heero was almost taken aback when Wufei nodded. "Yes. She does. Especially now."
"What's going on?"
"I just received a message from Trowa." Wufei paused. "He's figured out how Relena was poisoned."
Heero's eyes narrowed in thin slits. "Tell me. Now."
"I went back over all the files, all the people we interviewed, especially her secretary, and I didn't find anything…but then I dug just a little bit deeper."
"I said now, Chang."
His partner took a breath. "On the night before she received the letter, Relena had a dinner date with Karen Wynstock's ex-husband. According to the finance check we did on him, on that day he had flowers sent to her office."
"Flowers," Heero repeated.
"It's the only thing we never checked, because we never found them. She probably dumped the evidence the minute she got into the office the next day. At the same time she planted the letter in the President's mail. It fits, Heero. The poison was in the flowers. And Relena inhaled it." He paused for another breath. "Yuy? Hello? Are you there?"
He never got a reply. Heero had dropped the communicator and taken off back into the hospital.
He reached Relena's room at the same time as a rushing group of doctors and nurses, three of whom were pushing a bright red crash-cart.
"No," he said between heavy, frightened breaths. "No…Relena…please."
Heero began bypassing nurses, pushing them out of the way if they were stubborn. "Sir!" one of the more stubborn ones called out. "Sir, you can't go in there." She went for his arm to pull him back from the door. "The doctors need room to…"
He effectively silenced her with the sheer power of his glare. "I'm going in."
The petrified woman nodded. "Okay." Heero pushed past her and flung the door open.
"I don't understand," Sally was in the middle of saying to her nurses. "She was just fine two minutes ago!"
"Doctor, she's hypotensive. BP's 70 over 40."
"Shit!" Sally rubbed her arm across her forehead. "Um…get the paddles ready. 100 setting." Another nurse reached for the crash cart and grabbed two metal handles attached to cords and handed them to Sally. Yet another nurse adjusted something on a small computer screen. "Clear."
Heero closed his eyes when Relena's body jumped from the shock. He couldn't watch. Bile rose up in his throat.
"65 over 40," a nurse called out.
"Again," Sally ordered.
Heero put a hand over his mouth, backing up all the way to the wall. With his eyes still closed, all he could do was listen.
"C'mon, Relena," Sally said. "Please don't make me open you up."
"She's not breathing!"
"Intubation kit, 35 French." A moment passed. "I'm in. Bag her."
"Still nothing, Doctor. Heart rate's down, BP still crashing."
"Please, Relena. C'mon…don't do this." Sally's tone turned from pleading to commanding. "Get surgery down here. We're going to have to open her up."
A machine went off, emitting a shrill series of beeps. "Asystole!"
"Vasopressin, 100 cc's."
Minutes dragged by. Heero's heart beat at the base of his throat, fast and hard. So ironic. His heart wouldn't slow down and Relena's wouldn't start up. The voices turned in a muted blurb of noise, muffled and distant. For a long time, he heard nothing specific. Until Sally said, "No, no adrenaline. We'll overload her systems. Any rhythms?"
"Nothing, doctor."
Sally paused. "How long has it been?"
"Twenty minutes."
"Stop compressions." Heero's eyes flew open just in time to see Sally look up at the clock, blinking rapidly. "Time of death, 1445."
"No. No…no…no…NO!" On autopilot, Heero reached into his hip holster for his weapon. With clammy, shaky hands, he raised the gun at the nurses. "Keep going. Give her whatever you have to…get her back!"
The nurses froze, staring at the madman holding them at gunpoint.
Sally licked her dry lips. "Heero, put down the…"
"Shut up," he spat out, coldly. "Do your fucking job, or I swear I will kill you."
"Relena wouldn't want this."
"Relena would want to live." He cocked the trigger. "And if you want to do the same, I suggest you get to work."
With all the bravado she could muster, Sally walked straight for him. He flinched when she touched his hand. "You're not a killer anymore. Don't disappoint her."
His fingers relaxed as his knees grew weak. She took the opportunity to gently pry the gun away from him. Heero's arms flopped to his sides. "Bring her back to me," he whispered. "Please. God, Sally, please." He choked back hot tears. "Please, please…I need her."
"Heero." She swallowed heavily. "She's gone."
Just then, the door opened and a nurse entered with a pink cotton bundle in her arms. "Dr. Po, it's time for her next feeding." Seeing the chaos, and the very still body of the baby's mother on the bed, the woman stopped short.
Heero couldn't keep himself from looking over at the nurse carrying Gisele. He could see a tiny bit of the baby's face in the sea of pink, the tuft of dark hair on her forehead that would never be Relena's golden blonde.
"Take her, Heero," Sally urged him. The nurse approached them and held the baby out to its father. "She needs you."
He couldn't make his arms work. And he wasn't entirely sure he even wanted them to. Taking the baby, holding her, feeling her warmth and life while Relena grew colder…he couldn't do it.
Shaking his head, Heero backed away from his daughter. "I can't."
Without another word, he bolted out of the room. He didn't stop until he was outside in the fresh air. He gulped in huge breaths, his stomach rolling and churning. A bird chirped in a nearby tree and several people passed him by with strange looks. He couldn't fight his stomach anymore, and Heero vomited into the bushes.
Bent over at the waist, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as crushing sorrow broke down every single one of his emotional barriers. "Relena," he cried out. "Relena!!"
"…the procession starts from the gates of the Presidential Mansion and takes a two-mile path through the center of what was once the Sanq Kingdom, the country of her birth, and will end up at the Old City Cathedral. After the ceremony and an unprecedented five day's viewing, it will be taken to the church's ancient cemetery and Relena Dorlian Peacecraft, President of the Earth-Space United Nations, the people's Queen, will be laid to rest amongst her ancestors. A proper, yet untimely end to a beautiful life."
The nurse changing Quatre's IV bag shook her head sadly. "Mr. Barton, would it be all right if I turned the television off? It's just so horribly sad."
Trowa shook his head. When he spoke, his throat was raw. "Leave it on. He'd want to see it." He looked down at his sleeping love. "They were friends, you know."
"I didn't. Did you know her, too?"
He thought for a moment. "No. Not really." A second passed. "I should have, though. The things she did…gave my life purpose again. And I never thanked her. None of us ever thanked her."
The nurse looked back up at the screen. "I voted for her. She's about my age. Was." She shook her head. "I'll never understand why the good ones die young."
"Me neither," Trowa whispered when the nurse was gone. On the television, a group of fifty children marched solemnly just behind the carriage that bore Relena's coffin. But just in front of them, the pallbearers, the men who would carry the President from the carriage to the cathedral walked along. Three unidentified Preventers, and next to them, three familiar faces. Chang Wufei, Duo Maxwell, and Millardo Peacecraft.
"We should be there," he told Quatre's still body. Something struck him. A missing face. "He should be there."
But no matter how hard he scanned the crowds that lined the streets for a final glimpse at their fallen princess, he did not see Heero Yuy's face.
He didn't have time to think much more on it. Something touched his wrist and he jumped, instantly on guard.
Quatre's fingers reached out to him; his blue-green eyes slowly began to open. Upon seeing Trowa, he gave him a dry smile. "Hey." He tried lick his lips to wet them. "What have I missed?"
To Be Continued