"It's all my fault." Relena said, tears brimming her baby blue eyes. "If I only knew a little sooner...I-this wouldn't have..." She took a deep breath trying to calm herself, which wasn't working very well.
Lady Une leaned against her to add some comfort. She would pull her into a hug, but the restraints on her hands made that impossible.
"Don't think that. Heero wouldn't want you blaming yourself like this. She only wants you to think it's your fault. Don't give in to her will, we mustn't. We have to pull through and save Heero." Une said encouragingly. The other's nodded.
Relena still had a shadowed look about her, the happiness now gone from her features.
Everything had been shattered in under a hour. The call, the arrest, his capture, everything was all wrong. "Still..." She said aloud. 'I can't not help but worry about him...' She thought, finishing off her sentence in her mind, Sally watched her, Relena noticed this and looked at her.
Sally looked at Relena who was looking at her, noticing her stare. "Aw, don't worry about him... He'll be fine. He always is, even through all he's been through. I mean, after what they..." She stopped at looked at the questioning looks of the others. She blushed.
Chapter 2: Failed Mission"Crap!" She hissed, mentally kicking herself for that bad move.
"They who?" Wufei said, not leaving Sally's twisted features on her face. It was obvious that you could tell she was mentally berating herself for that bad move.
'Double crap!' She had a knack for falling against her will to 05's pilot. She liked him, almost more than a friend.
Almost.
He had a good personality. When not around others, but he was so damn proud it was annoying at times.
'Heero'll kill me if I tell them. He doesn't even know that I know.' She thought rapidly trying to find out an excuse other than the truth to say.
"They who?" Wufei said again, his gaze making her move even more uncomfortably in her spot.
"Um..." Sally muttered. She lowered her eyes, then raised them and her chin. 'My best goal is to keep quiet and then play dumb and not know what they're talking about.' Sally said and smiled at this thought. It was brilliant and bulletproof.
"TELL US NOW, WOMAN!" Wufei yelled as they made a sharp left, causing him to ram into Trowa who didn't even flinch at the hard impact.
"Hmph." Sally muttered then lowered her face to gaze into his eyes squarely. "You are so discriminative." She said coldly. She hated it when her partner lost his temper and called her that. He never once said-
"Sorry." Or her name.
'Huh! Did he just- just say sorry?' She thought in disbelief.
"Sorry." Wufei muttered again, only more loudly this time. 'Maybe if I act nice I can get her to say what she was going to say.'
He wasn't about to admit that he looked at her differently than other women, that he actually like her, 'but what about Nataku!' He would argue with himself. Then, sometimes he would hear her voice, telling him that it was all right, that he should remember her, but to live his life, not live in her memory.
"Wow." Sally thought in disbelief. "Did you just say what I thought you said?" She asked, quite dumbfounded.
"Yeah." Wufei muttered.
"Well," Sally smiled heartily. "Now we are getting somewhere!" She said happily.
Relena looked at her. "What we you going to say?" Relena demanded. "Tell me now!" She screamed. She blushed at her sudden outburst. She muttered a nearly audible sorry.
"Well, Heero'll kill me if I do tell you..." Sally turned to look out the barred back window.
"Heero's not here to do that right now, but if you don't tell us, we'll enlighten him from that. Tell us, or we'll attack you" Duo said. Normally, this would be a joke, but judging by the seriousness in his voice, it wasn't something to take idly. The others nodded in agreement to what Duo said.
"TELL NOW!" Relena exclaimed so loudly that her face almost turned a red color, making her gasp for air after she screamed this.
"It might help us." Quatre said calmly. Too calmly. His voice sounded calm, but his mind was racing with thoughts. She was hiding something important, especially if Heero would kill her if she told them. That meant something, actually, not just something, but a lot.
"Well, I was wondering about his past, so I decided to do searching. It took forever and a great deal of hacking, but I didn't get anything except a mission that really went bad." Sally said, finally giving up. It was hopeless to resist them. It might even cause Relena to have a mental break down if she didn't tell them, and quickly.
"When was this?" Trowa said. "He can't have had the Gundam, so he couldn't have had missions before us." He stated.
"That's where you are wrong, Dr. J gave him missions long before the Gundam's had ever been constructed. He was trained to be a first class assassin ever since a very young age. I don't even know how long, but the record I got was when he was about thirteen I think, or fourteen, so that was three to two years ago."
"Wow," Relena breathed. She was learning something about his past; this struck as amazement to her. The young soldier she had first saved when she found him on the beach, she had known nothing about... and still rarely knew any thing about him. He had hid his past very well, from all of them.
"Any way," Sally continued, "The mission was to destroy a military base nearby and this was on one of the L1 colonies. He set off the detonation and it caused a chain reaction. It destroyed the whole city." She said sadly. "The doctors and people who trained him thought of it as a complete mission and they were happy of the outcome, as in the chain-reaction. The civilian's were going with the Alliance and OZ organization's ruling and convincing other's it wasn't bad to be oppressed, even though it was." Everyone was shocked.
"This was a lot on Heero. One of the spies over looking him said that he saw a young girl give him a flower or something. She must have lived in the city that was destroyed.
The doctors were furious with this, saying that human kindness was a useless emotion and all, so they retrained him. They really worked him hard." She said sadly, remembering reading over the report she hacked into and the description of the things they did to him.
"What do you mean by that?" Relena said, afraid at what she was going to say.
Sally looked like she didn't want to say anything. "They..." She gulped, audibly so the others knew she had a hard time saying this aloud. "They beat him a lot of times, because when you're captured, they may want answers so they torture you. They did it so many times, it didn't hurt him anymore. That took awhile though. Once, in a training session, he collapsed from blood loss and serious injuries when his wounds didn't heal yet and was in a coma for three days. They worked him harder after that. They improved his already beyond-human skills like hacking and weaponry." She said and turned away from the faces of the others. "They took away his emotions, turning him to the 'Perfect Soldier'."
Trowa was thinking this through in his head and Wufei was too, they were both speechless. Relena looked at Sally, almost not wanting to believe her, and Une bowed her head low as she shook with the pain she remembered when she had when she was shot.
'It hurt so much, but he, he must have gone through so much more pain. So much...' she thought, but it actually came out as a whisper, only Quatre heard this. He looked away from her, not wanting anyone to see the pained look in his eyes he felt for the young soldier and Miss Une.
"Don't tell him though." Sally said.
"Oh my god. I can't- they wouldn't be so cruel-how –how could they send a fourteen year old into a coma from that?" Relena said, transfixed by the story, she imagined all of this in her mind. The blood everywhere, she cringed. "They put him into a coma for three days and they worked him harder after that?" she said, outraged, as it slowly made more and more sense into her mind.
"I couldn't believe it either." Sally said shaking her head. "If you listened to Lethe she said something about almost making a deal with the people who trained him..."
"No!" Relena said looking up. "They wouldn't do that to him again! They wouldn't retrain him like that, he's come so far!" She cried. "He's not a killing machine anymore."
'An empty shell'.'
Relena looked taken back. 'Where did I think that?' Relena thought confused.
'Obsolete.'
Relena gulped. "Heero..." She whispered. She saw his smiling face in her mind, one of the rare times she saw him smiling when they pilots caught him of guard and unknown to him took his picture, giving it to her to put some where secret where she could look at him when she got lonely. They seemed to know how she felt about the young pilot, everyone close to her except Heero himself. There was darkness that mingled with the light and grew until it was every where and then there was blood. Blood everywhere.
'Sweet raspier life, it ends here tonight.'
"I think that they will retrain him once they get him back. They'll train him even harder." Sally said, holding back the urge to cry for the brunet perfect soldier. "They will take away what little emotions he now has."
"He's body is already to its limit, and it said he collapsed from blood loss because his wounds weren't healed yet. They might work him to death." Quatre said, almost to himself. The words repeated in Relena's distraught mind. 'They might work him to death.' Her mind agreed with this. 'They almost did once, and they could do it again...'
Trowa was in the corner. He nodded in agreement. 'I hope that Catherine is alright and that she doesn't come looking for me.' Trowa thought. "We've gotten far enough with Heero that he's willing to accept our help and give us his, he wasn't like that before, and they will try to turn him back. His will is strong, but that doesn't mean that he won't give in." He stated.
"I-I wouldn't think Heero would say anything about this to you, Sally." Duo said, who obviously still had his mind on the mission that Heero had been given.
"He didn't. He doesn't know that I know. So no one acts like anything is out of the ordinary. Everything has to be like it was before I told you. 'Kay?" She said firmly.
They all nodded their heads agreeing on this.
"I never knew..." Une started. "I remember how it hurt so much when I was shot, he must have been through so much more than all of us." She said, wincing at the thought about the bullet tearing through her muscles and skin.
"Yeah, I always have wondered how he was able to endure so much, both physical and mentally." Trowa said.
"Mentally?" Relena questioned.
"Well, yeah." Duo said, taking it over from Trowa whom didn't feel like talking. He wasn't much of a talker like Duo was. "The colonies and missions were tied to the fate of the war. We all had to handle a lot of pressure." He said simply.
"Plus, he was able to not get controlled by the Zero system. If you think about it, the system only started controlling him when he met us and you, Relena, so maybe it has a key to play with emotions," He said. "He's still a better soldier than all of us." He admitted.
"But if they work him anymore than this, he's still human, and human's can only take so much." Quatre added.
"Oh..." Relena said. "I hope-I really hope that he's okay..." She whispered loudly.
"I'm sure that he's fine." Quatre said assuring. Though, he himself didn't even believe his own words.
They all bumped into each other as the truck screeched to a halt outside a building. The back doors opened and the silhouettes of two soldiers came into view. More stood behind them, to make sure no escape plots would be attempted.
"Get out." The soldier ordered coldly to the prisoners. They did as they were told.
The next soldier came and grabbed the girls. "We'll be taking you to a different section. That way, if you escape then you won't want to leave your comrades behind, now would you?" The young man sneered.
"Fine." Relena said, holding her head high. 'I won't loose my dignity!' She thought. 'They cannot take that away from me.'
"If I were you, I wouldn't hold my head so high. Others would be more than willing to slit your throat the moment they lay eyes on you." Relena lowered her head to a normal position and gulped.
"People hear aren't so friendly with politicians and peacemakers. You Gundam pilots should fit in perfectly though. The soldiers all love the stories they hear about you during the war. I myself admired how you fought. It was a great pride when we caught your other Gundam pilot friend." He said glowingly.
"Heero?" Relena almost sounded desperate.
The soldier chuckled. "So Miss Lethe was right. You do seem somewhat attached to him. Too bad, he's already taken." He sneered, breathing on her neck when he said this, the smell of whiskey reeked on his breath.
She eyed him angrily. 'Already taken, by who? This Lethe person!'
"Aw Ferd!" Short for Ferdinan of course, "Come off it and get 'em to their cell!" The other soldier said.
"Whatever, Brad." Ferd said sharply and jerked the girls into the building quickly and led them into a nice looking corridor.
"Sadly, your friends won't get such nice accommodations." He stated. The girls looked at him. "They can get out using the simplest of objects, or so we've heard from stories. No one has ever captured them and lived to tell the tale." He hiccuped and went on walking.
He stopped at a heavy (very thick and bullet proof too) door and unlocked it and opened it. There were four beds in it, each with fluffy comforters and pillows. There was a desk a TV screen on it and then a bulletproof window looking out into a courtyard.
"Wow." Relena breathed.
Ferd looked at her angrily. "Be thankful that Miss Lethe is so kind to let you have THIS room. She comes here often. One of the best of the buildin' here." He hiccuped again, shoved them in and slammed the door.
"Why did they give us this room?" Sally asked to no one.
"Yeah..." Lady Une said as the same question in her mind, waiting to be answered.
"Mainly because I want you all to be comfortable. If the others weren't known for all they did, they would join you, but it's something we aren't willing to risk." A feminine voice said as she stepped out of the shadows. Her crimson eyes pierced through the other girls' hearts. Her blue, almost deep purple hair shone vibrantly in the light reflected from the ceiling.
"You." Relena snarled.
"Yes, me." Lethe sighed mockingly, she tilted her head, knowing Relena and what she would first say. "Really, your too predictable." She shook her head disappointedly.
"Where is Heero." Une said through clenched teeth.
Lethe smiled. "Oh, obviously, you haven't looked around your room yet I see." She smiled evilly. Relena looked at the last bed near the window and saw a lump lying on the covers. His brunette hair was recognizable anywhere.
TBC
Author's note: Doesn't every one just love Lethe? She's one of my favorite original characters that got a name change (it was originally 'Reece' and got switched back for a original round robin I did with Vrunka. Maybe I'll add her in a story if I create another one muahah!
Comments and feedback is always loved! I hope that the revised chapters ar ebetter though not much has changed (I have relaized though when reading back I spelled brunette wrong about five thousand times for which I apologize greatly for!)
in Liebe, Red Tail
PS: check out my sister's story, 'Passions' if you like a good read. The summary's kinda crappy (my sister said I could do one for her instead Woo!) but it's actually a really good story and I love it! It's an X-men fusion only kicks much more ass than the comics!
