No, as a matter of a fact, I am not one of those speed writers who can whip
up great chapters in a few hours . . . what's more, I had to prepare for a
Germany-wide Latin competition. Tough, right? (Wrong, actually it was dead
easy, but how was I supposed to know?) Anyway, please continue to bear with
me. The fruit of our combined efforts and impatience:
After-effects
The sight of 'his' school, already teeming with students and teachers, seemed like a bomb in innocent disguise to Heero. After Friday night, he could no longer ignore the chattering kids that moved through the hallways. They were dangerous; at least to him.
A kid had gotten the better of him. Heero had woken up on Saturday morning with his heart thudding disbelievingly in his throat. And every one of the hazy pictures he could recall – tipping down the drink, fighting his way outside, standing close to Relena, kissing her – they were all real, nightmare-quality though they seemed.
It was obvious who had drugged him. Damon had been sitting right next to him – probably he and Ryan had cooperated in order to get the drug into his drink. The stupid, innocent high school kids were turning out to be a dangerous blade of steel that he had let too close to his throat.
But he was a Gundam pilot. That steel blade should have been easy for him to evade. Heero had spent the weekend mercilessly setting up a fool-proof theory that explained what had happened and why.
The actual drug was the entire school. Damon, Ryan, Leat, Jiran, Relena – they were all reasons for him losing the control over himself. Lulling his soldier instincts into placated drowsiness, they had managed to take his control away from him. Relena of course had not meant any harm – but in her way she was even more responsible for what had happened. Her soft voice, her smile, and her big shining eyes – they had all served to make him lose his Gundam pilot's honour.
His weekend had not only been a time of bitter thoughts, it had also been dominated by an even bitterer training schedule. He had strained every muscle in his body, grappling vainly for respite from the black sins he had already committed.
Now his mind told him he was tired and aching, but there was a tension in his body that fleetingly reminded him of the feeling on Friday night – except that this time, it felt good. It was what he had done to himself, it was painful – it was the body of a soldier. From now on, he would never act like anyone else.
**************************************
School had always been a pleasant mixture of wisdom and thinking, and laughing and having fun for Relena. Even though she sometimes felt rebellious, thinking of all those people out there she could be helping or motivating, she was content for the moment to finish her education first.
But today she could not have gotten out of bed early enough; the sunlight was promising her things she would never reveal to anyone else. The promise was in her eyes and beating in her heart as she entered the school building and moved with the steady flow of students.
Relena was glad of the distraction her friends provided as they greeted her enthusiastically. Opposite her overwhelming desire to be near Heero was the fear that seeing him again, in the bright daylight and a crowd of people, would somehow harm the wistful magic of that night.
'Oh, Relena, have you heard?' Mina asked her, obviously awed with her news. 'You know Heero Yinkomoto? The guy you lectured after he beat up Tekkan? He's so amazing –'
'I was even there, but I completely missed it!' wailed one girl close to her.
Relena could only grasp onto the familiar name. 'Heero? What happened?'
A wave of excited words crashed over her. Trying to take it all in, she only heard little bits.
'Oh, right, you weren't at the Lab that night –'
' – the guys say it was a double dosage –'
' - didn't even flinch –'
' - so cool, he –'
' – that one's got nerves like steel; not to mention muscles!'
A big cheer of laughter was the reaction to this last admiring sigh. Relena's cheeks turned pink as though they had been talking of how hot her boyfriend was. Of course that wasn't true, but it had not been that long ago that there had been no space for anything thicker than a sheet of paper between the afore-mentioned muscles and herself.
'Don't you get it, Relena?' Mina exclaimed impatiently. 'Some guys put drugs in Heero's drink on Friday night – don't ask me how – and they didn't affect him! They say he was as poker-faced as ever; didn't even get aggressive! The guys had thought they'd finally find out something about the guy – make him be emotional – but it completely backfired, of course.' She stopped for breath. 'Awesome, isn't he?'
Awesome. The word jeered at her as she repeated it in her head. Maybe, if the magic had lasted, she would be telling Mina about Heero's affections at this moment. She had even imaged Mina's reaction: 'Awesome!'
It was as if she had had a puzzle of a beautiful picture, but there was one annoying piece that wouldn't fit. Now somebody had inserted it correctly – shown her where her mistake was and how easy the solution really was – and the picture all of a sudden turned out to be of a bloody execution.
She should have known. An ordinary Heero would never, ever have kissed her and then not run away – no problem for a drugged one. Furious hatred at herself welled up inside her. Idiot, idiot, idiot, she repeated to herself. Some restraint was keeping her from saying the words aloud, but she spat them in her mind. How could she have expected a perfect love like in some romantic comedy movie? Life – at least her life – didn't work that way. She was a hopeless, gullible idiot and it was too late to do anything about it now. The guys had been right after all – their plan had worked – but nobody except Heero and herself would ever know about it.
The only thing she could bitterly hope for was that the tears would only come when she had hidden herself in a place as miserable as she felt.
***************************************
As soon as Quatre entered the school, pale and tired due to a sleepless night studded with dreams of the curly-haired girl laughing at him and suddenly turning into Dorothy, he was pounced upon by Duo, who was looking serious for once.
'Hey Duo, what's wrong?' Quatre asked, alarmed by the grim look on Duo's face.
'Where should I start?' Duo remarked darkly. 'With Heero getting drugged, Catherine missing, or the lack of progress we're making with locating the GA?'
Quatre knew he was referring to the gundanium alloy, but that was about all he did catch. 'That's the first thing I've heard about either Heero or Catherine,' he commented, shaking his head. 'Drugged, missing?'
'Yup, buddy, I'm telling it the way it is,' Duo said with the ghost of a grin. 'Some guys managed to slip Heero drugs; it's all over the school. Probably the 'friends' he's been hanging around with lately. I couldn't believe it either,' he added, seeing Quatre shake his head incredulously. 'But I just asked our number one and he confirmed it himself. Beats me how they did that, and Heero seems really wretched, but the biggest problem is still that Catherine hasn't been communicating all weekend. I checked her place myself, but – gone,' he reported, shrugging helplessly.
Thinking fast, Quatre asked automatically: 'There were no clues as to where she is? No note, no phone number?'
'The only thing I found is this.' Duo yanked a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to his companion.
At first glance Quatre could only see that it was a plan of some kind. But a closer look at the lines and typed writing told him it was an architectural lay-out of a school. 'Is it this school?' he questioned Duo, though he thought he already knew the answer.
The other Gundam pilot nodded moodily. 'Looks like she's been trying to help us with our mission,' he pointed out between gritted teeth. 'Why don't girls ever do what you tell them?'
Sighing, Quatre thought of Catherine's insistence to be told about their secret doings. He knew she would not have listened to him, but he still wished that he had been able to talk to her seriously.
Duo's twin sigh showed that he was thinking along the same lines. 'And it doesn't sound as if Heero and Wufei are making much of a head-way,' he added another gloomy thought. 'Sure, they've found the trap door, but that doesn't mean anything . . . '
'Well, let's go find Relena,' Quatre intercepted his friend's for once pessimistic broodings. 'Maybe she can tell us where Catherine went. And, remember, she wanted to look up the school plans in the library –'
Both guys stopped short and stared at each other for half a second, their faces alike in realization. Then they started walking as quickly as was normal for a couple of reporters, Quatre clenching the piece of paper Duo had found in Catherine's room in his fist.
***************************
If Heero had met Damon in a crowded hallway, he would have simply ignored him. As a supposedly acting inconspicuously Gundam pilot, he was powerless against the crowds of kids. But as it happened, their paths crossed in a half-lit stairway that was off one of the side wings of the school.
'Hey, Heero!' Damon was grinning up at him from the bottom of the stairs, one arm full of books, as Heero came down them.
The fake student smiled dangerously. Now at last he had the chance to prove the soldier within himself again. Dropping his school bag on the floor, he bent down low. The muscles that had been aching a second earlier were stretched taught in the familiar position. His feet pushed off the ground automatically, Damon's eyes widened in amazement as Heero leaped over him, and in mid-somersault he calculated his landing point. Perfectly estimated, he fell in a crouch just behind his victim, and bounced up to firmly place a hand over its mouth and to twist the free arm behind its back in one fluid movement.
Damon's jerk came much too late. He was completely in his capturer's power.
'If you say one word, I'll break your arm. Come with me.' Heero's voice was as cool as it had ever been. As the perfect fighting machine, he thought only rationally and practically. Damon had done him harm: he was an enemy. And that enemy had to be frightened and hurt. He would not hit his face – there must be no blood.
Heero nearly laughed out loud. He was free of the drug; he was calm and calculating and doing his duty – a soldier. It seemed as if Relena had never existed.
***********************************
Catherine got up off the elegant sofa, feeling uncomfortable and stiff from sleeping on a space that was too narrow and small for her, but the only alternative was the bare wood floor.
Like she had done the morning before, she walked over to the long windows and slipped her fingers in the spaces between the forbidding bars that criss-crossed across the glass panes. There was only room for three of her fingers, and her nails could barely scrape at the glass. She had not really expected the unrelenting bars to suddenly bend, but she was sure that there had to be some way out. It was not possible that she had been shut up in a completely impenetrable prison.
Her view had not changed from the day before. She still looked out on an enormous bright green lawn surrounded by obviously high concrete walls that limited her view to a few skyscrapers and otherwise only the wide, slightly hazy blue sky.
Except that last morning, the wide empty lawn had been dotted with figures. Catherine had spent some of the long tedious hours watching the young men below. And what she had seen had made her worry even more.
They had been training. Having seen enough for her taste of Trowa's long martial arts training routines, she had no difficulty in identifying the soldiers for what they were, even though they wore no uniform. She was not close enough to see more than their outlines, but the sharp sparks of silver that flashed up in the sunlight could only be guns, and the round shields they were facing were undoubtedly targets.
Disappointed in her half-hearted hope, Catherine turned her back on the now motionless scene outside, and glanced around the room.
It looked exactly like an elegant sitting-room: there was the sofa she used for a bed, two chairs in the same style, a smoothly carved coffee table on which there was a generous supply of crackers, chips, biscuits and plastic- wrapped sandwiches next to a several huge bottles of water. A modest chandelier hung from the monotonously painted ceiling. There was a plain bathroom adjoining the 'sitting-room'. That had been her world for the past two days, ever since she had received the message from Trowa on Saturday morning.
****************************
'What the hell is wrong with you?' Damon's voice trembled and he raised one arm feebly to hide his pain-filled and scared face from his attacker.
Heero glanced at him in the dim light of the unused storage room they were in. He judged that Damon had been beaten enough, now he only had to round it off with some threats.
Straightening up, he looked the boy who was lying on the floor straight in the eye. Something in his eyes made Damon's widen in even greater fear.
'Take my advice and stop meddling with drugs; you could end up in a lot of trouble,' Heero stated. 'And don't try to get the better of me again. It doesn't pay.'
While he said this, Heero took in Damon's state contemptuously. Somehow he had come to see a sort of wisdom, a shrewdness, in the guy, but when he was under a real threat, there was no difference between him and any other scared, pathetic kid.
Damon's arm dropped and he groaned in pain and disbelief. 'God, Heero, you nearly kill me for something like that? I didn't even do it, just for your information. It must have been Leat's gang, and I am NOT responsible for their actions.' His voice died out hoarsely at the end of the sentence and was shaken by a cough.
Heero stared at him in cold refusal to accept the story. Wincing as he shifted his position, Damon started again: 'I know the story of your being drugged is all over the school, and I thought there was something wrong with you at the time, but –' He shook his head and let it slide back onto the floor. 'It's not like it even affected you.'
A sudden despair choked Heero's calm triumph. Relena's touch – her lips on his – her warm body – it was all unforgivable. And he couldn't change it; couldn't erase this horribly vibrant black spot that was worse than all the blood he had ever spilled.
'You don't know anything,' he said roughly, not even seeing Damon. But he heard his voice.
'Heero?' it asked quietly. 'It did affect you, didn't it? But as long as you just do it once, that's not really bad. It shows you things inside you that you haven't even realized yourself, just more pronounced. Not that I'm saying it's good to get high, but it can sort of set your emotions free, you know? What you really feel.'
What he really felt. Relena; beautiful, strong Relena, in his arms . . . for the first time, he remembered how he had kissed her before, in the hallway. Had he felt desire and happiness at that moment?
Heero's eyes and self-destructive hatred focused on the helpless figure watching him expectantly from the ground. 'You don't know anything,' he repeated through his gritted teeth. 'You're just a kid.'
The last punch he administered to Damon came from frenzied anger, not the calculating soldier, and his victim screamed in pain for the first time.
********************************
That was it, I suppose . . . don't worry, the plot is still unwinding (I'm figuring it out as I go), and we'll make a high school kid out of our poor Gundam pilot yet! I'm referring to Heero, of course, don't think Duo or Quatre need much help . . . though maybe Wufei and Trowa could do with some lessons. The next chapter will be longer, and bring us a big step closer to the climax and the end of the story. Promise! *hastily crosses her fingers behind her back*
Please be patient, O Reviewers, and don't desert me!
Giss – sorry bout that, I don't seem to be able to update 'quickly' at all, I should write that word on my comp every time I pass it, maybe that would help. Thanks for all your faith!
anonymous - I know, I don't think anything in GW can beat Heero/Relena, it's the best ship there is. Please don't go crazy on me, I need your advice on this chap. *grins*
Pink Sakura – I'm glad you liked the romance, myself, I thought it a bit too outdrawn . . . but you're welcome to this next, romance-free chapter!
Callisto Nicol – Maybe I should email you, if you get that upset at not getting to read my chapters sooner. OK? Do you read mysteries, by any chance? Cause you're a pretty good detective; I won't say any more now, it will spoil what little plot there is! *winks*
Inferna – well, I don't think Heero would kiss Relena and not run away immediately afterwards if he wasn't being influenced by SOMETHING. Sorry it had to be the drug, but it's a good excuse to put some H/R into it!
May – thanks, it seems that every time I put romance in a chapter, my reviewers suddenly wake up! See you!
Aristale Wolf – no fear of me stopping the story, it's just a question of how long it will take me to finally finish it . . . I just have to tell you that Threatened Dancer (one of my other two stories) sucks, so read at your own risk. *grins*
anonymous – well, I think Heero looks way too good to be an average high school kid, but otherwise I'm trying to make him into one! *evil grin*
Nonsequitur – are you still reading this? It's been, like, how many months since I updated? Three? *sighs* hey, at least I'm trying! the_painter – yea, sorry this one took so long to be put out!
Erinamation-limited2 – I still don't get exactly what you mean by that review, but I'll take it as constructive criticism, ok? Can't be that far off.
Cheers, everybody! Drink to the health of my editor, Arabian Knight! (hm, she was very quiet about this chapter . . . probably didn't even read it properly *j/k*)
Shooting Jewel
After-effects
The sight of 'his' school, already teeming with students and teachers, seemed like a bomb in innocent disguise to Heero. After Friday night, he could no longer ignore the chattering kids that moved through the hallways. They were dangerous; at least to him.
A kid had gotten the better of him. Heero had woken up on Saturday morning with his heart thudding disbelievingly in his throat. And every one of the hazy pictures he could recall – tipping down the drink, fighting his way outside, standing close to Relena, kissing her – they were all real, nightmare-quality though they seemed.
It was obvious who had drugged him. Damon had been sitting right next to him – probably he and Ryan had cooperated in order to get the drug into his drink. The stupid, innocent high school kids were turning out to be a dangerous blade of steel that he had let too close to his throat.
But he was a Gundam pilot. That steel blade should have been easy for him to evade. Heero had spent the weekend mercilessly setting up a fool-proof theory that explained what had happened and why.
The actual drug was the entire school. Damon, Ryan, Leat, Jiran, Relena – they were all reasons for him losing the control over himself. Lulling his soldier instincts into placated drowsiness, they had managed to take his control away from him. Relena of course had not meant any harm – but in her way she was even more responsible for what had happened. Her soft voice, her smile, and her big shining eyes – they had all served to make him lose his Gundam pilot's honour.
His weekend had not only been a time of bitter thoughts, it had also been dominated by an even bitterer training schedule. He had strained every muscle in his body, grappling vainly for respite from the black sins he had already committed.
Now his mind told him he was tired and aching, but there was a tension in his body that fleetingly reminded him of the feeling on Friday night – except that this time, it felt good. It was what he had done to himself, it was painful – it was the body of a soldier. From now on, he would never act like anyone else.
**************************************
School had always been a pleasant mixture of wisdom and thinking, and laughing and having fun for Relena. Even though she sometimes felt rebellious, thinking of all those people out there she could be helping or motivating, she was content for the moment to finish her education first.
But today she could not have gotten out of bed early enough; the sunlight was promising her things she would never reveal to anyone else. The promise was in her eyes and beating in her heart as she entered the school building and moved with the steady flow of students.
Relena was glad of the distraction her friends provided as they greeted her enthusiastically. Opposite her overwhelming desire to be near Heero was the fear that seeing him again, in the bright daylight and a crowd of people, would somehow harm the wistful magic of that night.
'Oh, Relena, have you heard?' Mina asked her, obviously awed with her news. 'You know Heero Yinkomoto? The guy you lectured after he beat up Tekkan? He's so amazing –'
'I was even there, but I completely missed it!' wailed one girl close to her.
Relena could only grasp onto the familiar name. 'Heero? What happened?'
A wave of excited words crashed over her. Trying to take it all in, she only heard little bits.
'Oh, right, you weren't at the Lab that night –'
' – the guys say it was a double dosage –'
' - didn't even flinch –'
' - so cool, he –'
' – that one's got nerves like steel; not to mention muscles!'
A big cheer of laughter was the reaction to this last admiring sigh. Relena's cheeks turned pink as though they had been talking of how hot her boyfriend was. Of course that wasn't true, but it had not been that long ago that there had been no space for anything thicker than a sheet of paper between the afore-mentioned muscles and herself.
'Don't you get it, Relena?' Mina exclaimed impatiently. 'Some guys put drugs in Heero's drink on Friday night – don't ask me how – and they didn't affect him! They say he was as poker-faced as ever; didn't even get aggressive! The guys had thought they'd finally find out something about the guy – make him be emotional – but it completely backfired, of course.' She stopped for breath. 'Awesome, isn't he?'
Awesome. The word jeered at her as she repeated it in her head. Maybe, if the magic had lasted, she would be telling Mina about Heero's affections at this moment. She had even imaged Mina's reaction: 'Awesome!'
It was as if she had had a puzzle of a beautiful picture, but there was one annoying piece that wouldn't fit. Now somebody had inserted it correctly – shown her where her mistake was and how easy the solution really was – and the picture all of a sudden turned out to be of a bloody execution.
She should have known. An ordinary Heero would never, ever have kissed her and then not run away – no problem for a drugged one. Furious hatred at herself welled up inside her. Idiot, idiot, idiot, she repeated to herself. Some restraint was keeping her from saying the words aloud, but she spat them in her mind. How could she have expected a perfect love like in some romantic comedy movie? Life – at least her life – didn't work that way. She was a hopeless, gullible idiot and it was too late to do anything about it now. The guys had been right after all – their plan had worked – but nobody except Heero and herself would ever know about it.
The only thing she could bitterly hope for was that the tears would only come when she had hidden herself in a place as miserable as she felt.
***************************************
As soon as Quatre entered the school, pale and tired due to a sleepless night studded with dreams of the curly-haired girl laughing at him and suddenly turning into Dorothy, he was pounced upon by Duo, who was looking serious for once.
'Hey Duo, what's wrong?' Quatre asked, alarmed by the grim look on Duo's face.
'Where should I start?' Duo remarked darkly. 'With Heero getting drugged, Catherine missing, or the lack of progress we're making with locating the GA?'
Quatre knew he was referring to the gundanium alloy, but that was about all he did catch. 'That's the first thing I've heard about either Heero or Catherine,' he commented, shaking his head. 'Drugged, missing?'
'Yup, buddy, I'm telling it the way it is,' Duo said with the ghost of a grin. 'Some guys managed to slip Heero drugs; it's all over the school. Probably the 'friends' he's been hanging around with lately. I couldn't believe it either,' he added, seeing Quatre shake his head incredulously. 'But I just asked our number one and he confirmed it himself. Beats me how they did that, and Heero seems really wretched, but the biggest problem is still that Catherine hasn't been communicating all weekend. I checked her place myself, but – gone,' he reported, shrugging helplessly.
Thinking fast, Quatre asked automatically: 'There were no clues as to where she is? No note, no phone number?'
'The only thing I found is this.' Duo yanked a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to his companion.
At first glance Quatre could only see that it was a plan of some kind. But a closer look at the lines and typed writing told him it was an architectural lay-out of a school. 'Is it this school?' he questioned Duo, though he thought he already knew the answer.
The other Gundam pilot nodded moodily. 'Looks like she's been trying to help us with our mission,' he pointed out between gritted teeth. 'Why don't girls ever do what you tell them?'
Sighing, Quatre thought of Catherine's insistence to be told about their secret doings. He knew she would not have listened to him, but he still wished that he had been able to talk to her seriously.
Duo's twin sigh showed that he was thinking along the same lines. 'And it doesn't sound as if Heero and Wufei are making much of a head-way,' he added another gloomy thought. 'Sure, they've found the trap door, but that doesn't mean anything . . . '
'Well, let's go find Relena,' Quatre intercepted his friend's for once pessimistic broodings. 'Maybe she can tell us where Catherine went. And, remember, she wanted to look up the school plans in the library –'
Both guys stopped short and stared at each other for half a second, their faces alike in realization. Then they started walking as quickly as was normal for a couple of reporters, Quatre clenching the piece of paper Duo had found in Catherine's room in his fist.
***************************
If Heero had met Damon in a crowded hallway, he would have simply ignored him. As a supposedly acting inconspicuously Gundam pilot, he was powerless against the crowds of kids. But as it happened, their paths crossed in a half-lit stairway that was off one of the side wings of the school.
'Hey, Heero!' Damon was grinning up at him from the bottom of the stairs, one arm full of books, as Heero came down them.
The fake student smiled dangerously. Now at last he had the chance to prove the soldier within himself again. Dropping his school bag on the floor, he bent down low. The muscles that had been aching a second earlier were stretched taught in the familiar position. His feet pushed off the ground automatically, Damon's eyes widened in amazement as Heero leaped over him, and in mid-somersault he calculated his landing point. Perfectly estimated, he fell in a crouch just behind his victim, and bounced up to firmly place a hand over its mouth and to twist the free arm behind its back in one fluid movement.
Damon's jerk came much too late. He was completely in his capturer's power.
'If you say one word, I'll break your arm. Come with me.' Heero's voice was as cool as it had ever been. As the perfect fighting machine, he thought only rationally and practically. Damon had done him harm: he was an enemy. And that enemy had to be frightened and hurt. He would not hit his face – there must be no blood.
Heero nearly laughed out loud. He was free of the drug; he was calm and calculating and doing his duty – a soldier. It seemed as if Relena had never existed.
***********************************
Catherine got up off the elegant sofa, feeling uncomfortable and stiff from sleeping on a space that was too narrow and small for her, but the only alternative was the bare wood floor.
Like she had done the morning before, she walked over to the long windows and slipped her fingers in the spaces between the forbidding bars that criss-crossed across the glass panes. There was only room for three of her fingers, and her nails could barely scrape at the glass. She had not really expected the unrelenting bars to suddenly bend, but she was sure that there had to be some way out. It was not possible that she had been shut up in a completely impenetrable prison.
Her view had not changed from the day before. She still looked out on an enormous bright green lawn surrounded by obviously high concrete walls that limited her view to a few skyscrapers and otherwise only the wide, slightly hazy blue sky.
Except that last morning, the wide empty lawn had been dotted with figures. Catherine had spent some of the long tedious hours watching the young men below. And what she had seen had made her worry even more.
They had been training. Having seen enough for her taste of Trowa's long martial arts training routines, she had no difficulty in identifying the soldiers for what they were, even though they wore no uniform. She was not close enough to see more than their outlines, but the sharp sparks of silver that flashed up in the sunlight could only be guns, and the round shields they were facing were undoubtedly targets.
Disappointed in her half-hearted hope, Catherine turned her back on the now motionless scene outside, and glanced around the room.
It looked exactly like an elegant sitting-room: there was the sofa she used for a bed, two chairs in the same style, a smoothly carved coffee table on which there was a generous supply of crackers, chips, biscuits and plastic- wrapped sandwiches next to a several huge bottles of water. A modest chandelier hung from the monotonously painted ceiling. There was a plain bathroom adjoining the 'sitting-room'. That had been her world for the past two days, ever since she had received the message from Trowa on Saturday morning.
****************************
'What the hell is wrong with you?' Damon's voice trembled and he raised one arm feebly to hide his pain-filled and scared face from his attacker.
Heero glanced at him in the dim light of the unused storage room they were in. He judged that Damon had been beaten enough, now he only had to round it off with some threats.
Straightening up, he looked the boy who was lying on the floor straight in the eye. Something in his eyes made Damon's widen in even greater fear.
'Take my advice and stop meddling with drugs; you could end up in a lot of trouble,' Heero stated. 'And don't try to get the better of me again. It doesn't pay.'
While he said this, Heero took in Damon's state contemptuously. Somehow he had come to see a sort of wisdom, a shrewdness, in the guy, but when he was under a real threat, there was no difference between him and any other scared, pathetic kid.
Damon's arm dropped and he groaned in pain and disbelief. 'God, Heero, you nearly kill me for something like that? I didn't even do it, just for your information. It must have been Leat's gang, and I am NOT responsible for their actions.' His voice died out hoarsely at the end of the sentence and was shaken by a cough.
Heero stared at him in cold refusal to accept the story. Wincing as he shifted his position, Damon started again: 'I know the story of your being drugged is all over the school, and I thought there was something wrong with you at the time, but –' He shook his head and let it slide back onto the floor. 'It's not like it even affected you.'
A sudden despair choked Heero's calm triumph. Relena's touch – her lips on his – her warm body – it was all unforgivable. And he couldn't change it; couldn't erase this horribly vibrant black spot that was worse than all the blood he had ever spilled.
'You don't know anything,' he said roughly, not even seeing Damon. But he heard his voice.
'Heero?' it asked quietly. 'It did affect you, didn't it? But as long as you just do it once, that's not really bad. It shows you things inside you that you haven't even realized yourself, just more pronounced. Not that I'm saying it's good to get high, but it can sort of set your emotions free, you know? What you really feel.'
What he really felt. Relena; beautiful, strong Relena, in his arms . . . for the first time, he remembered how he had kissed her before, in the hallway. Had he felt desire and happiness at that moment?
Heero's eyes and self-destructive hatred focused on the helpless figure watching him expectantly from the ground. 'You don't know anything,' he repeated through his gritted teeth. 'You're just a kid.'
The last punch he administered to Damon came from frenzied anger, not the calculating soldier, and his victim screamed in pain for the first time.
********************************
That was it, I suppose . . . don't worry, the plot is still unwinding (I'm figuring it out as I go), and we'll make a high school kid out of our poor Gundam pilot yet! I'm referring to Heero, of course, don't think Duo or Quatre need much help . . . though maybe Wufei and Trowa could do with some lessons. The next chapter will be longer, and bring us a big step closer to the climax and the end of the story. Promise! *hastily crosses her fingers behind her back*
Please be patient, O Reviewers, and don't desert me!
Giss – sorry bout that, I don't seem to be able to update 'quickly' at all, I should write that word on my comp every time I pass it, maybe that would help. Thanks for all your faith!
anonymous - I know, I don't think anything in GW can beat Heero/Relena, it's the best ship there is. Please don't go crazy on me, I need your advice on this chap. *grins*
Pink Sakura – I'm glad you liked the romance, myself, I thought it a bit too outdrawn . . . but you're welcome to this next, romance-free chapter!
Callisto Nicol – Maybe I should email you, if you get that upset at not getting to read my chapters sooner. OK? Do you read mysteries, by any chance? Cause you're a pretty good detective; I won't say any more now, it will spoil what little plot there is! *winks*
Inferna – well, I don't think Heero would kiss Relena and not run away immediately afterwards if he wasn't being influenced by SOMETHING. Sorry it had to be the drug, but it's a good excuse to put some H/R into it!
May – thanks, it seems that every time I put romance in a chapter, my reviewers suddenly wake up! See you!
Aristale Wolf – no fear of me stopping the story, it's just a question of how long it will take me to finally finish it . . . I just have to tell you that Threatened Dancer (one of my other two stories) sucks, so read at your own risk. *grins*
anonymous – well, I think Heero looks way too good to be an average high school kid, but otherwise I'm trying to make him into one! *evil grin*
Nonsequitur – are you still reading this? It's been, like, how many months since I updated? Three? *sighs* hey, at least I'm trying! the_painter – yea, sorry this one took so long to be put out!
Erinamation-limited2 – I still don't get exactly what you mean by that review, but I'll take it as constructive criticism, ok? Can't be that far off.
Cheers, everybody! Drink to the health of my editor, Arabian Knight! (hm, she was very quiet about this chapter . . . probably didn't even read it properly *j/k*)
Shooting Jewel