"Manifestations"
By Isis
Chapter 17

Heero lay staring up in the black cabin. He hadn't exactly wanted to come back to the room for downtime. Part of him knew that he'd lost all credibility with the others, and that sooner or later, he was going to have to confront them with the truth… and trust them with it.

But by the time he and Duo had entered, Ry and Delano were already asleep in the bunks on the other side of the room, crashing hard. It had eased him some to at least be able to rest without the questions he knew were coming.

Although he'd never admit it, he was mildly thankful that Duo had decided to stay on ship instead of returning to the Star Grazer after lockdown. Having someone who knew the truth was oddly comforting.

That was a startling revelation.

His training meant death for anyone who discovered his mission. Although he'd realized long ago that he had utterly failed where that was concerned. Duo and Relena were only the beginning of a long list of people that should be dead if that were true.

Relena….

He forced his mind back to black as he tried again to erase the thoughts and let himself rest.

Staring up, he knew that Duo's nerves were overextended too. Although Ry and Del were able to sleep comfortably, both snoring lightly from the other bunks, it wasn't as easy for the two ex-pilots. In their lives, snoring could have been lethal, and Duo had a thief's stealth… at least when he wasn't talking.

It had taken the other some time to fall asleep; dozing lightly apparently, since he woke each time one of the other two shifted. The fact that Heero had the bottom bunk was the only way he would have noticed the small shifts from above him.

But Heero lay perfectly still, allowing his body to rest even if his mind wouldn't. He tried to keep his breathing slow, attempting to concentrate only on the rhythmic sounds of the others to calm him, and hopefully lull him enough to close his eyes.

To no avail.

Before, they had entered quietly, kicking off their shoes and simply crashing, barely even waking his two officers. He still lay on top of the blanket, not bothering to crawl under it. It had been hours he was sure, but his mind still drifted.

Next door the girls were probably resting easily. Sally, Alli, Relena and Noin—if she had decided to leave Zechs' side for some sleep. Relena would be well looked after.

He stared up into the darkness and tried to blank his mind again.

He didn't know why he bothered with the exercise; he couldn't remember a single time that it had actually worked.

Ry rolled over, swallowing in his sleep and interrupting his snoring pattern. Duo woke up, snapping his head up and then apparently putting it back down with a weak sigh.

Heero tried again to focus on nothing, allowing no thoughts….

Relena.

He closed his eyes out of sheer irritation and gave up. Rolling his head to the side on the blanket covered pillow, he moved his hand off his stomach and placed it flat against the wall next to him. The wall plates were cool to the touch.

He'd been avoiding his thoughts on her since they got here. He didn't know why exactly, he just did that. This wasn't the first night that he found himself trying to avoid thoughts of her. Most of the time he did. Sometimes he caved in. Like now.

He'd never resolved anything in those times; he'd only managed to rehash the confusing mix of emotions and images that always seemed to accompany her. But more often than not in the time since Mariemaia's attempted coup, he'd given in to the thoughts, trying to sort through the path that he'd chosen.

He hadn't understood her reasoning for her offer to him to stay that morning. He had no more understanding of why he came back… other then that, well, she'd asked him to.

He realized that wasn't sensible. But when Quatre had asked him why he returned, it had been the only honest reason he could give. The other hadn't seemed overly surprised by the remark, and he hadn't questioned him. Heero had taken that as a good sign. After all, Quatre was a lot better at understanding others' emotions than he was.

He was still trying to find out his own.

The old line came unbidden into mind. "The only way to live a good life is to act on your emotions." He didn't remember when, or from whom, he'd learned that. But it remained. No matter his training, no matter the desensitizing situations he was placed in, they couldn't erase that.

He wouldn't let them.

Duo especially would find irony in the situation if he were ever to tell that to him, which he more than likely would never have to do. The man in the bunk above him was notorious for claiming he was perfectly stoic and wouldn't know an emotion if it hit him in the head.

His words, not Heero's.

But for Duo, emotion and being emotional were the same thing. Heero knew better. Getting emotional clouded your judgment, impaired your vision, held you back, and got you killed. And whether the braided idiot knew it or not, he did the same thing, all of them did. The cockpit wasn't the place to be emotional, but emotion was the best defense you had when you were being offensive. Clarity and focus of direction….

They'd all lost it at some point. They'd been tossed around from side to side so much that there was no more focus, no clear direction, no understanding of who the enemy was.

The war he had been trained to fight for as long as he could remember turned emotional. And he, like the rest of them, wasn't prepared for that.

His feelings had been easy to understand then. His desire was to end the oppression, no matter what it took. That was his mission. That was why he trained, why he improved, why he grew. The war was coming, and he had the chance to stop it from spreading… he thought. He had a clear direction, and clear purpose, and an enemy that deserved the destruction that he knew he would bring.

Relena, Duo, Quatre, Trowa, Wufei… they were an annoyance to the path his heart was set on. Not because it was simply his "mission" but because…. Because he cared.

Until they managed to break all hell loose.

In the war, and in him.

Relena….

He didn't know what kept her attached to him. Didn't know what made him care that she cared. But she accepted him.

He reopened his eyes, the black nearly as dark, and moved his hand on the wall enough to find another patch not warmed by his touch.

He'd felt it. And he honestly hadn't realized that he was searching for that acceptance until he was finally confronted with it. She knew him. Knew his past, knew what he was capable of, knew what he'd done… and still believed in him.

He knew she did. How, he wasn't sure. She was too innocent, even now after all she'd been through, to ever actually understand what he was. There were very few who did. But that didn't matter to her. She just didn't seem to care.

She knew him. Just like he knew her. Even though he would honestly never have an understanding of her heart or her past.

He'd discovered that when they had visited her home. She was different there. Happy, at peace, almost like a normal teenage girl. Almost.

It didn't matter how many scrapbooks they dug through, how many clippings he'd ended up overhearing, he'd never honestly know what she was like before. …Before him.

How she could trust him after that, he had no idea. Why she was so bent on helping him, he didn't know. Nothing about her made any sense.

How could she possibly accept a man who had done nothing to warrant it?

His hand absently turned and balled itself into a fist.

The images of their past flashed up again, just as they always did when he got to this point. But as they ticked by this time, new ones started to add themselves in.

The image of her dirt-smudged form standing by his bedside that morning as he turned her face to check what he thought was a dark bruise on her neck. And her smile when he realized that her offer to stay would stand, with or without an actual answer from him.

The little smile on her face as she sat in a pair of sleep pants and a T-shirt, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders as she tried to warm his hand in the gray light of early morning. Her confession that she felt better with him beside her. That she had needed his strength. Although he still had no idea why. She was always stronger than he was.

The way she felt when she'd hugged him aboard the Mars satellite. The feeling that she was searching for that strength in him, and the millions of emotions that ran through him. Not least of which was his own desire to give it to her. Anything she wanted or needed from him, he'd been willing to give if he'd just known how.

And….

His hand relaxed again and moved to rub at his dry eyes before he rolled his head back to stare straight up again.

And he'd kissed her.

He didn't even know he knew how to kiss her.

Duo started again from the bunk above, repeating the same sigh as before as Ry rolled over once more. Heero humorlessly mused that Duo would have found that thought extremely funny.

He let himself close his eyes again, and sink back into memory. She was warm. Her pulse raced harshly under the palm of his hand as he held her neck, mirroring his own. Her hand over his heart was hot, even though he knew her hands were normally cold. Her lips….

He pulled out of the thought, feeling slightly ashamed of thinking of it, but not knowing why. Instead he turned again to the wall, placing his hand back on it. Somewhere on the other side, she lay asleep….

Except that Relena wasn't asleep. She lay on her side on the opposite side of the wall, unknowingly facing him. She had welcomed the bed when they had gotten back to the room, conscious of how tired she was. But she still lay awake, buried in her covers and still feeling cold.

The day's events just wouldn't go away. The images of the injured men and women she had worked with had haunted her most of the night. By now she was almost afraid to sleep in case they worked their way into her dreams as well.

Relena tried to lie still, being quiet so that she didn't wake the others, but her thoughts plagued her and she kept finding herself restless. She had tried not to think about it, but the more she tried to turn her mind off, the more it came back. She hated trying not to think about things.

If it wasn't the rescued crew, then it was Milliardo, or Heero, or the explosion, or just the constant fear she had been in all day. It had eaten away at her and she hadn't even noticed, hadn't stopped to dwell on it and let it open up, until the lights were off and she felt terribly alone.

It wasn't until Miss Noin—Lucrezia, she corrected herself, again—had slipped in and taken the bunk above her in the dark, an hour or so ago, that she had begun to drift towards happier things. She had a sister now, although their relationship had been developed during the war, it was still fun to think of her as "part of the family."

She should have expected it. After all, you don't wait for a man for literally years and then choose to go with him to the farthest reaches of humanity because you "kind of like him." She let the smile slip onto her face in the dark as she thought about it. The two had been out here, together, with basically no one else that they knew for months. Why shouldn't it have followed that they would have worked out their feelings… finally.

Oh, she was one to talk.

Relena held back the pathetic sigh that she felt and resisted the urge to get up and flail around absently for a while until she worked off this giddy nervousness. As it was, she tried to silently roll over onto her back, tucking the covers securely around her to suppress the shiver she felt.

Heero. Did the man ever do anything that didn't confuse the crud out of her? And why couldn't he ever do it some time that didn't involve him walking into impending peril? And how could she get him to do it again?

Wait.

Sleep! she commanded herself forcefully.

The odd string of thoughts slowly tapered off. But in the dark, the only comforting thoughts she had resided with him. Closing her eyes she tried to relive the moment, tried to vividly remember the look in his eyes when she'd broken down and confessed that she couldn't lose him.

She should never have done that. Even though she knew Heero would never scoff at her emotions, would never take them lightly… she was afraid of confessing too much too quickly with him.

She was afraid that she'd scare him off.

Maybe it was her own insecurities that made her think that way. She wasn't sure. She just knew that all of these emotions had come up too fast in her, let alone trying to explain that to him.

Somehow, she began thinking like that. Like she was going to try to protect him from her feelings. She knew how dumb that sounded. But it was really the way she felt.

It wasn't like she thought he was incapable of returning it… she'd been extremely surprised at how far he'd returned it actually. But she was… concerned.

Contrary to popular belief, she knew Heero's heart was kind, pure… and mildly unused. She didn't know his past, didn't understand what he had gone through, but she knew she saw a gentle soul in him. One that obviously hadn't been given the chance to know what love was capable of.

She worried that he would simply overload if she tried to pour out the extent of her own confused feelings to him. She knew that was stupid. She knew that he may guard his own emotions forcefully from the outside, but inside, he was probably more confused than she was. He would be able to accept her feelings for him, but….

She wanted to know that he was in the same place she was. And in order to do that, she needed to know where it was that she found herself.

Relena let the sigh escape her as she lay there in the dark. He'd kissed her…. And she had nearly lost her knees and collapsed right then and there. Maybe she should start rethinking the idea that he was confused too. After all, she hadn't thought of making that move.

Not that she was complaining one tiny bit.

He hadn't seemed scared over her confession, a little confused, maybe a little shocked, but not scared. He had even given her a promise to return, something that she would have never expected to actually come out of him, not with the way he was typically drawn into these conflicts. He'd responded to her, acknowledged her feelings, and had… kissed her.

A man of few words, she mused.

But she had felt his uncertainty. The tiny touch of his fingertips at the nape of her neck. The last look that she realized now was one tinted with a request for permission. He had been worried….

Worried that she wouldn't respond to him?

There was a switch.

She moved the covers; lifting her hands she covering her mouth with her sheet covered fists, remembering the light pressure of his lips on hers. A softly audible whimper escaped her as she felt her heart ache at the memory.

She snapped her eyes open and stayed absolutely still, hoping that no one was awake enough to have heard that. When no one stirred, she relaxed again, tucking the covers back under her chin and moving her loose fists to cross over her heart, which was again racing.

…Like his had been. She'd felt it under the hand she'd absently placed on his chest. She had wanted to reach out and cling to him, hang on for dear life so that he couldn't move, couldn't leave. But she wouldn't dare have tried, even if she hadn't been a bit preoccupied by that time.

Preoccupied with remembering enough to try to return the kiss.

She'd seen his intentions in his eyes, if her brain had been clicked on enough to notice. As it were, the emotion swirled in those midnight blues had claimed her, body and soul. It had taken her a moment to even think of closing her eyes and returning his feathery touch.

Timid, uncertain, frightened… shy. Absolutely everything that he never was.

She frowned in the dark, her forehead creasing lightly. She could probably understand that to some extent. After all, she was more certain then ever that he'd never experienced that before. Of course, neither had she, but she'd at least been around it, quite often really.

But Heero…. Uncertain, timid. Did he wonder if she'd return it? Had he believed she would pull away? Maybe he really didn't know the extent of emotion he held over her if he believed that.

But he'd relaxed when she returned his touch; his hand had gently laid against her neck. Perhaps she'd unknowingly eased the anxiety.

Anxiety could probably explain quite a bit of it. After all, if she was right, and these types of displays of affection were "foreign" to him, it would make sense that he would be unsure of himself. She had at least come from a loving background, had a set of parents who kissed each other in front of her, and of course, both were openly affectionate to her. She'd even had a few friends who would divulge the details of their first kisses during various times when she was still in school.

First kiss…. Relena blinked. She'd just had her first kiss.

That just seemed… weird. It wasn't like she was magically different from the other girls a couple years ago. She was still sixteen. Just a teenager with a crush….

Crush? Heero Yuy… mass destructive, mass murdering, potential kamikaze, inhumanly skilled Gundam pilot, and world savior by the age of fifteen. And Relena Darlian/Peacecraft… average schoolgirl turned pacifism Princess, turned Queen of the World, turned official politician by the same age.

Yeah, there was an ordinary coupling that you saw every day.

Well, there was nothing ordinary about their entire relationship, why start now?

But crush? No. She didn't believe that she could call this a crush.

She loved him. At least in the most "platonic" meaning. She had been drawn to him from the beginning, had been forcefully attracted to him since the first time she saw his eyes. Even though he had been more than a little frightening, she had been taken in by that smoldering strength of character in those dark eyes.

Strong, purposeful, adamant, focused, secure… genuine. Beautiful. A collection that had haunted her mind's eye for weeks. Actually, they still did.

But she didn't know when that attraction, that desire to understand, had turned to love. Somewhere in the war, at some point she didn't remember, she'd started confiding to herself that she loved him. Loved him enough to care where he was and what he was doing… and loved him enough to try to find every, and any, way to keep him from harm.

It, of course, hadn't worked. With a silent sigh, she realized it still didn't.

Her affections had changed now. That was something that she had been struggling with since they'd left Earth, since she'd realized just exactly how much she was reliant on him aboard the satellite. She hadn't honestly noticed how far her emotions had grown for him in a single month until she was confronted with a whole collection of others at the same time.

Maybe… maybe she was moving past "platonic?" Perhaps this was turning… "romantic?"

For some reason, that worried her. Too soon? Too fast? She didn't know why exactly. Maybe it just seemed like an "un-Heero" thing to hope for. Well, he had been the one that kissed her. Perhaps it wasn't too unreasonable.

She turned onto her side again, facing the wall and bunching her pillow up until she could hold it with both arms. Balling herself up, she hoped again for sleep to relieve these types of thoughts. They were just a little too much for tonight.

Silently, she hoped that he was resting peacefully.

"The superior man, when resting in safety, does not forget that danger may come. When in a state of security he does not forget the possibility of ruin. When all is orderly, he does not forget that disorder may come. Thus his person is not endangered, and his States and all their clans are preserved." – Confucius

"Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone." - Anthony Burgess

AN: This was either going to be a short Heero/Relena chapter, or a long one with other stuff, but decided this was best on it's own. Consider this the episode 26 review. :)

Proofed by: Lisa. Thank you!