It's My Life
Okay, as promised, here's Lena's side of 'For Rel' and 'Get Rel'.
Okay, so I'm slightly late but I hadn't planned on spending the entire day on Friday at Six Flags Great America (Mommy pulled a fast one on me with that one). Sorry for my lateness. Next updation should be the 26th or 27th of this month.
Maybe it was the recent chain of events, starting with Sylvia arriving at the Noventa household, but Relena was starting to doubt her own acting abilities and plans. Heero was just too close, and added with her lowering self-esteem it was making her really depressed.
It was getting to be a bit much as Relena exited the bathroom, drying off the tips of her wet hair with a towel and praying her glasses would clear up soon. She was in boxers, not something she normally would have worn but her pajama pants were all down in the washer. Accompanying the boxers was a Coke-a-Cola t-shirt that was a tad bit large as she had borrowed it from Adam; it was a bad week for laundry to be done.
Sitting cross legged on her bed with her music book in her lap, Relena opened up to the chapter she left off and pushed her glassed up. She still had two more chapters to read before the next class. Although she wasn't worried about finishing the reading, Relena knew that she still had some other chapters to read in her other classes and a few reports to type up. So, she wanted to be done with the reading portion as soon as possible.
Relena couldn't take it anymore, she wasn't getting any studying done (like she should have) due to her stressful, paranoid state of being. There was only one cure for it, tea, preferably with a lemon drop in it along with some marching music that Adam had burned onto a CD for her.
Amazingly enough, Adam and Sage both had been in their high school's marching band—Relena didn't even know those still existed—but more surprising was the fact that Adam was on colorguard. It always cracked Relena up to picture her friend in spandex while marching, sashaying, or 'jazz running' on the field with a flag or rifle. It was the spandex portion that was disturbingly hilarious to her.
So, when they first moved to Italy, the boys played their marching music from all four years of high school for the girls, and Relena had to admit that she loved the music. There was one song she particularly liked and it was a song from their 'circus show', which Relena never really could associate with marching band. Circus…marching band…it didn't seem to fit together to her, but she liked one of the circus songs just for the can-can portion, and kazoo solo.
Reaching for Lynn's portable CD player, Relena dug through the small stack of CDs for the marching music. Finding it, she popped it into the CD player and put the headphones on.
"Where're you going?" Draca asked, glancing up from her philosophy book as her friend got off her bed with the CD player in hand and pulling her wet hair under the moss green wig.
"Downstairs for some tea, I need to calm my nerves," Relena replied quietly, flipping her wig hair over her shoulder; she didn't want to disturb Lynn, who was sleeping peacefully. With a quick hand brush through and pressing play on the CD player, she went out the door and crept down the hallway to the stairs.
Glancing about for any witnesses, Relena bit her lower lip and seated herself onto the wide banister. One last look about confirmed that no one was out and about except for her, meaning that she could slide. So, she did.
Giving her body a fair push off, the former politician went sliding all the way to the bottom of the staircase. It had always been a secret wish of hers and now she had fulfilled it, but she still wanted to run back up the stairs just to do it one more time. The ride down had made her giddy, made her feel like a young child who had found a new way to be entertained.
Stifling her girlish giggles, Relena went into the kitchen, turned the light on, and skipped the other songs on the CD until she came to track seven, the song with the can-can bit. Bopping her head to the peppy music, Relena danced about the kitchen to get a clean mug and fill it with water from the faucet. She had no reservations against tap water, especially since she was going to be putting the water into the microwave for a while.
Balancing the mug of water in her hand as she pranced about the empty kitchen to the microwave, this was what she had needed. Already Relena was starting to feel better.
With the mug of water in the microwave and the kazoo solo being played, Relena punched in one minute and start. The microwave began to whir around, heating the mug of water.
Singing the kazoo solo out loud, Relena continued to dance her way towards the door as there was more room to do kicks for the can-can, which was coming up shortly. It was coming…almost there…now!
"Da! Da-da-da-da! Da. Da. Da-da-da-da! Da. Da. Da-da-da-da! Dadada!" she sang as she kicked her legs up as though she was an actually can-can girl.
She had been completely unaware of another person's presence in the kitchen until she almost kicked Heero in the groin. Out of reflex he covered he private area with his hands, something Relena would never have thought Heero to do. It was Heero Yuy, the perfect soldier, but the simple reflex reminded Relena that despite his soldier persona Heero was still human, and more importantly, a man.
Oh shi…I am so sorry, I honestly didn't know you were there!" she apologized in a high-pitched, squeaky voice as she took off her headphones. Naturally he felt he had to protect that area, she thought, trying to hold back a grin.
"Hn," was all Heero said back, relaxing his hands as the threat was no more.
Her heart was racing from the surprising entrance of Heero, until the microwave went off.
"AH!" Quite literally, Relena jumped back, putting a hand to her heart; the rate of that organ increased ten-fold at the sound of microwave. "Bloody hell!"
Sliding over to the microwave, Relena pulled out a mug of hot water then poured in three spoonfuls of tea into the liquid holder, stirred, and added in a lemon drop.
"Ah! There's nothing like a cup of hot tea and lemon drop," she moaned contently as the scent of the said tea and lemon drop wafted to her nose.
Heero didn't agree, but having known Heero for three years Relena knew that he was more or less for coffee-black mind you. Although, she had known him to indulge in tea every now and again, especially Wufei's tea which seemed to popular about the Preventers office. Relena had always found that quite funny since Wufei was just as or even a bit less distant than Heero.
Turning around, Relena looked up at Heero only to find him checking out her legs. Following his eyes to her legs, Relena realized that he wasn't 'checking her out' as in attraction but in curiosity. He was such a contradiction, in some ways he resisted most lustful traits that men seemed to share and yet he was capable of holding down a relationship with a member of the opposite sex; so, there had to be some attraction between him and Sylvia.
"Just shaved my legs and I have no idea how I got those bruises," she explained as she sipped her tea and sat on the counter. It was a privilege that Relena had never known until she had moved to Italy with her friends.
Evaluating her leg, Relena smirked a bit as she glanced up at Heero. "It's funny; I never used to shave my entire leg until I moved here and started wearing shorts. Before I would just shave my shins since I always wore pants, long skirts, or pantyhose, now that I wear shorts I shave my entire leg." She thought he would have liked to know, plus she hoped it might have been the start of conversation.
Obviously not, since he was staring at her like she mentally off balance.
"So what has brought you down to the kitchen? Couldn't sleep?" inquired Relena, starting to swing her legs like a young child.
"No," groaned Heero as he went to the fridge and pulled out a container of milk.
Having taken a sip of her tea, Relena watched Heero intently as he moved to the counter and pulled out a glass. "Oh," she began in a carefree tone, "I just kind of thought that since you're getting married and all that the stress would be…"
"We're not getting married!" interrupted Heero, slamming the container of milk on the counter that caused Relena's eyes to widen in surprise.
The outburst had shocked Relena, mostly because Heero was not one to ever lose his cool and to somehow openly express his frustrations in any sort of way. "Oh," she breathed, looking down at the mug of tea in her hands. "Sorry."
She felt guilty now. She had hit a nerve that she hadn't meant to and, unfortunately, that nerve had something to do with Sylvia.
What could have happened? Relena wondered.
"For what?" demanded Heero, snapping the girl out of her thought line.
"For Sylvia and you not being able to work things out," answered Relena, hoping that she wasn't red with embarrassment.
"It's not my fault that she wants to get married and that her mother has it in her head that we're engaged when we never were engaged in the first place!" argued Heero, slamming the refrigerator closed.
Huh? "Whoa! Wait a minute!" interjected Relena, quite confused. This is starting to get complicated. "Sylvia wants to get married, her mom wants you two to marry, and you want what?" He's not engaged to Sylvia?
Facially, Heero remained the same as he always did, indifferent. His eyes, however, told of his internal conflictions as he thought carefully about his answer.
"I don't know."
Adjusting her glasses again, Relena asked, "Let me put it to you like this than, do you want to get married?"
If it had been anyone else Relena would have thought him lying, but as it was Heero, she knew that he was telling the truth. Problem was, that frightened her a bit, especially since Relena was realizing that this was the most Heero had opened up to her since the Eves' War.
Kind of pathetic, she thought.
"I do not know yet! I just want to first find Relena, easy as that," he answered, drowning down the glass of milk. "What does it matter to you?"
Recalling the fact that Heero didn't know it was her, Relena, he was speaking to, 'Salimar' acted indifferent. "Nothing really, but obviously you needed to talk to someone. Relena was right when she said that you didn't often express your feelings openly to others," sighed Salimar taking a sip of her tea.
Heero was glaring at her with his trademark glare but Relena decided to ignore it; there was no way that she was going to break…well, not completely anyways. "Then again, she always did attract people to her, it was quite interesting too."
"When did she tell you this?" Heero questioned. He was starting up the interrogations again.
What should I say? Will this somehow affect what the others might have told him? Relena wondered as panic began to rise. Please, don't let him notice any inconsistencies, if there are any.
"About a month before she ran away," she shrugged. "Plus, she also mentioned how protective you could be of her, like she was labeled as your woman in a sort of romance book-ish style." Rambling, that's what she was starting to do, Relena could just feel it as the words slipped out of her mouth easily. "It was cute, but at least she didn't stay on the topic of you for too long, because then that would have been just too boring."
"Sounds like she told you a lot," pointed out Heero.
Even if his tone was matter-of-fact, Relena knew what he was implying and he was, unfortunately, right. However, he didn't need to know that.
"I'm not quite certain about that," she lied, "but I do know quite a bit about how she felt." Hint, hint, Relena thought, licking the lemon-tea flavor from her lips to keep from grinning in that teasing, 'I know something you don't know' manner.
"How serious is our relationship with Sylvia?" Relena inquired, wanting to both change the topic and to have some questions answered. "Must be pretty serious if she wants to get married. Much like the whole 'First I get cold then hot, think I'm on fire but I'm not. Oh what a pain I got, it must be love' sort of thing."
She was quoting a song and Relena knew it, but obviously Heero didn't, or if he did he didn't bother to show it. All he did was glare at her some more, which Relena found to be rather amusing than intimidating, but that could have been because there was quite a bit of distance between them.
"Not exactly."
"There's nothing I can do, all that I want is you. Look what I'm going through, it must be love. That's the kind right?" continued the girl.
"No."
"I fall like a sparrow and fly like a dove. You must be the dream I've been dreaming of. Oh what a feeling, it must be love. That one was it!" declared Relena. Come on Heero, don't you feel anything similar to these sort of things?
He didn't grunt but Relena could tell that he was trying to maintain his composure and keep from letting his annoyance show, which amused Relena even more. It was just so…human of him that Relena found it so fascinating even though she had always held the belief that he was more human than he let on.
"Oh wait, I might be thinking of Relena." The words flew out of her mouth without her thinking. Insert foot into mouth, or bandana, anything. Just gag me already. "Never mind then," she quickly added, trying to cover up her mistake.
"What exactly are you trying to get at?"
He did not say that, Relena thought as she gave him a doubting look. How can he not get my meaning? I mean, I went through three years of practically wearing a sign that read, 'I love you Heero'. What is he, blind!
"What's your eyesight?" she asked.
"Twenty-twenty in both eyes," Heero simply said.
Ha! she wanted to laugh aloud. For having twenty-twenty eyesight he is fairly blind to not have noticed by feelings.
"What is yours?" he returned.
"My right is fifty-twenty and my left is seventy five-twenty. In case you were wondering about my glasses, I wear contacts during the day and at night I just wear my glasses," Relena winked playfully, she saw how he had noticed her glasses. "Though I like my glasses better than my contacts my glasses are just bothersome at times so I just stick with my contacts."
"Hn."
Great, now they were back to square one, with no conversation or point of interest. What should she say? Should she wait for him to speak? Ha! she had to laugh, Heero was never one to start a conversation, why would he start now?
"Why are you in search of Relena?" questioned Relena, looking back down at her tea that was growing cold. "I mean you technically don't need her anymore since everything's all cool with the Earth and the colonies," she looked up at Heero intensely, "plus you have Sylvia as your Vice Foreign Minister. So what's the use in finding Relena?"
The former gundam pilot certainly took his sweet time answering her questions, but Relena wasn't about to let the conversation be dropped. Nor was she going to force a hurried answer from him either.
However, as the seconds ticked by on the clock so did Relena's patience, especially when she began to suspect that Heero was purposely being silent to avoid answering the question.
"So?" she spoke up, sipping her tea.
"It is none of your concern," Heero stated.
"Of course not, who am I but Relena's friend, I know nothing!" snorted Relena, feeling rather bitter as she jumped off the counter and put her empty mug into the sink to be washed. "Perhaps you should discontinue this little search for her until you find out why you're so desperate to find her."
The bit of advice was not just so that Heero would do some soul searching, but also so he would leave Relena be for a while. At least long enough so that she could put some distance between them.
"I'm not desperate," defended Heero.
"I'm sure you're not, you just can't get the nagging fact that she got away, out of your mind; even when you're with Sylvia, it's Relena who's secretly on your mind all the time," described Relena, even though she felt that she was detailing her emotions more than his. "You barely sleep, you only eat when told to or reminded, you forget about all your other jobs until you find a major lead to Relena. Am I right?"
Heero's eyes were hard as he replied, "No, she is not an obsession of mine. I can operate without knowing where or who Relena is with."
Of course, her mind commented as a ghost of a smile tugged at her lips. You don't ever need to worry so much about me. I guess he really doesn't care, emotionally, about me. He only wants to find me so that he can 'guarantee' peace, even if that's an illusion.
"If you say so," Relena shrugged as she brushed past Heero.
Ready to go back up to her room and turn in for the night, Relena stopped when another comeback formed at the tip of her tongue. "You know what," she asked, "you don't really deserve Relena, at least not her love."
He didn't, at least to everyone else Heero didn't deserve her love, that much Relena had gathered from talking with her friends. Whether he deserved it or not was never the issue, because he had been given it, freely, and he had earned it over the years. At least he had earned it in ways that were less romantic, like protecting her, listening to her, escorting her, or even holding the door open for her.
He didn't reply or, to Relena's surprise, react in anyway.
He really never did love me as a person, only as a way to keep the peace… "Good luck with Sylvia," Relena told him before leaving the kitchen.
Making her way to her room, Relena's composed demeanor gradually began to evaporate until she got into the room and closed the door. In the darkness of the room, as Draca had shut off the lights to go to sleep, Relena's calm exterior broke into a quivering pout.
Pulling off her wig, Relena felt her way to her bed and laid her wig on the dresser, along with her glasses. Lying on top of the covers, staring up at the darkened ceiling, Relena wiped away the tears that were forming at the corners of her eyes.
Determined not to dwell on the events or words exchanged that night, Relena slid underneath the covers and curled on to her side to stare out the window from the cracks of the curtains. She needed to concentrate on something, anything, but Heero and the conversation they just had.
"He never did love me. Did he even care?" she muttered aloud. "What was I to him? What am I to him?" Without an answer, Relena buried her face into her pillow. "Why can't he just leave me alone? My life would be so much easier without him here."
The door opened and was quietly closed. Someone moved about the beds until he or she came to Relena's bed.
Frozen out of fear, Relena didn't turn to see who it was until the person laid down next to her on top of the covers and began to comb through Relena's real hair. The hand was a bit too big to be that of a woman's so it had to be male.
"Rough night?" inquired Adam's voice.
"Yeah…" Relena answered, sighing in relief.
"Want to talk about it?" offered Adam, resting his head on Relena's other pillow while his hand continued to comb through her hair.
"No, but thank you."
They laid there for some odd minutes before Relena began to notice Adam's movements become more languid and feather light. "Adam, why don't you get under the covers so you don't freeze?" suggested Relena, laughing a bit.
"Mmh…'kay," the bass player murmured, lazily slipping under the covers. "Go to sleep Lena, you're going to need it I think."
"Yes sir." Yes, this was the remedy that Relena needed more than the tea and lemon drop. Adam, just being there and offering a listening ear should Relena decide to open up to him. She was feeling better, much better.
Thank you to Lynn-Minmay and Morrighan of Crimson and Sable. You guys are great! Also, a thank you to the silent fans and to those loyal reviewers who hadn't gotten the chance to review the last chapter, it's all good people I know who you are. Thanks!