Hereafter

Chapter 14

Heero followed Trowa in a stupor, though he didn't really need the guidance. All the work crews were gathered in the same area. He passed dozens of bodies laid out in rows, sheets pulled over their heads. This many had not been here when passed through before. Were these the people from the auditorium where Relena had been speaking? If survivors had been found, they had been loaded up on ambulances already. Or perhaps there were none.

Abstractly, he wondered what this meant for the ESUN. Not all representatives had been in attendance for this meeting, but this event had still likely decimated the council. Surely there would be some survivors. But then, he thought soberly, even if there were, there was little hope that they would continue serving, that they would even be able to after living through something like this. No. Other representatives would need to be elected, and that was assuming…

His thoughts about the council were wiped when he saw the body.

A fireman was carrying her down an incline of pulverized cinder blocks. He was being followed by a score of people—policeman, doctors, reporters, and other emergency responders. Heero saw the gathering crowd only as blurred objects.

The hair was so caked with ash and grime, he could not determine its color, but it was long and straight. Her face was so bruised, it had swelled and blackened beyond recognition, but she was young. The build was also right. It was a slender woman, about Relena's height, wearing a suit and skirt.

"Is she alive?"

Heero did not ask the question. He wasn't the only one who wanted to know. It was Lucrezia Noin, shoving her way through the circle of gaping onlookers. The fireman lowered the body to the ground. His face was also caked in grime, but his eyes were emotional. Cameras flashed from the reporters in attendance. No doubt that face would end up as a magazine cover.

Heero elbowed his way passed the people circling the body. He didn't care when they objected. He had to get to her. He had to know…

Noin was kneeling beside the body on the ground. There was a woman in hospital scrubs kneeling on the other side, checking her pulse. A doctor? Heero's throat tightened. Surely, a doctor meant she might be alive…

But the doctor turned to look at Noin and shook her head, whispering something. Heero read her lips. She's dead. I'm so sorry. Tears blossomed in Noin's eyes. Her hand slapped over her mouth.

Heero had just reached the inside of the circle. His knees hit the dirt. Pain jolted through him as the sharp gravel bit into his skin, but he barely registered it. Trowa knelt beside him. Heero clung to his arm without really seeing him at all. All his thoughts were vanquished. If anyone spoke to him, he did not hear them in that moment.

He knew only one thing. If Relena's life was over, his life was also over. All the meaning, all the purpose, all the point of existing any further was gone without her. The thought of living on, alone, was like ambling in the dark through an endless desert, parched with thirst he would never be able to quench. It might be weakness, but he didn't care about that. He had always been weak. He had never been good at balancing expectation with reality, at tempering the training he had endured to be excellent with the grim reality of inevitable failure and loss.

He knew that no one really liked him, or perhaps he just did not really like anyone. No one except Relena. He did not really consider the other Gundam Pilots his comrades. Even Trowa, whose company he tolerated best, was a pale substitute for her. Before meeting Relena, he had wanted to kill himself many times. He had lived a miserable existence. Without her, he was everything he had always been before but drowning in grief. He could not do it. He knew he could not. He could think of nothing in that instant except an irrepressible desire to fling himself off a building, to drink cyanide until his stomach burned and his heart stopped, to find a gun—any gun...

He knew where he would find one. Duo had knocked it out of his hand. Had anyone picked it up? It was probably still there. He could retrace his steps. The gun was loaded. He only needed a few seconds.

He was staring at the body on the ground as a plan came together in his mind. The battered face was turned away from him. Matted, dirty hair spilled out away from her body, but he caught glimpses of the color as the dirt shook loose—a soft, buttery blonde. His eyes trailed along her body, from her shoulders to her wrist, which peaked out from the sleeve of a maroon coat.

Maroon?

His thoughts seemed to churn slowly, revelation firing like pops from a machine on the edge of breaking down.

Relena's coat had been blue-the color of her eyes.

He surged forward, tripping Trowa in the process, who managed to avoid a face plant only by virtue of his acrobat training. Heero did not stop. He was beside the body in an instant. Noin reached out to him, her face a mess of tears, but Heero did not take her hand.

"It's not her," he gasped. "It's not her."

He shoved the sleeve up—a maroon sleeve—to reveal a creamy white wrist.

Confused, Noin looked between him and the wrist of the girl lying dead in the dirt—the girl that was definitely not Relena Peacecraft.

"She has a scar," Heero choked. "Relena has scar on her wrist. An accident as a kid. She told me. Call Zechs if you need to. He was there. She has a scar."

He turned the girl's wrist toward Noin.

There was no scar.