A/N: I wrote this chapter to Rhythm Emotion, so I suggest you read it listening to Rhythm Emotion.

Hereafter

Chapter 19

March Madness Prompt #5

"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here. This is the war room." -Dr. Strangelove (1964)

In a single moment, the world had changed.

Katie Kline stood before Heero with her hand thrust into the air. His gaze trained on her, the only reporter in the crowd with a familiar face. She knew it too. She beamed with pleasure at being given this career-making chance to pose the first question to Relena Peacecraft's mysterious boyfriend… on the possible day of the Vice Foreign Minister's death.

Heero ignored her. Ambivalent to the impression he was making on the whole universe, Heero left the stage without taking a single question and ducked under the police tape that separated the press area from ground zero. Sensing his mood, the three other Gundam Pilots fell in behind him as he charged up the hill.

"What is it, Heero?" Trowa asked.

"Furniture," Heero panted.

"Huh?"

"You said there wasn't any furniture, but there was at least one piece," Heero said. "Where Relena was standing on the dais."

Recognition flickered across Trowa's face.

"It would have to be a huge podium," Duo sputtered.

"It is," Heero said. "A body could easily fit in the hollow. If it fell just right…"

"And since we haven't found her…" Wufei whispered.

Heero did not have the energy to summon either positivity or pessimism.

The sun had set. While addressing all of Earth and Space, Heero had felt only cool darkness on the back of his neck. Minutes ago, he had just wanted it to be over. He had wanted to communicate the wishes of the woman he loved, a woman he had just allowed himself to believe must be dead.

But now he could see the stars. They pricked through the deep oceanic blues of the western horizon, winking at him faintly like tiny, distant fireflies.

"There," he huffed into the night air, pointing. The work crews had paused in their digging to erect emergency scene lighting. Three engineers squatted around one, trying to adjust the angle so that the light would properly illuminate the mouth of the shored-up excavation tunnel.

"Hey! You lot need PPE to be up here!"

Heero turned to see Tom trudging up the hill of debris toward them. His face and neck were flushed red. Unlike the Gundam Pilots, he wore a hardhat, work gloves, and steel-toed shoes. He gestured at them where they stood, taking in their lack of personal protective equipment with one wave of his hand.

"I think I know where she is," Heero interrupted.

Tom stopped dead. "Relena Peacecraft?"

Heero pointed at the mouth of the tunnel.

Tom shook his head. "My people have been all through there," he said. "Unless you heard someone banging on a beam with a bit of pipe or—"

"No," Heero said. "Not the tunnel. Look. There." He pointed again. "That bit of dark granite. It's not a scrap of shattered countertop. It's the corner of the podium."

Tom stared at the granite triangle sticking out from the floor of the tunnel. "Hold up," he said. "You think… You think Relena Peacecraft is buried alive in a podium?"

"I hope she is buried alive," Heero said, emphasizing the last word.

Tom's face changed. He whistled to the men huddled around the light fixture and they came over. Tom repeated Heero's theory. Each one of their faces changed too, transforming from pinched and contemplative to open and awed. A flurry of activity broke out as the workers began calling to each other for action, to fetch the equipment needed to dislodge the debris directly around the tunnel mouth.

"Would she have any air?" Heero heard one of the workers whisper to another.

Heero's heart clenched. Air. Relena would need air to survive this long, even if she couldn't speak or see or feel anything but dirt and darkness. What if they pulled her out with blue lips, white hands, and empty, staring eyes?

"Easy now," Duo said, tugging on Heero's jacket collar from behind so that he had to step back or be pulled down backward. "This isn't your fight, Heero. Let the gentlemen do their work."

Not his fight? It was an absurb statement. Heero had never felt more like fighting. But Duo was right. This wasn't a war. This wasn't even a war room. The most he could do here was get in the way.

"She has to breathe," Heero said, anxious again. He had been elated to have solved it. When the floor caved in and the ceiling crashed down on top of her, Relena must have somehow fallen into or under the podium, the hulking mass of granite and wood shielding her body from a rain of death. But what if she had no air? What if that podium was effectively her coffin?

There was nothing Heero could do except wait. The construction workers shifted debris around the podium until they had freed all the edges. Heero could see the whole face of it now. It was cracked through the center but intact. If Relena was there, she was underneath, in the hollow, just as he had imagined.

More debris came free. Piece by piece, the podium was worked loose from the clutches of shattered concrete, timber, and gypsum that confined it. Trowa and Wufei lined up on Heero's left. Duo stood on his right. Heero searched frantically for signs of Relena, for a flash of a coat sleeve, a lock of hair….

The podium was excavated further. A final piece of timber was pulled free from the ground, and there the podium lay before them—exposed.

It shuddered once.

And then cracked open like an egg.

Two halves fell to either side.

Underneath, lying hauntingly still, was the curled-up body of a girl.

Heero threw himself into the pit, heart pounding, heedless of Tom's shout to stop, to wait. Relena looked barely even bruised. He gathered her in his arms, pushing hair from her face. She was limp. Her eyes would not open. An ugly gash marred her forehead.

"Breathe," he commanded, pressing his forehead to hers. "Relena."

He pushed two trembling fingers to her throat.

Silence.

No, wait. There.

Faint, but... yes.

A pulse.

He cried. "She's alive."