Chapter 33 - The Separation Part 2

Two weeks later

Heero POV

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Holding Zero by the bridle, Heero carefully led his horse through the devastated yard. His shoes slid down the crumbled, dust-covered debris that Zero's hooves crushed with a loud crunch. It wasn't a safe crossing for horse hooves, so they moved slowly but steadily, eventually reaching the shady corner of the yard, under a high wall of a crumbling house. Crossing the line of shadow, Heero let go of the horse while he slumped in the shade, exhaling a deep sigh with his head propped up against a building.

Stopping right next to his master, Zero snorted loudly and shook his head, his bay hair glistening with moisture of his sweat. Heero took a water bottle from his backpack and took a long sip, then poured water inside the palm of his hand, letting the horse lick it.

The sun was mercilessly scorching the earth for several hours, while the group got stuck in the village of Castleberry. They just had a clash with the largest group of infected since they left Evergreen. Judging by the scraps of clothes they found on the monsters, it had been once a military unit sent from one of the zones on the coast.

Resting in his shadowed spot, Heero watched his companions with attentive eyes. They all trailed on drained legs, their arms pulled down by the weight of the weapons, their foreheads and necks sunburned and covered with sweat, their eyes resigned and their breaths too fast and shallow. It was apparent to Heero that these frequent skirmishes with infected carried a significant psychological burden for those men, so used to living their days in peaceful seclusion.

After more than two weeks on the road, it was already easy to tell solely by the look in their eyes: they were scared. With each battle, which they barely got alive from, they were realizing again and again that their home, Evergreen, was only a tiny, almost undetectable island in the ocean of chaos and death that consumed the world. They were losing their enthusiasm and hope, their faces turned gray, their movements weren't so studied and nimble like just after they left home. What's more, they were witnessing the death of their friends. Fear and regret deprived them of the ability to concentrate and coolly assess each of the dangerous situations they stumbled upon. They kept making more and more mistakes.

How well he knew these stages of the development of the disaster. He had witnessed it more than once, on many battlefields...

One thing was distinctive here, though: none of the Evergreen men wanted to go back, behind the safe walls. Nobody even talked about this. Not before they finished what they had headed for.

"Get up! Get on your fucking feet! We need to move forward!"

Heero rubbed the sweat off his face with the back of his hand, fixing his gaze at Trowa. The green-eyed commander approached each of the men, jerking them to their feet, commanding loudly. Every one he turned to obediently stood up on staggering legs, looking around with undisguised shame that he allowed himself to show weakness at all.

But Heero didn't stand from his spot in the cold shadow. Instead, he rested his rifle on his lap and began slowly loading the ammo. He gazed with cold eyes at the madness that seemed to engulf the group and the commander. The unit got reduced by almost a quarter since the beginning of the journey. Even so, the men obediently stood at Trowa's commands.

"The longer we sit here, the more we risk," Trowa continued, walking between his men. "We have only one district left, and we'll retire to the forest by the evening."

Heero sighed disapprovingly and allowed his eyes cast down at the weapon on his lap. He could already hear the increasing sound of heavy footsteps approaching him through the rubble, but he didn't lift his head.

He already knew the outcome.

"What's up, smuggler? Waiting for me to issue you an invitation in writing?" he heard Trowa's impatient, a little hoarse and breathless voice from above. "On your feet. Move your ass."

Heero eventually looked up but didn't move an inch, patiently loading more shotgun shells.

"We should stay here until evening."

Trowa's eyes narrowed, flooded with anger and impatience.

"Look around, Yuy, because I feel like you missed something. Do you see those corpses around? We barely survived," Trowa hung his voice for a moment. "By staying here, we expose ourselves to another attack. Will you take responsibility for that?"

"Only with the leadership included," Heero grunted. "Before you kill us all."

A discontentful murmur of the rest of the group answered him. Men started commenting on the recluse smuggler, that pushed the stick into the anthill once again, while Trowa kept his hostile eyes on Heero.

"Such insubordination in military troops or in the zone is intolerable. You're nobody special here, so better stop testing me. Get up."

Heero still didn't move.

"You put your people at completely unnecessary risk," he drawled. "In these conditions, it means certain death."

"Enough."

Zero backed and nickered shortly with surprise at the sudden and aggressive move when Trowa drew and aimed his gun between Heero's eyes. Heero furrowed his eyebrows, glaring fearlessly at Trowa from above the barrel.

"…you pitiful asshole."

A murmur filled the square again. Hearing the insult, Trowa raised his chin gently, then flicked off the safety of his gun.

"You won't get another warning," Trowa growled, then added in a whisper. "Don't tempt me to change my mind."

Heero slammed the magazine in, then slowly got on his feet and approached the tall, green-eyed man.

"The infected aren't here yet," he said with a calm, controlled voice. His gaze never left Trowa's eyes as he murmured to him silently enough that the others didn't hear him. "If they appear, we will fight. While they're gone, that's our moment to rest. Leaving this place, wandering in this heat, we'll lose strength faster, and we'll only attract more infected."

Trowa narrowed his eyes on Heero.

"How many groups have you already led?" he hissed. "As far as I know, you failed to lead even a woman safely through the city."

Heero clenched his fists angrily, sending Trowa a sinister glare, but getting a bunch of hostile looks, he kept his mouth shut.

x x x

Relena POV

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She wasn't breathing air anymore. She was air.

She flew with the wind, interfusing it through, merging with it. She flew far away from here. She didn't see the world only through the doors of her eyes; for now, there was no barrier of corporeality or spirituality between them.

She slowly drifted away, and waves of aromas permeated through her: ripening grain, wet peatlands, and smelly swamps, majestic and coniferous forests and rushing rivers. She floated over the wastelands, and deserted villages carried like the fragile dust by a warm summer wind.

To where he was now. To envelop him comfortably with the breeze like with her own arms. Or suck him like a tornado and bring him back here…

…oh, she was never a model of patience.

"Relena?"

Ripped out of her moment of melancholy, Relena opened her eyes and looked up at the sound of a familiar voice.

"I'm sorry… Did I disturb you?"

"Quatre…" she muttered absentmindedly, still a little startled. "No, not at all... I just came here to…"

"…ponder?" Quatre laughed gently as he walked over to her and leaned against the railing of the wall. "I like to come here too. Look at this view."

They both looked down at the meadows and woods surrounding Evergreen. There was an intimidating view of the horizon from here; in the distance, darkened the dark scratches of the Evergreen suburbs.

"Indeed," Relena sighed. The view was truly serene. The world taken away from people, taken over again by nature, seemed much more beautiful than when it was in the hands of people. Relena tilted her head and looked at Quatre. "How do you do? Since I came here, we almost had no time to talk."

"It's partly my fault. I wanted to give you space to acclimatize here. I'm sorry if you felt neglected."

"It's okay," Relena shook her head. "I'm doing fine here."

She failed to hide the soft sigh of longing in her voice. This didn't escape Quatre's attention, but he was tactful as usual.

"What happened to you, Relena? After the outbreak?" he asked with a gentle voice. "How did you survive?"

Relena folded her hands in front of her. Turning back to her memories of the first years after the outbreak was always painful. Those were memories of a child whose stable and safe world had collapsed forever; the child can never understand why something like this happened.

"On the outbreak day," she started after a long moment of silence, nervously toying with her fingers, "everything happened so fast. It separated us. About a month later, my father and I left the Washington DC zone and headed to Philadelphia QZ. We stayed there for twenty whole years."

"Actually… why Philadelphia QZ?"

"Father-" Relena started, nervously debating in her soul whether she should tell Quatre everything…

"Dad, when we'll go back home? What if mum and Milliardo come and won't find us there?"

"Relena... We can't go back there."

She felt that little girl again, gazing confidingly in her father's concerned eyes. He was a hero for her; he could always find a solution to all problems and never lacked the right words to say. But at that moment, those blue eyes of his, so similar to hers, were obscured by fog. He never got out of grief after losing his wife, his first-born son, and the World that he had wanted to save from destruction. Never after did he find the right words to explain to his daughter that life would never be the same again.

Relena gazed at her father through the eyes of imagination. A father who kept disappearing for days and nights, leaving her alone in a safe, four-locked flat in the central part of the Philadelphia QZ. And when he was at home, he was usually visited by suspicious people who always talked in low voices. Father, who kept repeating:

"There's a thing we still need to do - a thing that we are obliged to try to save the world. That's our duty as Peacecrafts."

"…He said it would be safer there," Relena said vaguely. "It turned out to be a fortunate decision; we later found out with Heero that the zone of Washington DC had been destroyed."

"Speaking of which… where did you get this grim man from?"

Relena chuckled at the word. "We got him out of trouble."

"We?" Quatre asked, lifting his eyebrows.

"Cheer up, babe."

Her heart squeezed for the mention of another painful recollection. Another unjust victim.

"You can always count on me, you know."

Relena's memory of Duo was so intense that it seemed to her that a ghost of this long-haired American stood right next to her, resting his hands on his hips, sending her his feistily smile. Just like the day they set out on a journey…

"Now pack this Wunderwaffe up! No need wasting time, it's a long way to Houston."

"That's a long story," Relena started, realizing that it wasn't still the right time to tell Quatre the whole truth - about the mission and the vaccine she got with her. "I had a friend in the zone. His name was Duo. When my father died, he agreed to escape with me from the zone, and eventually get to Houston. I wanted to get there because I got a rumor that someone from my family survived and could be in Houston..."

"…where those laboratories are?"

Hearing these words, Relena gave Quatre a cautious look, but the blonde man only nonchalantly shrugged. "I also heard these rumors."

"Yeah…" Relena sighed and gazed away. She suspended her voice and smiled involuntarily. "And Heero... He just happened."

Quatre kept listening to her with a gentle smile on his face without rushing her.

"He got into trouble while smuggling and fled from the horde of infected. Duo saved him, and a moment later, I held him at gunpoint." They both chuckled. "Duo asked him to help us get out of the city. Unfortunately, Duo died while escaping... but Heero agreed to accompany me on my journey."

"I suppose that by making this decision and leaving with you, he went for broke," Quatre noticed. "There's probably nothing to come back to as a smuggler in the zone. You must have been convincing," saying this, he winked at her.

Relena smiled, then chuckled softly.

"Shut up. You'd better tell me about yourself, smarter."

Quatre leaned against the railing and brushed his blonde bangs away from his eyes.

"…I left Washington DC after Iria's death. I wanted to break out, forget... every street, every corner reminded me of her and the rest of my family… Of everything I lost. I couldn't take it anymore."

Relena looked down. She remembered Quatre's sister, Iria. A delicate, tall, dark blonde with always cheerful eyes. "I'm sorry."

"I'm over this already," Quatre shook his head, then fell silent for a brief moment. "The way south seemed to be a natural way. I met Trowa not far from here. He wandered alone, and I decided to offer him my company; that time, I already led a group of few people. You know, I always thought that together is the merrier. But Trowa wasn't an outgoing type at all…"

"…Just like Heero," Relena smiled, then searched Quatre's face, tilting her head. "And how was Evergreen born?"

Quatre chuckled. "Evergreen just happened. We found this old power plant and planned to restart it. At first, there was only a handful of us, but later more and more new inhabitants came, for example, Catherine... Until the village has grown to its present size."

"You've managed to create something beautiful, Quatre. This place gives hope."

"It's your arrival that gives hope, Relena."

Relena shifted her curious gaze on Quatre while he continued.

"The world is a ship that's sinking, and Evergreen isn't a lifeboat or even a raft. It's just a lifebuoy that allows those few who catch it to stay afloat. I feel that you are the one who can bring true salvation."

"Why do you think that?" Relena asked. "Just because I'm a Peacecraft?"

"It's much more than that," Quatre whispered, leaning conspicuously over to Relena. "I know you carry a heavy burden on your shoulders, Relena. I can only guess how hard and important it might be; it has to be - no one makes a decision to cross the whole country if not for a huge reason…"

Relena measured her friend with anxious eyes, looking for any sign of hostility, but Quatre reached out and squeezed her hand.

"I'm also aware, as your friend, that I would put you in great danger if I revealed even my suspicions of this reason," he smiled. "You don't need to worry about that, Relena. I want you to know that I understand you, and you have my full support. But I also want you to know that there is a place for you here."

"Quatre…" Relena sighed, squeezing his hand back.

"Please remember, Relena. Even if you fail to save the world," whispered Quatre, "here's the place where you can come back to."

Relena looked deeply into her friend's eyes.

"Quatre Raberba Winner," she began smiling broadly, "I didn't think you could bash these kinds of soppy declarations so easily!"

A blush flashed across Quatre's cheeks.

"Trowa would laugh at me..."

Relena continued to smile, though that moment, she realized that her childhood friend was connected to Trowa with a bond much more profound than friendship.

"This Heero… Do you really trust him?"

"With my life," Relena answered solemnly.

"Did you ever figure out… why he didn't kill you when you got bitten?" Quatre asked, hesitantly. "I mean… not only he didn't kill you; instead, he stayed with you, risking that you would attack him... One has to be unbelievably stupid… or brave to do that."

Relena turned away, gazing at the horizon again. In all her melancholy, she also felt Heero's presence, but it was different. It had to be…

"I've kept asking myself 'why' for weeks, Quatre," she whispered, closing her eyes. "I think I found out. What's more… I think that even Heero realized the reason only recently…"

x x x

Heero POV

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…what did I tell you?

Their situation turned hopeless and desperate so instantaneously that he hadn't even been able to say those words. Either way, he would have hardly found anyone to say it to, as his comrades were dropping like flies.

Hearing the infected onrushing on him, he turned abruptly and pushed the stinking body away with a strong kick before firing his shotgun. The monster was thrown back with a loud roar, while Heero reloaded and aimed at the next advancing Clicker. One bullet wasn't enough; he had to fire at least two times. Straight to the head.

In the chaos that surrounded him, he noticed more and more of his companions who desperately needed help. They were tired of traveling and fighting in the heat and now helplessly surprised by a relatively small group of infected, that holed up only a few blocks away…

Heero kept fighting as if it was the only thing his body was programmed to do since the day he was born. As if he could do nothing else, as if stopping would kill him; he was a machine. His senses got enhanced, his breathing was fast but steady, he repeatedly heard in his ears the drums of blood pulsating through his veins. His muscles spontaneously repeated memory patterns, every scrap of his body was fighting for survival… but not just trying to save himself.

"Leave it, run!" he kept shouting, running from one to another of his companions, ripping them out of the embrace of death.

Then he eventually made a mistake. He didn't notice a sudden, sharp tug on his leg. Losing his balance, he fell forward, painfully hitting the ground.

The Clicker promptly started climbing on top of him, nailing him to the ground. Its slim fingers dug deep into his skin and flesh, tugging chaotically on his clothes. Rolling onto his back, Heero missed a kick, and then it took only a moment for the Clicker to reach up, right above his face.

Heero shot his arms up and blocked the attack, suspending the furious Clicker above him. The Clicker was only a few inches away from his face, frantically clenching his jaw and screaming deafeningly. Heero narrowed his eyes with exertion, feeling the monster's hot, smelly, almost sticky breath on his face. The living corpse's body under his fingers was ice-cold, his fingers kept sliding on the surface of the monster's flabby, rotting skin. The inside of its black mouth dripped with the blood of previous victims, and the protruding sharp teeth clenched in the air with a deaf clash closer and closer to his neck.

"Fu…." Heero grunted under his breath. Just how many times already had I been this close…?

The Clicker started to hit his skull with claws and rubbed at him with all its weight. Heero felt the muscles of his arms faint when the monster mounted him, pressing his chest to the ground, almost taking his breath away. How much longer can I hold it…?

Heero's arms eventually bent at the elbows under the beast's pressure, and the faceless head with teeth came even closer to his neck. The Clicker flung its claws against his body, and Heero felt a sharp pain when the monster ripped his shirt on his chest. Together with his skin.

He was holding the Clicker only by its throat, trying to keep it as far away as possible, but it was clear that he wouldn't last long like this.

He had the impression that someone called him by his name…

With the Clicker's weight piled up on top of his ripped chest, unable to catch a breath, his view was obscured by a black veil again and again. His body trembled with superhuman, prolonged effort, and pain. It would be much easier to give up... no longer feel that fear… nor this pain...

This is not goodbye, remember?

Then he saw the light through the closed eyelids and heard her voice. How...? For a fraction of a second, those beautiful, oceanic eyes stared at him, then sent him a sad look, and she turned away. He saw her silhouette walking away from him.

…further and further away.

Wait for me.

He felt that for a brief moment, his useless, exhausted body... ceased to belong to him.

You can't die… you can't leave me here…

"Get… the fuck… OFF!"

His dry throat shouted those words as his arms, guided by some inexplicable and sudden wave of strength, pushed the monster far back, away from him. As soon as he released his hands, he reached for his gun and fired a series of five, frantic shots, three of which hit the Clicker in the open jaw. The monster froze, then fell to the ground, uttering one last bloody neigh, stiffening in a deathly pose.

Finally catching his breath, Heero heard a deafening squeal in his head, as if after an explosion. Dazed, he greedily kept breathing air in his lungs, barely controlling the shivering of his muscles. The torn skin from the wound on his torso burned him painfully, and his chest suffered tremors as if his frantically throbbing heart was actually bouncing off his ribs like a ball. His body howled in pain and effort. He rolled onto his stomach, and opened his eyes, slowly noticing the contours of his surroundings.

About ten meters from him, Trowa fell on the ground, stunned by Runner. He limply tried to fight the hail of blows inflicted by the attacking monster, but it was in vain. He was clearly losing strength, fainting, and the Runner was only centimeters from his neck.

Heero only had a split second to aim. With one last effort, he held out his pistol and pulled the trigger.

His hand dropped the weapon immediately after firing. His brain was dark, his body finally gave up. A moment later, he got engulfed by darkness.

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TBC

Hello, again!

I'm still out there, just have a load of real-life work to do. That's why you had to wait so long for the update. I'm sorry about that. To be honest, I'm also working on another story, also 1xR, only one-shot, but it's getting long already. Keep your eyes out for it!

This chapter is slightly different from the others, maybe a bit spirited; Heero and Relena are already two weeks apart. He is fighting for survival, she is waiting for him. Even for a moment, however, the bond between them and their hearts isn't broken. It is really a breath before the further development of events, which will happen soon.

Thank you so much for your reviews and PMs!

Stay safe,

~enelle