A.C. 202
When Heero first suggested that she spend the weekend camping with him on his newly granted crown land (which actually meant it was Relena's land), she made a face at him.
"Mosquitoes Heero, they love me! And why sleep on the ground in a tent as bug bait when we can rent a cottage?"
"You and I are not allowed to sleep in the same dwelling alone. Your own rules, Princess."
He only called her Princess when he wanted to annoy her, she crossed her arms unconvinced, he needed to do better than a simple taunt to coax her into the uncivilized wild with him.
Heero unfolded her arms methodically and placed them down her sides, his own hands glided up from her elbows and held her lightly at the shoulders. He leaned in, eyes dancing. "You won't be sleeping on the ground, and we won't be sharing a tent, but we won't be in separate rooms either."
He was giddy, she realized with a start, and felt her own excitement rise against her better judgement.
This was how she found herself riding shotgun in Heero's old jeep, a rickety relic from the war he had rescued from the scrap yard. Relena knew from experience that he was an excellent driver, but on this particular day he seemed to revel in the bumpy terrain of the unpaved road that led to his parcel of land. She was beginning to suspect that he took pleasure in the yelps she let out whenever he purposely drove over potholes.
"Heero! You'll ruin your car!"
"It's seen worse days!" He shouted over the whipping wind and the rattling frame of the battered jeep, a peculiarly cheerful lilt in his voice. Sometimes she forgot how young they were, Heero was still in the high-risk/high-reward stage of his life. In fact, their brains weren't even fully developed yet. Perhaps he was right, she did read too much psychology.
They stopped in a cloud of dust, Heero parked in a clearing between the open pasture and treed portion of his property. He had prepared this level site for building an A-frame cabin in the months to come.
She followed him out of the car, grabbing her overnight bag. He led her by the hand toward the tree line. She noted what must have been hundreds of saplings in root trainers that sat in neat rows, hazel and chestnut, according to Heero's proposed use of the land.
He stopped in front of a group of towering firs. Two camping hammocks were strung at right angles between three of the trees, one a few inches closer to the ground than the other. She stared for a moment.
"Sleeping together apart, huh Heero?"
She gave him an approving side-long glance. Heero looked so pleased with himself that she wanted to laugh, instead she tugged him by their still laced fingers and planted a kiss on his shoulder. Relena was sure that if he was a bird, his feathers would be all proudly fluffed up right now.
He built a fire a little ways away as dusk approached, blowing on the kindling until they were both teary from the smoke. Relena sat upwind from the firepit and threw in an occasional pine cone just to watch it combust. Heero was on his hands and knees beside her, still puffing away into the base of the fire. There was a cowlick on the swirl of his head that refused to lay flat, the tuft of hair tickled at her heart and made it ache for him.
A soldier who bore the name of long departed peace. He was sent to earth as a weapon, but his name was a prayer.
"Hey Heero?"
"Hmm?"
He sat back on his hunches and wiped his brows, his cheeks ruddy from the heat of the flames.
"How come you never changed your name? You could be called anything you wanted."
He was silent for a moment, staring into the flames as he formed his thoughts.
"Heero Yuy was a good man. I want to earn the right to be called by his name."
You've earned that right many times over, she thought to herself, but he would not have accepted this even if she'd told him out loud.
They lapsed into a familiar silence. As daylight faded completely, Heero busied himself with making a pot of tea. She asked him about the progress of his plantings, and the applicability of his online courses.
He had outlined his plans for a nuttery and orchard in his application for the land grant. When she first read it upon his arrival at the capital, the meaning of his proposal had hit her so hard it made her light-headed. Nuts were slow maturing trees, his plan would span decades. It seemed that Heero had chosen the most earth-bound profession he could find. Earth-bound, at her side.
During his stint at university, Heero had taken an interest in the closed-systems ecology of colony-side agriculture.
The average colony cluster dedicated one fifth of its habitable space to food and oxygen production, during the long years of inter-colonial isolation imposed by the Alliance, it was vital for each colony cluster to be self-sufficient. The lack of seasons and 24-hour sunlight meant quick harvest cycles on very minimal real estate.
Relena had once seen the L1 hydroponic facility in operation, on one of the many trips to space with her father. She was only seven at the time, and was allowed to pluck a half-ripe strawberry off the tall racks, boosted on her father's strong shoulders.
There were no fruit or nut trees grown at L1, most cultivars required either too much soil, or needed insect pollination. Bees did not fare well in space, there have been multiple attempts to introduce hives to the colonies, all of which failed to reproduce. The first generation would adapt to artificial gravity in a few days, but new eggs laid in space would not hatch.
Quatre once posited it might have been the same problem faced by early colonists who could not conceive naturally, a problem which took decades of environmental calibrations of the colonies to correct. No one was in a hurry to mess that up for a few insects.
"Space bees." she chuckled and leaned back into Heero. The fire in front of them warmed her legs and his body behind her was a solid shield from the chill of the night. His hands snuck into the pockets of her pullover and rested flat on her stomach, she could feel the heat from his palms through the soft fabric. The combination filled her with a sense of safety that she was sure reached all the way back to the Pleistocene.
As if on cue, he grunted at her childish assertion, and was not impressed when she called him a caveman. She had made up all kinds of nicknames for him since his return, it was a playful side of her that he only saw hints of before.
It would have been less improper for them to fool around when she was the Vice Foreign Minister, her private life could be separate from her public image then. Neither had dared pursue such a relationship however, the burden of their terrible purpose paralyzed them in their youth. Royalty, on the other hand, had much more traditional standards of conduct. She was now old school, as Duo had put it.
The braided man pestered him with monthly video calls, every one more annoying than the last.
"Man, I know she has faith in you that could move mountains, but you're slower than the speed of continental shift!" Duo had said during his most recent call, and followed up with "You gonna make a move before the next ice age?"
Time felt both slower and faster on earth, he was not sure how both could be true at the same time. Winter seemed to never abate, at some point he stopped tallying their kisses; but when he at last came up for breath, the sun had lifted its axis in the sky, and shadows shrunk in the lengthening days. He felt the sacred cycle of time awaken something in him as old as the world itself.
The seasonality of earth still amazed him. Such dramatic changes in the colonies would be a sign of fatal systems malfunction, but on earth, the changes were anticipated, hoped for, and beautiful. To him, she was no less miraculous than the earth itself, all-generous and yet all-demanding.
He sat with his chin nested in her hair, and asked about her opinions on marriage-based alliances between royal families.
"Heero that's gross!" Relena swatted at his arms that were draped over her collar bones, "All the royal families are cousins!"
And so they danced around the issue as they watched the flames, each hiding behind the ambiguities of personal opinion and generalizations. The embers diminished to a low glow, and the two sat in the dark. He poked at the coals with a half burnt stick.
"I used to wonder what the role of a soldier could be in times of peace."
They knew each other's tells so well, that it was difficult to explore new territory without feeling scrutinized. In the near total darkness, they could speak of more intimate things. A piece of coal collapsed and broke in half, sending sparks that floated up to join the twinkling lights in the sky.
"Perhaps I should ask not as a soldier, but as a man."
She stared up at the milky way, they were far enough from the city that it seemed every star was trying to stand out. She felt his voice rumble against her back, it was the only tether anchoring her to the world.
"It's been seven years since the war." She said to the stars.
"It's time I stopped fighting."