A/N: This grew from a drabble request made by chemicalchrush.

A/N #2: Thanks to Ro for being an amazing beta, and to Maeve, for beta-reading and always being so encouraging.

A/N #3: I am in NO way an expert on ballet or music/orchestral life. I'm an expert on NONE of the careers mentioned - with the exception of Wufei's, and even then I fully acknowledge he is way too young to have that job - so please just know I'm relying on the internet. If you have any suggestions or expertise to offer, I welcome it.

A/N #4: If you're ever curious about what these people's homes look like, check out "Pas de Trois Locations" on my tumblr page, where I have links to actual apartments that are for sale! In case you have several million dollars laying around. In which case, we should talk.

Warnings: language, angst, sexy times

Pairings: 2x3xR, 3x5, 3x13, 1x4, 1x6, DxC others will be added as necessary

Pas de Trois

Chapter Five

I woke up on Sunday will the insistent, throbbing reminder that I had had too much champagne last night and gone to bed without drinking any water or taking aspirin.

As I rolled over in my bed, I groaned at another painful reminder of the stupid things I had done last night.

My ass and thighs ached, and as I shifted to the edge of the mattress, I very clearly remembered the look on Treize's face as he pounded into me last night.

I sighed, disgusted with myself all over again, and stood up to stretch properly.

I winced through the pain, but stretched out my body as if I was preparing for class.

Normally, I liked the subtle ache of a night spent fucking. As a dancer, it was a given that I was something of a masochist, but this was the one pain - the one burn of muscle that didn't have anything to do with dancing and everything to do with being wanted.

Normally, I resented anything that distracted me from dancing - when I was in Paris last year and a guest artist had decided to share the barre with me for class, drenched in cologne, I had picked up my bag and moved across the room during a break in work, just so I could focus better.

But this was different; pain and soreness from sex was like the lingering touch of a lover, and it felt like a caress that was mine alone.

Of course, it didn't feel much like that this morning. More like a sharp rebuke.

I finished stretching, and wondered how Heero was doing this morning.

We'd come home last night and finished off the bottle of tequila in the fridge, while I told him about Treize and he told me about Zechs - about his half-assed apology and insistence that Heero couldn't possibly have thought Conrad would go to a junior soloist.

I suspected he was as much the worse for wear this morning as I was.

When I walked past his room, however, the door was open and his bed was made, with Heero nowhere in sight.

I continued down the hall, past the bathroom - empty - and the kitchen - also empty - until I reached the living room - also empty.

It was just after ten, according to the wall clock, and while I liked to spend Sunday mornings sleeping in, Heero had a pathological need to wake up with the sun. He was probably out running, or at the gym.

Sundays were our one day off, and even then they were rarely entirely free - things like tonight's private performance for the Winner's cropped up occasionally, but there were also interviews, photoshoots, and offers to teach workshops that came up more often than not.

And then, of course, there was my once a month obligation to take the train down to Philadelphia on Sunday and have lunch with my parents. I was incredibly grateful that it wasn't until next week - Wednesday night's dinner had been enough for me, and I was still irritated by their shock and my father's clear dismay over how well I seemed to be doing.

I took a shower - longer and more leisurely than I ever had time for during the week - and stayed under the warm spray until the hot water heater started hinting at an imminent temperature change - and then changed into shorts and a t-shirt.

I should work out - a day off was never really a day off, not when it came to keeping my body in peak condition - but I was still feeling off-kilter today.

Letting Treize fuck me had been one thing. Engaging in that battle with him during the middle of sex had been unexpected - both for him and for me, but what really still had me rattled were the things he had said. The way he had been so uninterested, so dismissive about my talent as a dancer.

I was still trying to wrap my head around it, around my self-disgust for letting any of it happen, and I knew that working out would just lead to me tunneling in on the mess even more.

So, after dressing, I grabbed a bottle of water and an apple from the fridge and put them into my backpack along with my camera bag.

The Fuji X100S had been an exorbitant gift to myself, two years ago for my birthday, and I had barely been able to cover rent that month. Wufei had thought I was an idiot for not getting a digital SLR, but I liked the retro feel and the compact nature of the camera. I had only gotten into photography because of Wufei in the first place. Wufei, while a rising star as a lighting designer, still made a decent amount of money as a freelance event photographer, and, for our second date, took me to Governor's Island and taught me the rudiments of photography.

I wasn't sure what it said about me that, feeling the way I did this morning, the only thing I wanted to do was go back to Governor's Island and take photographs. I didn't want to dwell on it too much, especially not in conjunction with the other self-reflections I was avoiding, so I pushed it aside and took the subway to the ferry terminal.

I just made it on the eleven ferry, and I spent the seven-minute ride eating my apple and checking my email on my phone.

There was a note from McKenzie's assistant that the Winners were sending a car to collect us at our apartment at six, and a dire warning not to be late. We had taken our costumes home yesterday, after morning class and a brief rehearsal for Sylvia, and mine was currently hanging on my closet door, the garment bag beside my other $150 suit. Treize, at our last rehearsal on Friday, had told us to come prepared to change and mingle with the guests after our performance, and it was probably the thing I felt most anxious about tonight.

I simply wasn't good at making small talk. Not with strangers, not with ballet patrons. As a child, I had lost count of how many nights Cathy and I had stood around in the lobby of a theatre while our parents were flooded with admirers, and my father, who seemed to glow from the compliments, effortlessly fell into conversation with everyone as though he had known them for years. My mother, while she had the same ability, had never been quite as eager as my father to linger and soak up the praise. Cathy, too, was able to talk to people and put them at ease in her presence almost immediately, but that family trait had very much skipped me. I never felt as though they were being entirely sincere, never felt that I measured up in any way to my parents or even my sister, and I felt like a fraud whenever I had to stand in a crowd and listen to compliments about my dancing.

The ferry landed at Governor's Island, and I followed the crowd off. The island had only reopened last week for the season, and I found myself wondering if Wufei had been out there yet.

Before I went to Paris, we had come out at least once a month, his favorite place in New York becoming mine as well, and it was impossible for me to walk along Carrier Road, on the perimeter of the island, and not think about him.

While it wasn't the distraction I had had in mind - reminiscing on visiting the island with Wufei, on sneaking into that copse of trees to give him a blowjob, or laying on his chest on the grass over there while we read, or taking photographs of Castle Williams - all of those memories were better than dwelling on last night.

I rarely took photographs of people - Wufei had always done enough of that at work, and insisted that landscape and architectural photography were so much more vivid, and I no doubt allowed that to color my own judgement - but today I found myself walking along Carrier and stopping to capture the other New Yorkers who had escaped to the island.

It was nearly four by the time I finally acknowledged the hunger pangs in my stomach. I didn't want to each much - even though performing the pas de deux with Meilin tonight was hardly the same thing as performing a full-length ballet, I still didn't want to be full.

I stopped by the Ligget Terrace food court on my way back to the ferry, grabbing a salad for the ride back.

It was just after five when I made it back to the apartment, and Heero had returned from wherever he had been that morning. His bedroom door was closed, and I could hear the sound of a hair-dryer running.

I had to smirk - we had learned, the hard way, that the outlets in the bathroom were not to be trusted under any circumstances.

I knocked and then opened the door to see Heero, naked except for his dance belt, engaged in the never-ceasing struggle to tame his hair. When we had done Cinderella as apprentices, the hair supervisor had been on the verge of taking a razor to Heero's head.

He looked over at me, then frowned and looked away.

I knew that look.

I walked into the room and leaned against his dresser, crossing my arms and waiting for him to turn off the hair dryer.

He managed to tame his hair into a semblance of a pompadour, the one hairstyle that his hair seemed to accept, and then turned to me.

"What did you do?" I asked.

Heero sighed and stepped into his suit trousers.

"I had lunch with him."

He didn't need to say who him was.

"Heero-"

"I told him I was done. With this, with us."

That wiped away my anger immediately.

"Oh."

Heero spared me a smug look as he pulled on his dress shirt.

"And?" That didn't explain his frown when I had walked in, that look of I did something and I know it was stupid, let's just move on.

Heero shrugged and looked down to button up his shirt.

"He said…" Heero sighed. "He said he was an asshole, and that I deserved better."

"No argument there," I muttered.

"And that he wants to be better. He said I make him better."

I opened my mouth to say something scathing, but the look on Heero's face made me close my mouth.

Shit. Heero had bought it, had believed Zechs and-

"Heero."

"Look, he is an asshole - he's selfish and arrogant, and I've never met anyone more in love with himself-"

"Spend some more time with Treize," I muttered, but I honestly wasn't sure which of them was the more self-obsessed.

"But I… no one else has ever made me feel like he does."

I closed my eyes. Heartfelt confessions weren't exactly easy for Heero, or ordinary. If he was saying all of this... He felt it, and felt it deeply enough to be intimidated by it.

I sighed. He didn't need me to stand here and shit all over this. Though Heero handled it differently, he was just as full of self-doubt as I was most of the time, and he likely had all of the same problems with Zechs that I did. He'd probably thought through all of the ways this was a really, really bad idea.

And decided it didn't matter.

There was no way this was going to end any other way than Heero being miserable.

But it was Heero's life - it was his choice, and while it was a really fucking bad one, I was only going to end up pissing Heero off if I tried to argue against it right now.

"Blue tie," I told him when he held up the two options.

"Thanks." He started to tie it, holding my gaze, waiting for me to finally say something.

"He is an asshole," I said at last, pushing myself away from the dresser and heading for the door, "but if he stops being an asshole to you, then I guess it doesn't matter."

It was the best I could offer, and while it was pretty weak, it seemed to be enough for Heero.

-o-

The Winners sent a black Escalade to get us. I was pretty sure the interior was easily twice the size of my bedroom, and as we stepped out of the car and followed the butler through the side entrance of the Winner Mansion, I made a mental note to stop spending so much time around disgustingly rich people.

Located just off Central Park, the Winner Mansion was a five-story monolith built one hundred years ago, or so the butler told Heero and I as he led us through the servants' hall - an actual servants' hall. He took us down a flight of stairs, through the kitchen, which was easily three times as large as our entire apartment, and to an open room set up as a dressing room - a long bank of lighted mirrors, an array of towels, a clothing rack and even a barre. I had performed in professional venues with a worse setup.

"You may leave your things, and I will escort you upstairs to the performance space, where the ballerinas are waiting for you."

We followed the butler up another set of stairs, through a maze of small rooms - including a fully stocked bar - and into a huge, open room that he called the grand salon.

It was easily more than forty feet across, and more than twenty feet deep. Rows of chairs had been set up against one wall - at least fifty, it looked like. The opposite wall was, in fact, a bank of floor to ceiling windows, and on the floor below the windows, rolls of marley had been taped down to create a stage floor.

Meilin and Iria were already there, both in cocktail dresses and heels, walking the length of the space.

I thought it looked to be about eighteen feet wide and maybe forty feet long - nowhere near the size of the Metropolitan Opera House where we were used to performing, but a fairly sizeable performance stage. Especially in someone's home.

Meilin looked over and held out her hand, and I had to smirk at the imperious way she just expected me to come to her side.

But, of course, I walked over and, together, we walked through the steps of our pas de deux. We would hardly have to adjust anything - I would simply have to make sure to reign myself in during the series of leaps I had for my variation so that I didn't end up in someone's lap - and after a few minutes, we moved to the side so that Heero and Iria could do the same for their pas de deux.

"Congratulations," I said to Meilin, giving the huge rock on her hand a significant glance.

She smile, and instead of the smug little curve I was so used to seeing, her lips formed into a wide, genuine smile that I had never seen before.

"Thanks. Terry- he's the best thing that ever happened to me."

I had thought that Meilin lived and breathed ballet, so I was surprised that hadn't come with a caveat.

"When's the wedding?"

"Sometime in January, during our break," she gave a shrug. "My mother - both of our mothers - have all sorts of ideas about what it should be like. If it were up to us, we'd just go down to city hall. Actually, we still might do it that way for us, and then give them their big day."

I realized that I really didn't know Meilin well at all. I had assumed she would love a huge wedding, another chance to be on display for her admiring fans. It had certainly seemed that way last night.

She must have caught something of my thoughts in my expression.

"Not everything has to be a performance," she said.

I nodded, not really understanding - but I didn't think Meilin particularly cared if I did or not.

Heero and Iria finished walking through their pas de deux, and I noticed that the butler was still lingering.

"Yes, Rashid?" Iria asked him.

"Dinner will be served at seven, with the performance to follow at eight-thirty. You are, of course, expected to join the family for dinner, but your... colleagues-"

"Are a surprise for Mommy, yes, they know," Iria said.

Rashid nodded. "Yes. Well. They are welcome to join the staff in the kitchen for their meal."

I felt like I was in an episode of Downton Abbey. Had he really just called us the help?

I saw Meilin's mouth quirk, and knew that she was swallowing down some sharp retort. I still remembered three years ago, when ABT had performed in Berlin during our summer European tour and she had verbally eviscerated a stagehand for having the gall to call her Schätzchen.

"I'm sure that will be fine," Iria said, and I couldn't tell if she really believed that - or if she cared. After all, she would be eating upstairs with all of the guests.

Iria walked through a side door of the room, but Rashid gestured for the three of us to follow him.

"Wonder if they have any pots and pans for us to scrub?" Meilin muttered, and I had to smirk as Rashid led us back downstairs and to the dressing room.

"I will return to fetch you when the time comes," he said. "Please feel free to make yourselves at home - down here," he gestured in the direction of the kitchen. "But please do not come upstairs and ruin the surprise."

"We won't," Heero assured him, and I could tell by his tone and the roll of his eyes that he was just as irked as both Meilin and I by this treatment.

Rashid left us, and Meilin shook her head.

"I am not going to miss this crap," she said, and walked over to a garment bag shaped around a pancake tutu.

"What do you mean?" Heero asked.

Meilin shrugged one shoulder and started to unpack the bag, laying out her makeup, tights and pointe shoes, before hanging up the bodice of her costume and then laying the garment bag on the floor and setting the tutu on top of it to rest.

It was only just now approaching seven, and we had nearly an hour before any of us needed to start dressing or putting on makeup.

Still, Heero and I both followed her example and set up our own stations.

"I mean that when - if - I stop dancing to have kids, I'm not going to miss being treated like a star and a servant at the same time."

"You're going to retire?" Heero sounded as shocked as I felt.

She smirked. "Not tomorrow. But in two or three years? Probably."

And here I had been thinking that Meilin would have to be wheeled off the stage and shipped off to a nursing home before she would stop dancing.

She saw the looks on both of our faces and rolled her eyes.

"Oh right, because it is such a tremendous joy to torture my body every single day, to have no life outside of the theatre and the studio, to have to pretend I care what pretentious shits like Treize and Zechs and Une think and want from me - do you have any idea how damn good it's going to feel to get fat?"

I thought of Cathy, and my mother's comment about her looking comfortable.

"Anyway," she continued, her tone changing back to the brisk one I was so used to, "I'm not retiring until after I've danced Raymonda."

I had to smirk. Of course. It wasn't that the ballet was extraordinary or that the title role of Raymonda was all that special, but the ballet was rarely performed in its entirety, and I wasn't sure that ABT had ever considered it. Of course, maybe that was part of it - Meilin's way to say she would retire soon, while at the same time the perfect excuse for her to keep on dancing.

Our things unpacked, I went ahead and shucked out of my jacket and removed my tie - if we weren't even mingling at the moment, I saw absolutely no need to look all that presentable.

Heero also removed his jacket, but he left on his tie.

"I think there's a garden back here," Meilin gestured in the direction of the kitchen. "I'm not sure if we're allowed, but it's better than hanging out in here until eight-thirty."

I completely agreed, and we followed her out of the dressing room, through the kitchen and, not even bothering to ask if it was okay, out into the garden.

Above us, there was a terrace, and I craned my neck to look up and see that it was just outside of the grand salon.

I was reminded, a little, of Duo and Relena's rooftop garden in Brooklyn. This, however, had nothing of the wild, urban sanctuary feel that their garden had. In the fading light, I could see that everything looked perfectly sculpted, almost clinical, and though it was better than being in the dressing room, it had none of the appeal of the other garden.

We followed Meilin to a circle of chairs and sat down.

Without asking for permission, she threw her legs into my lap, and I arched an eyebrow.

"What? It's not like I'm asking you to massage them," she pointed out.

I shrugged. Dancers were used to casual intimacy, to touching each other, holding each other, and if we had been in the studio, sitting to the side, and Meilin had just done it, I wouldn't have thought a thing of it. It was a little different, though, with her in a red satin dress and me in a suit - or part of a suit.

"Besides, you and Yuy are completely gay."

Heero snorted at that, and I had to smirk.

Meilin lifted an eyebrow.

"I am," Heero confirmed, and then waved one hand in my direction. "That one will fuck anyone, in the right circumstances. Or wrong ones," he added, no doubt thinking about Treize. At least, I was.

"Really? I did not know that about you. Who all have you slept with in the company - oh God, you've slept with Une, haven't you?"

I made a face. There was no way - there would never be a circumstance right or wrong enough for that to happen.

"No," I didn't bother to hide my dismay at the very thought, "of course not. And I'm not telling you who I've slept with in the company."

"Alex," she guessed, and I made a face. I had, once, as an apprentice. The experience had not endeared us to each other.

"Zechs?"

"No." I very carefully did not look at Heero. While Alex and Ralph clearly knew about their relationship, I wasn't sure how common the knowledge was, and I didn't want Meilin to learn about it from me being careless.

"Iria?" she asked with a smirk, and I shook my head.

"Sylvia?" Heero joined in, and I gave him a look of betrayal. He smirked.

"Oh! You and Sylvia! Do tell - was it like screwing a glacier?"

I glared at both of them.

"No, it was not." Sylvia had a bit of a reputation for being cold - she very publicly shot down and derided any dancer that dared to proposition her - but, with me, she had been anything but. I couldn't help the fond smile that came to my face when I thought back to the brief three-month fling we had had four years ago. "It was fun," I concluded, unwilling to say more.

"Thomas," Meilin named one of the male principals, and I gave her a look.

"No, I wouldn't sleep with him either - would you, Heero?"

"He wasn't awful," Heero shrugged. "Just… no stamina."

We both turned to look at him.

"What? I'm not a monk."

"No," I agreed, "but Thomas? When did that happen?"

"When you were in Paris. It wasn't important enough to mention."

Meilin snorted. "There's a quality review for his performance. Not important enough to mention." She snickered, and then nudged my thigh with her foot. "What about in Paris? Any worthy conquests over there?"

I shrugged. I had still been with Wufei at the time, and while he had been the one to suggest we have a more… flexible relationship while I was away for the year, it had felt like a betrayal for me to seek out the company of anyone else. The few times I had had sex with someone else hadn't exactly been my preference. Except for Illarion.

I hadn't told Heero about him - certainly hadn't told Wufei - but he had been one of the bright spots to my stay in Paris.

I could see that Heero was just as curious now as Meilin.

"There was this guy," I started, and Meilin rolled her eyes and grinned. "A balletomane - he came to every opening and every closing for whatever company I performed in."

"I'm lucky to get Terry to see two shows a season," Meilin muttered. I wondered at that, but then I realized she probably liked having someone so disconnected from our world to come home to.

"What was his name?" Heero asked.

"Illarion." I tried to pronounce it like he had, with his Russian accent, and did an admirable job. "Larya," I added, his nickname that only his mother and I had used.

"Oooh. Sounds sexy," Meilin said.

"He was," I agreed. He had been in his mid-thirties, more than ten years older than me, and even after knowing him for seven months I still had no idea what he did for a living - only that he made enough to keep his mother in luxury, and to try to woo me with gifts and dinners and weekends in Provence.

"What happened? Why aren't you still in Paris now? Wait- what about Wufei?" she suddenly seemed to remember her cousin.

"Wufei wanted to have an open relationship. I'm sure he had a few worthy conquests of his own while I was gone," I said, and gave her a pointed look.

She frowned, but was forced to nod. I had thought as much - we had never talked about it, even during our worst fights at the end, but if I had had Illarion, I was confident he had had someone, or a few someones.

"But Wufei is why I'm not still in Paris. One of the reasons," I added, because even if I hadn't been in a relationship with Wufei, I still wouldn't have been happy staying in Paris, not after what had happened between the artistic director and I. "Larya was… fun, but it was only ever a fling." I hadn't even kept the gifts he had given me - opening them and then politely refusing them every time - except for his last gift, given to me on our last night together, a clown's mask that he had insisted Nureyev had once worn for a performance. I didn't know if it was or not, but it had felt churlish to refuse it, and at the very least, it would remind me of the few good times I had had in Paris.

"I feel so very dull," Meilin sighed.

"Because you aren't a slut like Trowa or me?" Heero asked.

She laughed at that, and I had to smile.

"I'm sorry you won't be dancing Conrad," she said to him, and Heero stiffened, then forced himself to relax and shrug.

Meilin, I remembered, was Medora in the A company. They would have been fantastic together in the pas de deux, I couldn't help but think.

"You're dancing with Zechs again," Heero pointed out.

"Mmhm. And if I'm lucky, he won't choreograph it so I'm completely upstaged the entire time by his wondrous self."

I had to smother a laugh as I pictured the murderous look on Meilin's face if Zechs did do that.

She sighed and swept her legs off of my lap.

"Alright. We should probably get ready." She stood up and smirked down at both of us. "Looks like you two will be sharing a dressing room with me again."

-o -

Heero and Iria performed first, while Meilin and I, standing behind the partially-closed door separating the grand salon from the bar, waited and listened.

"Damn," Meilin murmured as she tried to peek through the door, "he would have been an amazing Conrad. I would love to dance this with him."

"Maybe Zechs will break something," I muttered uncharitably.

Meilin arched an eyebrow at me, and I shrugged.

"You're not the only one worried about getting upstaged," I offered.

"Hm. I did think it was interesting he put you in the A company - you're going to be a very dangerous Birbanto."

I hoped so.

The music reached the finish, and I heard the small audience applaud. And applaud. And applaud.

Meilin whistled softly. "That's the most curtain calls Iria's ever likely to get."

"Ouch."

She gave me a look and I had to agree, at least silently, that she was right. Iria would never be in Meilin's league, would never be a prima or anything close.

We heard Iria speaking as the applause died down, and Meilin drew in a deep breath.

"Ready to show them how it's done?" she asked.

I held out my hand and smirked.

On our way to the floor, we passed Heero and Iria, but my gaze was focused entirely on the patch of marley in front of us - I ignored the audience and my friend, and instead concentrated on the Bluebird.

Our costumes were, for something so hastily arranged, phenomenal. We were both in blue, from head to toe - including Meilin's pointe shoes and my slippers - but the blue was an ombre, going from midnight at our feet to the palest silver blue on Meilin's bodice and the feathers around my neck and arms. If we had been performing on a real stage, under lights, our makeup would have been intense and otherworldly. But, standing just a few feet away from our audience and under incandescent lights, we would have looked ridiculous going that far. Instead, Meilin had darkened her lips and added blue and white to her eyes, barely contouring her features, and I had almost entirely skipped contouring, except for my cheeks, and brushed just a bit of blue around my own eyes before lining them.

We took our positions, just offstage of the marley, and waited for the music to start.

It was strange. When dancing, time always seemed to contort for me. Sometimes it felt condensed and three minutes felt like thirty seconds, but sometimes it stretched so long that three minutes felt like half an hour.

Tonight, dancing with Meilin in a pas de deux I had dreamed about since I was a child, it went by fast, too fast, and before I knew it, I was catching her in my arms and easing the both of us down to kneel, our arms spreading together above our heads as though in flight, and the music was fading away to nothing.

It had felt perfect, and I knew that I rarely danced that well and I hated that it was over, that it had been so brief and so, ultimately, meaningless. I had the stupid wish that my parents had seen this and I couldn't help but flush.

I helped Meilin to her feet and guided her to her bow. We took one together, and then I stood back so that she could receive her bow alone, and then we bowed together again. They were still clapping, so we did the whole thing again - and again.

Five times, before I saw Iria and Heero return, Iria looking irritated that Meilin was commanding so many curtain calls from Iria's friends and family. We all took one last bow together, and then Iria stepped forward and hugged a plump, blonde haired woman who was clearly her mother.

It was only then that I allowed myself to really look at the audience, at the small sea of tuxedos and ball gowns, and I couldn't help but feel like I was at an opening night gala. I didn't know much about fashion, and only enough about clothes to make myself a menace around the customers - according to them - but I knew enough to know that the people in front of me were dressed in the height of fashion.

My eyes were drawn to a stunning woman dressed in a soft, white dress that fit her through the waist and hips before softly flaring out around her knees, but it was the bodice that drew my attention - it was sheer except for gold lace that twined over her skin in an obscuring pattern that, far from making the dress suggestive, made it elegant and mesmerizing.

No less mesmerizing was her face, from her full lips, upturned nose and startling blue eyes to the dark blonde hair that was pulled away from her face into a smooth bun, with only a swoop of bangs across her smooth forehead.

I stared, and she stared back, until a man stepped up beside her and slid an arm around her waist.

And then I recognized her.

It was Relena.

And the man with an arm around her was Duo.

-o-

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