UNDERLYING AGENDA

CHAPTER SEVEN

"And I'll pair the white with that, please." Lady Une exchanged the wine list for a hot towel and dismissed the waitress to smile warmly at Zechs. "Don't trouble yourself about a thing, please, order whatever your heart desires."

The menu listed a great many delicacies of Japan and surrounding Pacific destinations, but Zechs hungered more for the reasoning behind Lady Une's sudden interest in his well being. He suffered nothing a couple of weeks on administrative leave wouldn't fix if he wasn't so earnest in his objections. "Lady Une," Zechs prompted, placing his menu to one side.

"Yes?" she said, wrapping her crimson lips around the black straw of her Long Island Tea as she patiently waited for a round of questioning.

"What is this really all about?"

Lady Une straightened, her lips sliding away from the straw and forming an undeterred smile. She didn't answer right away, just chose to study him with a pair of deeply humored honey brown eyes. The silence, despite the pulsing bass of the music from the dance club down the avenue, was palpable and reaching across the richly lacquered table she touched her fingers softly to his. "Answer me something honestly, Zechs. Do you find me attractive tonight?"

Sexy, fuckable, ravishing…yes. "I'm afraid I'd rather not discuss such things with my boss."

"Yes! I am your boss, but am I not also a woman?" Lady Une sprung forward and planted a smoldering kiss to his parted lips, her hand clasping his firmly as if to strengthen her demand of him to agree so that she may truly believe herself so. Lady Une wanted so desperately to fall in love with the power of her sex, and for him to show her the way.

"You seek affirmation only he could have afforded you. Why are you so rushed to strip him of such value with someone so cold and broken… as I am?"

"No…" she sighed. "You were closest to him, fashioned of his magnificence and the beauty of his ideals. In his absence, there is no other more worthy to complete was has been left unfinished."

Zechs flinched. She was starting to sound an awful lot like his sister. "I'm not my father, Relena."

"Pardon?"

"I'm not Treize, Lady Une," he said. "Nor will building companionship on a foundation of loneliness yield the happiness you seek."

"Look, I very clearly understand that in our pasts we had our differences, differences that tainted our hearts with hate and destroyed our compassion for one another. But the war is over, Zechs, and I've been blessed with the ability to realize that I was wrong about you, about Noin, even about Mister Treize, and I must redeem myself for being swept away by such pejorative falsities."

"And how do you propose to accomplish that?"

"By being the first to admit that despite having been polar opposites for the majority the time we've known each other, I find you to be one of the most incredible people I've ever known." Lady Une flushed, "And I want you… I want you so badly, for selfish and selfless reasons alike."

Zechs looked away. For the better part of his life he believed this woman to have no purely human ambitions, except for those of Treize Kushrenada and how they shaped the fantastic war that once dominated their pasts and now defined their peaceful futures. Without him, without the war, it appeared that she was every bit his equal now; lucratively employed and one of the few most eligible of high society currently without a mate. Lady Une was a woman of great intelligence and worth and naturally would demand only the best.

And yet here she was…sniffing up his tree as if it were the only one left worth pissing on.

Like hell.

There was something prompting her to act now, like this toward him, and it meant enough to her that she could bear how forced and unnatural it all felt to approach him like a woman and not his Chief in Command. Not even his anguish could mask the stench of her underlying agenda.

"Please, Zechs. Let me help you-."

"Don't." He warned, ripping his fingers away from hers. Her hands fell to the table with a forceful 'thump' that rattled the ice in their water glasses, but her expression never faltered even when he bluntly called her out. "It's a miracle you can even feign compassion for those you've been conditioned to hate all your life. What makes you think I believe you now? Even after five years buried in the ground, you can love no one but him."

The waitress returned then and placed their entrees before them, filled their glasses with wine. "Will you be requiring anything else at the moment?"

"Check please."

"Apologize to me, Zechs."

"Why should I?"

"You owe her that much," Une snapped back. Tossing her napkin on the table and sliding out of the booth, she grabbed her studded clutch and tucked it firmly beneath her arm. "If your refuse to take administrative leave, then I expect to see you in my office Monday morning to contest my allegations."

"Allegations regarding what, Chief Une?"

"How you are unfit to fulfill your duties as Mission Director. You are ill, Agent Wind, and I have your medical and psychological evaluations to prove it. Apologize."

His gaze never left hers as he procured his wallet from the back pocket of his black slacks, tossed a couple notes more than sufficient to cover their uneaten meal, and stood to tower over her. "I'll see you Monday morning, then."

"I'll give you the weekend to think it over, Zechs." With that, she turned on her heel for the car park and left him to hail down his own ride home.