Hiding Scars
Chapter 2
Heero arrived to his sparsely furnished apartment and unlocked the door. He stepped inside and shut the door behind him, locking it without looking. Out of habit, he did a quick visual sweep of the apartment to ensure that nothing was amiss. Satisfied, he dropped his jacket over a chair and crossed the living room to his couch. He sat down and leaned his head back against it. He stared at the ceiling, the spot he'd stared at for hours and hours whenever his mind would not quiet. He tried to meditate there, but he usually became distracted by thoughts that were impossible to push away. Finally, he pushed himself back up off the couch and paced the living room. Occasionally, his eyes would stray to a bookshelf where he knew he'd hidden a certain picture four years ago.
"Fuck," he mumbled, and stepped to the bookshelf. He picked up a hardcover book and let it fall open. There was the picture. She stared at him from that picture, the smile on her face bright and happy, her face young and youthful, and her eyes glittering in the sun. She was sitting on a bench in her backyard, with her legs crossed in front of her. She had a white teddy bear in her lap, and she was hugging it. Heero had taken this picture of her after giving her the teddy bear a few days before her eighteenth birthday party. Heero reached out tentatively and touched her face on the picture. The hurt and longing welled up inside of him, causing his body to tighten as a response. He snapped the book closed and tossed it back on the shelf. He pressed his hands against his face, heels to his eyes, and tried to erase her face from his mind. Not a day went by where he didn't remember his failure to recover her after she'd gone missing.
He been nearly the last one to know she was missing. After her birthday party, Heero was reluctantly called away for an important mission for the Preventers. Her bodyguard was replaced by someone else for the week. He'd assumed at the time that he would be able to talk to Relena over the phone while he was gone, to make sure that she was alright, but he ended up barely having time to sleep. When he returned to the Preventer office to close up the mission, he arrived in a state of panic. When he tried to question the Preventers running around the office, everyone shied away from him, giving him nervous glances and running. Heero finally stopped Wufei in the hallway and demanded an explanation.
"What is going on?" he asked. Wufei tilted his head and frowned.
"Lady Une didn't call you?" he asked. Heero shook his head.
"No." Wufei sighed and held his hands out.
"You're not going to like what I have to say," Wufei began. Heero narrowed his eyes at his friend.
"Why?"
"No one can find Relena," he said after a moment. Heero's stomach dropped and his throat tightened. He stared at Wufei in disbelief for so long that Wufei waved a hand in front of his face to get his attention. "We've already begun searching, but so far, it seems we have literally zero leads," he said. Heero spun on his heel and marched through the building to Lady Une's office. He burst in without knocking. She was standing at her desk with several Preventers and a few men in black suits. She looked up and saw him, and the look on her face told Heero everything he needed to know. Heero threw his bag and files on a chair and stepped up to the desk.
"Fill me in," he stated simply.
He'd been the one to search her home, and it was painful. He could not find anything wrong. Her whole house looked the way it should. He combed it from top to bottom, checking everything. It was almost as if she had dissolved into thin air.
After several weeks, the search became fruitless. There were no leads. Heero had berated and verbally attacked her replacement bodyguard, but it was apparent the man had no idea what happened to her. Heero wanted to kill him for saying, "She called and said she was taking a few days off, so I figured I could just stay home and relax for a while."
Heero tried to get money out of Lady Une to go abroad to search for her, but Lady Une rejected him. He was unable to give her any solid evidence of her whereabouts, and with a tight budget already enforced on the Preventers, Heero had no choice but to give up on Lady Une. He continued to do his own searching over the net, but after four years, he still had nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Heero stopped pacing in his apartment and looked out the drab window over the drab street. He leaned his head against the pane, feeling the coolness against his forehead. Once a year, he allowed a single tear to roll down his cheek.
-
Duo's phone started to ring early the next morning. With a groan, he rolled over, grabbed his phone off the nightstand and answered it.
"Hello?"
"Hey, it's Quatre. I finished that book. It only took me a couple of hours. Do you know anything about this Cassandra Cooper?" he asked. Duo sat up in bed, waking Hilde as well. He put his phone on speaker phone.
"No not really. Hilde just picked up the book yesterday at the store," Duo said.
"What were your suspicions?" Quatre asked.
"That Relena wrote it," Hilde said.
"I agree with you. I knew right away that this was Relena. Even the emails she sent me on occasion before- well, you know, before she disappeared, sounded like this. She's always had a specific way of writing out her sentences in emails and letters. The similarity is unmistakable. I'll send over some of the ones I have saved and you can see for yourselves." Quatre said.
"That's why I asked you to read it. I knew you'd know if it was her or not," Duo said.
"So should we think that perhaps she is still alive somewhere?" Quatre asked.
"It seems more possible now than it ever has," Duo said. "I have been trying to decide if I should have Heero read the book without telling him."
"No, don't do that. Tell him to read it and tell him that you think it was written by Relena. You know that he will do the detective work," Quatre said. "He also won't appreciate you keeping information from him," Quatre added.
"That's true. I'm going to see him today. I'll have him read it," Duo said. "Thanks for helping us out, Quatre," Duo added.
"No problem. Keep me in the loop," Quatre said. They said goodbye and hung up. Duo looked at Hilde.
"This is great," Duo said with a big smile. Hilde nodded. Duo kissed Hilde then jumped out of bed. "We can get our friend back!" Hilde nodded and smiled, but then a sharp realization hit her.
"She probably doesn't want to be found," Hilde said. Duo looked at her, crestfallen.
"What do you mean?"
"She disappeared and didn't tell anyone on purpose, right? She probably wants to stay hidden. She dyed her hair and changed her eye color. What if going after her is what she doesn't want?" Hilde mused. Duo shook his head.
"I refuse to believe that. That girl was head over heels for Heero Yuy, and for as long as she wanted him, she wouldn't leave to get away from him, and from us. It had to be something else. Relena is the strongest person I know. It had to be something horrible for her to take herself out of her life and disappear," Duo said. Hilde shrugged her shoulders. "Either way, we'll figure it out."
-
"This book seems rather girly for my taste," Heero said, holding the book like it was a dirty, smelly sock.
"I really think you should read it though. Hilde, Quatre and I are on to something about this book, and we want you involved," Duo said. Heero raised an eyebrow, then glanced back down at the book. Duo reached across the table and flipped it open to the back cover.
"What?" Heero asked. Duo pointed to the picture. Heero leaned down and looked closely at the picture. With a finger, he traced the line of the jaw of the girl in the picture. "She looks like Relena," Heero said absently.
"That's what we think, anyway," Duo said. Heero looked up at him sharply.
"You think this book was written by Relena?" Heero asked. Duo nodded. Heero looked back down. "Cassandra Cooper," he read from the cover of the book. "And if you're wrong, as you are apt to be?" Duo shrugged.
"Then we haven't really lost anything," he said quietly. Heero stared at him, then back at the book.
"I will read it," Heero said.