He sighed. "Fine," he replied coolly, "I'm glad you're safe." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her face brighten. Relena 2, Heero 1.

AN: Thank you Red Lion 2 for pointing out that I forgot to add up the points at the end of the chapter. And thank you to everyone who reviewed; I'm so happy!

Somewhere I Belong

Chapter 5

Aftermath of Injuries

By: Miguela

Heero and Relena sat together quietly out in the hall, Heero fighting to stay conscious and Relena talking to him about anything to keep his from falling unconscious. She talked about her campaign, about her daily life, and then asked all sorts of questions about him and how he had been making out during the past three years.

He groaned inwardly, slouching back against the wall, closing his eyes yet again. "Relena, how about I tell you about my life when I don't feel like passing out at any given moment?" he suggested, feeling his wounds throb painfully.

He could feel her eyes on him. "How about you lay down Heero?" she suggested. "It would be easier on you in the long run."

He contemplated that for a second as he felt Relena's gentle hand on his shoulder. The offer was too tempting to pass up, and slowly, with her help, he laid down along the wall though he felt something soft under his head. He opened his eyes slowly to stare up into her smiling face; his head was resting in her lap.

"You looked like you could use some rest," she said simply and blushed slightly at his curious look. "This was the least I could do."

Not going to complain, he closed his eyes tiredly, resting fully. He knew that if Duo or the others caught sight of the two of them together like this, he would never be able to live it down, but at that split second he really didn't care what they thought about them; she felt sorry for him and wanted to help.

He had dozed off slightly, Relena toying with his hair, when Sally, who had started to strip away the bandages that Wufei had tied to stem the blood flow, awaked him rather unexpectedly. The blood had stuck the gauze to the wound and peeling it away was a rather painful affair, and he was instantly startled awake when Sally had begun to work.

"I'm sorry Heero," Sally said gently, "But it has to be stitched before it gets infected."

He started to sit up, but Relena held him down by placing both hands on his shoulders. He sighed, groaned, and lay back while Sally worked, defeated by the two stubborn females. If it was one thing that he had learned throughout the time that he spent with Relena, it was to let the women win when it came to physical fights. He relaxed as Sally wiped the blood from the wounds and had Relena thread a needle to stitch them closed.

"This might hurt a bit," Sally said, and he knew what was coming, as this wasn't the first time that this had happened, and as predicted, he felt the pick of a needle as she began to stitch up the hole. She pulled the wound closed, which caused his muscles to tighten out of reaction, and that caused pain to spread across his whole abdomen.

Sally made quick work of the wound, trying off the string and taping gauze over the stitches, wiping the blood from the surrounding skin. Relena stroked his hair the whole time, whispering soft reassurances that he really didn't need to hear, though he welcomed them all the same.

"There, now to take care of the exit wound," she said, pulling away from him. "Could you sit up?"

Heero groaned, and pulled himself up, feeling the pull of the open wound stretch on his back, just below his rib cage. Warm blood flowed down his back freely, staining the top of his pants. He heard Relena gasp from behind him as Sally took her place behind him to tend his wound.

"You're very lucky that that bullet didn't hit anything vital," Sally said, sewing up the second wound skilfully. "You would've been in a whole lot of trouble if it did."

He groaned, as she pulled a little too hard. With these two new wounds, practically his entire torso was covered in scares, from his self-detonation, from being shot on random missions and from the final explosion of the Wing Zero during the Mariemaia incident. He had a large scar on his right arm, where a piece of shrapnel had stuck in the muscle after his self-detonation. Trowa had pulled it out after he had rescued him and brought him to the circus where he was hiding; he had told him afterwards that it had taken thirty stitches to sew the wound together afterwards.

Sighing to himself, he felt Sally snip the thread she had been using and tape gauze over the wound like she had done to the first hole. He then felt a finger trail across the head wound that he had gotten from his first encounter with the psychopath, who he could see was being hoisted out of the elevator now.

"What happened here, Heero?" she asked curiously.

"That guy right there," he jerked a thumb in the general direction of the elevator, "meet me at the spaceport, gave me a threat, then knocked me unconscious."

"That's where Hilde and I found him," Duo quipped, having joined the conversation, as did Wufei, as the other Preventers' officers took care of the rogue from the elevator. "Passed out and bleeding everywhere in an alley."

Sally sighed in resignation. "I want to take a look at that while I'm here, if that's all right with you Heero," she said and began cleaning away the dried blood that caked his hair.

He shrugged. "Doesn't matter to me," he replied indifferently. "What are a few more stitches?"

Sally took her time examining his head wound, poking around the base of his skull, massaging every once in a while, and finally declared that he wouldn't need any stitches. "You do have a minor concussion though, so rest a lot during the next few days," she said simply, wrapping a strip of bandage around his head. "Other than that, you're in perfect physical condition, same as the first time I examined you, though we were far from friends then."

Heero smirked. He remembered when he was trying to blow Wing up after crash landing into the ocean and Duo had shot him, thinking that he meant to kill Relena, and she had in turn helped him. She had brought him to an Alliance medical facility, where Sally Poe had been stationed. She was right; they had been far from friends then, though now he really didn't mind her tending to his injuries as she just had.

As for him being in perfect physical condition, that was due to the Preventer Training Program that he had his branch do every week. He participated to show that no one was excluded from the ten-kilometre run, the obstacle course, and then a 10-lap swim in the pool afterwards. This entire course was set up near the centre of the colony where it was open to the public with daily camps for children and spectators' stands so that anyone could watch their training and give the cadets incentive to beat their superior, who was about half the age of most of the men.

"Why don't you come into my room and rest there, Heero?" Relena suggested. "That way, Une wont say that you weren't doing your job."

He snorted. "Une would've sent me home long ago," he said simply. "She said that an officer couldn't concentrate when he's injured. She made me take two days off work when I got shot on a mission," he pointed to an old scar on his shoulder, "and I was perfectly fine."

She smiled at his energy. "Come on then," she said, rising slowly for she had been sitting on her feet for a while. "Why don't we get out of the hall?"

He rose as well, careful not to agitate the gunshot wounds any more than they all ready were. He followed her stiffly, becoming slightly light-headed; he ran a hand along the wall to keep his balance. He scowled to himself over how weak he must look, as he tripped over his own two feet and stumbled slightly towards the door that Relena was unlocking with her key card. He caught the doorframe to refrain from ploughing head on into her and held on for all he was worth.

She looked at him quizzically. "Are you all right Heero?" she questioned, opening the door and turning to him. "Would you like some help?"

He shook his head stubbornly. "I can manage on my own thanks," he said gruffly.

She frowned but let it be. She strode inside, followed by Heero, whose vision was beginning to blur and he became unsteady. He stumbled yet again, though this time there was nothing for him to hold onto to steady himself, and he fell into Relena, knocking the two of them to the ground.

She cried out, out of instinct, as she sprawled out on the floor, a dazed and disoriented retired Gundam pilot on top of her.

After hearing her outcry, the others rushed into the room to see what had happened. After catching a glimpse at what had happened, Duo burst out laughing. "Geez man, you couldn't even wait to make it to the bed before you pounced on her? Have you no shame?"

Heero growled low in his throat. "Duo, if I could see straight, I swear I would make you eat those words," he snapped, rolling off of her to land with a thump on the floor. His head was spinning, which made it feel like the floor was sliding out from under him.

"Sorry man, I just couldn't resist," he replied, helping Relena up off the floor.

"Heero, are you all right?" she asked, touching his shoulder gently. He groaned in response. "What happened?"

He supposed he owed her an explanation, after flattening her for no obvious reason, though he knew that he'd never be able to live it down with Duo around. "I tripped," he muttered, embarrassed at his own stupidity. Duo cackled hysterically in the background. He shot the Duo multiples a fierce glare and attempted to sit up on his own, and succeeded after much after and agony due to his injuries. He sat panting and groaning on the floor, his side pulsating rather painfully, though he just ignored it.

"Are you all right?" Relena asked yet again, offering him her hand.

He growled out a "Fine" and stood up on his own, not bothering with her help. It took much effort on his part, using a nearby desk as his support, his side screaming protests at the movements. Sally was in the doorway by then, frustrated at how he was straining his injuries so soon.

"You'll pull those stitches right out if you're not careful Heero," she reprimanded. "Then it'll take longer for it to heal."

He snorted, and wobbled over to the bed before he fell again; he breathed deeply as he sank down on the edge, leaning his elbows on his knees. "So long as I can still fight these guys, it really doesn't matter if I'm wounded," he replied, as Relena came over and sat down beside him. "This matter is becoming out of hand."

She looked at him with sympathy in her eyes. "Why don't you rest for now Heero?" she suggested. "There are enough guards here to protect me while you sleep."

He shook his head. "I need a computer first, so I can try and figure this out," he said simply.

"But your injury-" she protested, but he cut her short.

"I need to do this if I'm going to sleep peacefully," he said, slowly standing up yet again. His vision was still doubled, though he wasn't about to let that and a little light-headedness stop him, and made his way over to the desk. He pulled a piece of blank paper and a pen towards him and began to jot down events and things that they knew about this new group, the Black Wolves. He wrote in Japanese, needing the practice and because Relena couldn't read it over his shoulder.

As predicted, as soon as he started to write, she came around behind him and looked over and made sounds of disapproval at his choice in language to write in. He smirked to himself. Relena 2; Heero 2.

He wrote down the strange drunkard that they had arrested and his threats, and then he wrote down the information about the man's master, though it wasn't very much. He added the bit about the Black Wolves all being specialists in the making of bombs, and trying to start a revolution by using underhand schemes, though he still couldn't find a reason as to why they would want Relena out of the way. The more he puzzled over the problem, the more his head pounded, so he finally gave up and stuck the paper with his spidery kanji in his back pocket and stood yet again.

Relena had gotten into her pyjamas by the time he had finished writing. She was checking things with Lady Une via a vid-phone on the end table next to her bed. She hung up just as he came over to her.

"Lady Une said that you're to rest, or you'll be suspended from work," she informed, and rather smugly too. He scowled and cursed his superior silently; how dare she command him to rest when he was perfectly able to continue his task without difficulty. Okay, well maybe a bit of difficulty, he had to admit. The bandages around his stomach were beginning to stain red from all his moving around on his own accord, and his head was pounding rather insistently now.

"What else did Lady Une command me to do?" he asked, sinking down on the edge yet again.

"Nothing really," she said, lying down behind him. "She said that your apartment is being cleaned up nicely, though no clues as to who the bombers were have surfaced."

"I already know who the bombers are," he replied.

"Oh," she said simply. An uncomfortable silence followed afterwards, Relena fiddling with the tips of her unbound hair and Heero trying to come up with someway to find these guys.

"Heero," she said after a while of thought, "Why did you change your name?"

"Lee Kodora is my real name, where Heero Yuy is just a code name," he replied simply. "Dr. J decided that the name of a pacifist would suit a killing machine."

She looked at him with pity echoing in her eyes. "You shouldn't say that about yourself," she said gently, placing a hand over his. "You fought to protect the colonies, and you still do."

He snorted. "Yeah right," he snapped. "I've done more shit than all these rookies combined." He eyed each one of them in turn, crossing his arms over his chest, sizing them up and finally concluded that none of them could've been a Gundam pilot, though he knew that a couple had been Oz or Alliance soldiers during the time of the war. They began to sweat and fidget under his intense blue gaze, so he let them be. "None of the could've been Gundam pilots from the way they act."

"And what would you know of being a Gundam pilot?" a rather cocky new recruit asked. "We could've been Gundam pilots for all you know!"

He fixed the young man with a death glare. "I know that you wouldn't have the guts to self-detonate," he replied in an icy tone. "You wouldn't have lasted five minutes."

The young man bristled, then smiled rather smugly. "I bet you were that murderous 01 pilot," he said thoughtfully. "The one who killed without a thought, and some say that he even laughed after he killed."

It took a lot of will power to hold himself back so that he wouldn't go over to the cocky youth and wring his neck just to prove him right, but then the three years that he spent hiding the fact that he had been a Gundam pilot would've been in vain. Never the less, his eyes narrowed further. That caused the youth's grin to widen.

"So you were 01," he said in amazement. "Your stunned silence says it all."

Heero was ready pound the arrogant young man into the ground. He rose to his full six feet, two-inch height, and stared angrily down on him. "If I was 01, it wouldn't take much to squish you right here and now," he hissed. "Then we wouldn't have to hear you mouth off to your superior anymore."

This quieted the young man, and he sat back down, his temper having grown short. He was glad that he hadn't fully lost control or they'd be short one bodyguard.

Whispers from the guards stationed in the room began as they whispered amongst themselves, which was grating on his last nerves. There goes his little secret that he had managed to keep hidden from the world for three years, even if it couldn't be proven that he had been a Gundam pilot. Why is it that he can never just keep his mouth shut from time to time? If this kept up, he would become as bad as Duo for just blurting things out without thinking first.

He groaned and laid back, his injuries finally catching up to him.

There was a light tap on the door, and Duo stuck his head in, braid smacking up against the doorjamb with violent force. "How are you two making out?" he asked cheerfully, inviting himself in. This caused Heero to groan even more; Duo's perkiness just wasn't suiting him right this instant, as he just wanted to fall asleep and not think twice about it.

"We're just peachy Duo," he replied, closing his eyes. "What do you want?"

"I've just come to tell ya that we took that strange guy into custody," he said, practically bouncing on the balls of his feet, just bursting with energy. Heero wondered briefly where he got it all. "We brought him for questioning, though so far we haven't been able to get anything out of him besides this," he handed his friend a slip of paper with Japanese kanji written on it. "And also, that's horribly written – hope you can understand it – cause my Japanese sucks really bad."

Heero nodded. "Thanks," he replied, and slipped the paper into his pants pocket. "Anything else?"

"Nope," he replied. "I'll see you guys later; I'm just goin' to search the parameter."

"All right," Heero closed his eyes again, "Take your time."

Duo left, locking the door behind him.

Again, thank you soooooo much to all of you who reviewed! I'm so happy! Sorry that this chapter's a little short; I'll try and make the next one a bit longer. Review and tell me what you think should happen next!