A/N: New chapter! It's not as long as the last few, but it felt like a good place to stop for now, and I wanted to get something out before Sunday. I plan on updating again this weekend, so look forward to more!

Please read, review, and enjoy!

-picimadar

When You Run Among Shadows
Chapter 11: Awake

Feb 14, A.C. 201, X-18997

"Oh, god," Relena said, wide-eyed, while she stumbled back down the first few steps. Heero stepped forward, looking down the street. He could hear the men running; they had only seconds before they were seen. Without thinking, he reached forward, grabbed Relena by the arms, and heaved her inside.

"No. No!" Relena nearly screamed, fighting against him. "Let me go, let me go!" Heero slammed the door behind her, surprised at how light she was. In the dim light of his front foyer, he could still tell it was her, Relena Darlian, now collapsed on his tiled floor. "Oh, god," she whispered, covering her face in her hands, looking as if she were about to disintegrate. "This isn't happening. This isn't happening," she kept whispering, eventually just laying down, feeling the cool marble against her cheek, tears flowing freely down her face. She curled into a ball, sobbing, while Heero locked the door behind her.

"Get up," he said, nudging her gently with his foot. Relena didn't move, groaning slightly while still crying, her body wracked with the sobs only someone truly broken could make. "Get up, or they'll hear you," he said again, crouching down to look at her. Relena didn't look at him, she just stood, slowly, looking as if she were about to collapse in on herself, before letting him lead her by the arm into his common room. "Go sit down. If you run, they'll kill you," Heero warned her, before turning back to his front door. Just as he reached it, he heard the knock, a sharp wrapping.

"Hey, did you see or hear anyone come by here?" his coworker asked, looking around as he stood on the front porch.

"Heard her, but by the time I got out here, she had taken off. Lavie's going to have your ass," Heero answered, shutting the door in the man's face.

"Some help, Caden! Fucking asshole,' the agent mumbled to the closed door before running off. Heero waited by the door until the man left, locking it again and turning off the porch light.

In the other room, Relena sat, catatonic, her brain simply unable to compute what had just happened. After months of being trapped away, years of mourning and torturing herself over the loss of this man, she ran straight into his arms. She started crying again, quietly, trying to listen to the conversation at the door. Relena heard Heero lie, and for a brief second allowed herself to hope before her conscience crushed it. There's no way he'll save you, she said to herself bitterly. You should have just let yourself die in prison.

Heero walked into the room and looked down at Relena. She was sitting on the couch, his couch, staring at the floor, hands in her lap. Heero could hardly believe it was her, mostly because of the state of her; her hair was matted and filthy, held back with some kind of string. Her clothes were in a similar state, full of holes, her shirt at least two sizes too big for her. Relena's once flawless skin was now covered in dirt and grime. What in God's name did they do to you?… he thought, before approaching her. When his foot hit the floor near her, her head snapped up, her eyes meeting his. Heero found himself unable to break the gaze, staring at her.

Finally, she looked away from him, her gaze turning to the view outside his patio doors. "Are you going to kill me?" Relena asked quietly, refusing to look at him.

"No," he replied, sitting down across from her, wondering what she was so preoccupied with outside.

"Then let me go," she said, for a brief moment her voice taking on its old, confident tones.

Heero sighed, raking a hand through his hair before pulling his laptop over to him. "I can't do that."

Relena lost her temper. "Like hell, you can't!" she yelled, picking up a dinner plate he had on the table and throwing it at him. "If you aren't going to kill me, let me leave!" Relena was hysteric now, overturning the coffee table and walking over to the patio door. She had it half open before she felt Heero's hands on her shoulders. "Don't touch me!" She yelled. Focusing what little adrenaline-fueled strength she had left, Relena closed her fist and hit Heero as hard as she could in the face.

Heero stumbled back, astonished, while Relena nursed her now painful knuckles with her other hand. Much to her chagrin, he started laughing slightly, rubbing his face where she had hit him. "You wouldn't get within a kilometer of the spaceport without getting caught. By now, this whole colony is crawling with people looking for you." He walked over, taking her hand and trying to make sure her bones weren't broken. Relena reflexively slapped him.

"Don't you ever touch me again," she growled, backing away from him. "If you do, I'll run."

Heero looked at her, still amazed she didn't understand. "You have nowhere else to go," he replied, trying to soften her demeanor.

"I would rather be dead than stay here with you," she retorted, her eyes narrowed. Heero took her insults impassively, hiding the hurt inside him that was beginning to resurface.

"I doubt that." He walked away from her. "If that were true, you wouldn't have bothered to escape." Heero opened a small storage closet and pulled out a large towel. "Here," he said, throwing it to Relena. "There's a bathroom upstairs, go shower."

Relena stared at him, the same resentment still stamped on her features. "Why are you doing this?" she asked. "You live here, you work for them. If they find out I'm here, they'll kill us both."

Heero turned away from her, waiting until he heard her walk past him and up the stairs before exhaling a breath he barely knew he'd held. I have no idea… he answered himself. I have no fucking idea.


Wufei sat in a nearly abandoned coffee shop, one of the only such places open 24 hours that was empty enough they wouldn't be noticed. He waited, watching the steam swirl off the top of his mug. It had been months since Relena had been taken, and still there was no sign of her. He sighed, taking a drink of his coffee before setting the mug back down gently.

They still hadn't found her, and it wasn't from lack of trying. Preventers had been formally looking into the disappearance for months, but with the colony being so aggressive, not to mention outside their jurisdiction, they were completely powerless.

L'Ombre was not. We have no jurisdiction, Wufei thought, a small half smile coming to his lips. Since he had met Relena Darlian over a decade before, their group had grown to hundreds, all referred by members of Relena herself, all highly scrutinized and approved by her, their leader.

She was still missing.

His wife came back from the restroom, holding Mai in her arms. The girl was unused to being awake so late, and rested head on her 'mother's' shoulder tiredly, her arms hanging uselessly by her sides. Ming sat down next to him, repositioning Mai so she could rest her head on her arm for support.

Just as Mai started to fall asleep, Jesse and Liam, the obnoxious twins, burst through the doors of the small shop. "Holy shit man, pick something far enough out? We thought it'd be next damn week before we— oh shit," Liam said, putting a hand over his mouth after he noticed Ming glaring at him, a hand over her daughter's exposed ear. "My bad."

"No kidding," Ming scolded, rolling her eyes. "Go back to sleep, Mai," she said soothingly, patting the little girl's hair.

Others soon began to gather, mostly residents of what had once been western Europe, a few who had flown in to get the necessary information for their cohorts in other regions. Grace Velasquez sat down next to Wufei, folding her arms, her lips pursed, as though she were in deep thought. They gathered in a group of tables, the lobby having enough room to pull them together and keep from disturbing the few other patrons there that late at night.

"Well, I guess we should start," Ming said, just as Middie walked through the door. Jesse immediately stood, looking threateningly at the intruder following her.

Wufei choked down his too-hot mouthful of coffee, too distracted to pay attention to the pain. "You told him?" he practically shouted, pressing his palm to his forehead.

Trowa stepped over and pulled up a chair behind Wufei, turning it around and resting his arms on top of the back. "She told me everything," he said, trying to ignore the dozens of narrowed eyes starting his way. "Your secret's safe, but you should have known better. We want to find her as badly as you do," he said, lowering his eyes. The last few months had been hard for him, he had been reassigned from his position guarding Relena. First he had worked on a task force on X-18997, trying to find the Foreign Minister, but they were quickly forced off the colony. They had tried to continue their work at Preventer headquarters, but running into such resistance from Lavie and the residents of the colony had forced them to give up.

No, Trowa thought. Not to give up. To take our time. Secretly, he had been amassing information on the colonists living on X-18997, delving as far as he could into their daily lives and those of their higher-ups, including Lavie.

"Not cool, Dee," Jesse said, sitting back down. Liam just looked at his sister and shook his head, hoping she knew what she was doing.

"Everyone, this is Trowa Barton. He's a Preventer and worked closely with Relena. He was also a Gundam Pilot." Trowa looked at her, then at Wufei, who stared back at him impassively. "Relax," Middie said, smiling slightly at him. "I for one would rather work with the Preventers than against them."

"Right, because 'proper channels' have gotten us so far already," Dorothy snarked, crossing her legs and fixing her hair.

"Fuck proper channels," Trowa said. "We have to get her back. She's been there for months now, who knows what's happened to her. We need to get people into that colony now, not in six months when Une finally approves it."

Grace smiled at him. "Good answer." Trowa craned his neck to see her better, surprised to hear her voice among the group of people. Then again, he thought, Middie had said 'When you least expect it, we're watching', so who knows where else the rest of these people operate.

"Okay, enough of that excitement," Middie said, sitting down near her guest. "What do we know? Kat?"

Katarina Nemkov was a tall, lean woman, nearing her thirties and barely showing it. "It appears Quatre Winner was right in his assumption, Heero Yuy appears to be in space, under a pseudonym."

"Really? Where?" Wufei asked, abandoning his coffe and staring at her intently.

"We're uncertain. There's still hundreds of records to go through. We just did a straight search of anyone moving in and out of the colonies from Earth at the time he disappeared."

Jesse sighed, closing his eyes. "And that's just assuming he did it through any channel we can measure. If he did it illegally, we could be totally missing him."

"Then how can we know he's around at all?" Grace asked, skeptical. "Unless we've seen him in the flesh, there's just no proof."

Katarina smiled, her typical, dry, "holier-than-thou" smile. "I have an informant on X-18997, the same colony on which the Foreign Minister disappeared." She tossed an open file folder onto the central table, its contents splaying as it landed. "These are pictures of the man we believe Heero Yuy is masquerading as."

Wufei picked up the photo nearest to him, examining it. The shot was grainy, and at quite a distance, but there was no doubt in his mind it was his old comrade. He passed the photo to Trowa. "Look like him to you?" His friend nodded, and he put it back. "It's him," Wufei confirmed. "Hiding right under our noses the whole time…"

Mingmei shifted her daughter in her arms, careful not to wake her. "I think it's pretty safe to assume he had something to do with her disappearance then."

Trowa finally spoke up. "What makes you say that?"

"It was all too good," a stranger said. "Seamless. She was there, then gone. Someone had to know where she'd be, what to say to her, how to get her away from you.. everything. How long they had, what you'd do, and how to get rid of you."

"Makes sense. Someone planned all that, and now she's gone. Whatever he and Jacobs told them, it worked to a 't'."

"This 'informant', is he one of us?" Wufei asked, turning to Katarina.

She shrugged noncommittally. "Somewhat. Relena knows him, I think he was once a potential, but something changed his mind."

"Maybe someone had a better deal," Liam said suggestively, looking at her. "If they have anymore people who know Relena working for Lavie and his bunch of goons, we might as well write her off dead." Middie shot him a glare that she wished could kill.

"Don't you ever say that again," she hissed. Middie collected herself before speaking again. "Well, what can we do? If that guy, that guy on the colony? If he can find Heero, maybe he can find out what they've done with her."

"Way ahead of you," Katarina said, putting down another file. "This is everything we have so far. Don't you dare," she said, glaring at Liam as he went to pick it up. She nudged the papers toward Wufei. "You're an analyst. Take it, look it over, tell us what we can do with it. There isn't much, but we can hope it will be enough to justify taking more risks for."

The group sat in silence, mulling over what they had heard and seen amongst their own contacts. Jesse broke the silence this time.

"What's to stop the Preventers from just invading? I mean, there's no way in hell Lavie can claim this was anything but a kidnapping. Why can't you guys just storm up in there and kick ass? Isn't that what you're paid for?"

Wufei sighed. "You're forgetting their ace in the sleeve. Une's been having a few of us on research, so far all we can tell is that the weapon is likely biological, something like a plague or virus. They're manufacturing a way to spread the disease infinitely quickly. We can only assume it infects to kill."

Trowa backed his friend up. "They already told us if we looked for her, they'd kill her. It proves that she was alive, at least until then. They want something from her, more than just her signature. I think it's a repeat of Dekim's deal. Lavie likely thinks he can scare her or us into giving him what he wants: Power."

Several of the seated people laughed, making Trowa think he had said something wrong. Middie placed a hand on his. "Well, have they got another fucking thing coming."


Relena was still in shock when she found herself walking through Heero's house, up Heero's stairs, through Heero's bedroom. She fought the urge to vomit when her eyes settled on his bed, the covers tucked in pristinely, as if he rarely slept in it. Relena forced herself to keep walking, opening the far door and walking into a basic but well-furnished bathroom. She put the towel down over the edge of the bath and turned the water on, trying, at least for a moment, to forget where she was. This isn't happening. I'm just someplace. Free. Having a shower. I'll just have a shower, and get clean. Just get clean.

Her thoughts comforted her, chanting along as though they were a separate part of her conscious. She put her hand under the water and flinched, her body trained to only expect the most frigid of water. Relena put her hand back under and let herself take in the warmth of the stream, the steam accumulating in the room, before turning on the shower and starting to take off her tattered and worn clothing.

Once her wardrobe lay littered on the tiled floor, she stepped inside the bathtub, pulling the curtain closed behind her. Relena simply stood in the stream of water for a while, watching the mixture of dirt, blood and sweat run down the drain. Just get clean, she reminded herself, and she turned around, letting the water run down her back, smoothing her hands through her hair. Relena looked around the shower; there were a few products littered around, none she would have personally chosen, but at this point she was far from picky. She picked up a bottle of body wash and squeezed a generous amount into her hands, lathering it before rubbing down her arms and legs. She repeated the process several times, rinsing, lathing, rinsing lathering, neurotically repeating to herself Get clean, get clean, get clean. Finally, Relena felt satisfied, and washed her hair no less than three times before finally turning off the water and stepping out.

Opening the curtain, she felt herself snap back to reality. I'm in his house, she thought frantically, grabbing her towel off the floor. I'm in his house, still on this colony, and no one is looking for me. Relena felt herself slowly unraveling, rubbing the soft cotton towel over her skin, tears starting to fall again. Why haven't they found me? I'm still here…

Heero knocked on the door, startling her. "Just- just a minute!" she croaked, wrapping herself in the towel, scolding herself for being so polite. Relena opened the door and Heero was standing there, his body turned away from her, holding out something in his hand toward her.

"They'll be too big for you, but you need something to wear… just take them," he said, shaking the clothes in her direction. Relena snatched them out of his hand and slammed the door back closed on him, pressing her back against it. When she was convinced he had left again, she sat down on the edge of the bathtub and examined the clothes he had left her, a t-shirt, a large sweater and a pair of sweatpants. She pulled on the pants and the shirt, fighing the urge to laugh at the ridiculousness of her situation. I'm going to lose my mind, she thought, and then she gasped, looking at herself in the mirror. Oh, god, I've already lost it. I bet none of this is even happening. For all you know, this is just some amazing dream, and you're still back at home, in bed, waiting for Trowa to wake you up and tell you another seven hundred people need to talk to you today. She smiled, looking at herself in the mirror, before laughing quietly. That's just it. A crazy dream.

Relena laughed outloud now, pulling the sweater over her head and dragging Heero's brush through her hair. Satisfied with her dream-self's appearance, she reopened the bathroom door and stepped through, trying not to trip over the inches of sweatpant leg pooling at her feet. She frowned, He never used to be so tall.

She walked back downstairs and headed to the front door. "Whoa, no," Heero said, catching her as she reached for the handle. "You step out there, you're dead."

Relena looked at him, an expression on her face that terrified him, somewhere deep inside. "Does it matter? It's just a dream." She reached again for the door, and he pushed her away more forcefully. She glared at him now, frustrated. "Just let me out, I want to wake up."

Heero looked at her, barely comprehending what she was saying. "This isn't a dream. Get back over there," he said, pointing to the common room, "now."

She looked at him, rolled her eyes, and threw her hands up, stalking over to the room she had been in moments before. A bowl of some kind of soup was on the dining table, and Relena's mouth began to water.

"When was the last time you ate?" Heero asked, watching her as she eyed the meal. Relena barely knew what the date was, and had less of an idea when she had last eaten.

"Days, it feels like," she said, marveling at the realness of her dream feelings.

"Eat, then," he said, watching as she practically pounced on the food, "slowly!" he tried to add, but it was too late. Relena half ate, half inhaled the soup, savoring the feeling of it settling in her stomach. As she got about half way through the bowl, she felt her body begin to reject the sudden influx of nutrients. Looking up from her bowl, her stomach turned violently, and Relena dashed for the kitchen, a hand over her mouth. Heero barely had time to react before he heard her retching into the sink. He walked in after her and put a hand on her back, making sure she didn't choke.

Relena laid her head on the cool surface of the countertop. "Well, that was unpleasant," she said, barely looking at him.

"You can have more in the morning," Heero said, still amazed she hadn't tried to escape, or at the least attack him. After her shower, her whole demeanor had changed. He looked at her as she stood, her cheek resting on the counter. She looked thinner than he had ever seen her, the bones of her back visible where her shirt had ridden up, her wrists, hands and cheeks looking sunken and pale. She had a large bruise on her back as well, and several on her face, a large black eye visible on the part of her face he could see. An open wound on her head had reopened in the shower, and he grabbed a paper towel to try and quell the bleeding.

Relena stood up after a while, looking at him exhaustedly. "Where can I sleep? When I sleep I usually wake up." Usually, she thought. Usually that's how it works. You sleep in your dream and when you wake up, bam. You're back.

"You can take the bed upstairs. I'll stay down here," he said, gesturing for her to go back to the room she had left before, barely comprehending her cryptic speech. Relena walked upstairs and went back into his bedroom. Walking over to the bed, she pulled back the covers, shedding the sweater she wore before she slipped onto the mattress.

"I'll be downstairs if you need anything," Heero said as she closed her eyes. "And don't try anything. I have a security system, you open any of the windows, and I'll know. Be very careful, Relena," he said, closing the bedroom door behind him.

It was then Relena knew it was no dream she was in. He said my name, she thought. This is a nightmare.