Author's Note: So apparently, I'm just on a roll right now.

Emergency Contact

South Atlantic, 650 miles off the coast of Argentina

November 27th, AC 198

He had seen the man walking around on deck with the captain. He seemed, stern, and humorless, and perhaps capable of great violence, restrained only with the fiercest of self-discipline. His slicked back black hair and his Preventers jacket, which he wore with such confidence and ease created an aura about him. He inspired fear and respect in equal measure.

So when the young officer approached the cabin door of Wufei Chang, the Preventers liaison, he did a few jumping jacks and tried to shake the nerves out of his body. He knocked. He waited. There was no response. He wondered if it was a good idea to try and knock again. Perhaps the man was asleep. Maybe he should try again later. He really didn't want to disturb the Preventer.

Then he heard coming from the other side of the door, "what?"

He tried to speak but the words wouldn't come out. A few moments later, the cabin door creaked open and there, in front of the trembling young officer, was Wufei Chang, himself, far more intimidating up close, if that was even possible. He stared at the young officer with impatience in his eyes.

"Ummm, we've found something… a mobile suit… sir," the officer managed to blurt out.

"Show me," Wufei said.

The officer led Wufei onto the main deck of the ship. Wufei followed the officer to the port side. He peered over the side of the ship and saw the crane slowly pulling up a heavily damaged red mobile suit out of the sea. His eyes widened as he immediately recognized the suit. He had never encountered the it himself during the war but he had seen the documents, the schematics, and the combat data collected by the Preventers. More importantly, he heard the stories from his comrades.

It was heavily damaged. The head was all but gone. Much of its chest armor had been torn off. It was missing a left arm and its right leg and none of the planet defensors were with it.

Brussels, Belgium

2 hours later

"She screwed up, what do you want me to say?" Une said in a stern voice.

Her phone sat in her pocket. She was using an earpiece as she needed both hands on her tablet to review the encrypted images and damage report of the Mercurius that Wufei had just sent over. Nolan Sideris, the Director of the Global Clandestine Division and Hope's immediate superior, had been venting his frustration about Hope, her benching, and Une circumventing the chain of command for her own ends, for the better part of her car ride, which seemed interminable due to the heavy traffic. Une indulged her colleague and the borderline insubordinate tone of the man only because she had more pressing concerns on her mind and that, although she would never admit it to him, he had a point. She did pluck Hope out of her day job to have her run an off-the-books operation.

"And I agree, she was too green to command a black ops mission like that. For that, I will take full responsibility. If you haven't noticed, it's not like I'm getting off scot-free over here," Une said.

Une flipped through the photos of the heavily damaged Mercurius as Nolan took his turn shouting in her ear. The images of the red mobile suit brought back vivid memories of another age. It seemed with everything that had happened in the past month, her past was finally catching up with her. Even now, as she sat in the back of her limousine, dressed not in her Preventers uniform, but a blue blazer with white lapels, and a pair of matching white heels, she felt herself trying to reinhabit a persona that she had long since put away.

"Nolan, it's not forever, she just has to sit out for a bit," Une tried to explain. "She'll be back in the rotation soon enough. Be patient."

Her limousine came to a stop in front of the partially reconstructed Presidential Palace. Her driver stepped out and circled around the car to open the door for her. After a customary check of her identification, Une was through the black iron gates. Sounds of buzzsaws, hammering, and men shouting could be heard as she walked along the path that led up to the main door. She noticed as she walked through the main hall, still brimming with construction workers and painters, that the ceilings were higher than they had previously been and that the voices of the Palace functionaries echoed far more dramatically as a result.

"Look, I'm heading into the president's office, we'll talk about this later," she whispered as softly as possible to prevent her voice from traveling.

The hallway opened up to a large drawing room, adorned with a fine and massive Persian rug and several sets of standing tables and leather couches. On the walls hung large paintings, some portraits of past Chief Representatives of the United Earth Sphere Alliance before the era of Romefeller and OZ, others depicting famous scenes and battles of recent history, including a large and detailed artist rendition of the Wing Zero shooting down the Libra in Earth's lower atmosphere.

Une walked by the men in grey in suits hanging around the waiting area and headed for the large oak double doors of the president's office. The doors opened and out emerged Relena looking rather confident. She and Une locked eyes immediately.

As the two women strafed by each other, Relena said in a hushed but audible tone, "good luck."

Une turned and shot Relena a nasty glare.

The overcast light of the morning sky cascaded through the tall windows of the president's office and cast the man in a stark silhouette. He stood there, motionless, with his hands behind his back, in the manner that men of importance tended to do, as if to demonstrate their contemplative nature, as if a signifier of their right to rule. Treize himself was not immune to such affectations, although, such gestures suited him more, Une thought as she sat uncomfortably in a overly stiff leather chair across on the other side of the president's desk.

He was making her wait. He was testing her nerve. Perhaps because the last time they had a prolonged meeting, things had gotten a little out of hand as their disagreement about the handling of the Mariemaia incident turned into a shouting match. He was demonstrating his authority. Une merely rolled her eyes.

"I thought I was being so forward thinking at the time. The Preventers seemed like an absolute necessity coming off of the the years of open hostility and the last year of unending wars," President Hoch finally said. "Now, I have to think if this organization, that I created, so don't think I won't admit my mistakes, is more trouble than it's worth these days."

"Mr. President, you don't seriously believe that," Une said, trying to sound as diplomatic as possible. "You receive security briefings every morning, you know the threats that are out there."

He finally turned around to look at Une. His long shadow washed over her as he moved. She furrowed her brow.

"Yes, I am," he said emphatically as he sat down in his chair. "But that doesn't mean I need to have an agency running around doing God knows what, blowing up corporate headquarters, arresting company executives. Katerina, two years ago, you convinced me that you needed greater operational latitude to prevent another crisis from occurring. And at the time, I didn't need the political headache that came attached to your organization. But what I'm looking at right now, what I'm staring at, looks like you are the one causing the crisis."

"Mr. President, we have made great progress in our investigation," Une said, still maintaining her diplomatic tenor. "We didn't arrest without cause, we have emails linking him to Rinus Van Der Deen."

"Then charge him with something and be done with it," the president said as he began to tap the table. "It's one thing to arrest a man, it's another thing to hold him indefinitely."

"We're building a case," Une said.

"So I've heard from the Advocate General," he replied. "But that's about all I've heard. Now you've got the Nation's top lawyer keeping secrets from me. I will say this, the way you recruit people to your causes is truly impressive."

"Thank you, Mr. President. But the Advocate General is just doing her job," Une said. "She is in the middle of interviewing Mr. Campana. We're hoping he will cooperate."

President Hoch stared at her with a severe expression for a moment.

"That wasn't a compliment," he finally said.

Une returned his pause with her own before finally relenting and letting out a deep sigh. She took her out her phone and placed it down on the desk in front of her and brought turned it into the holographic projector mode. An image of the partially submerged Mercurius appeared.

"Alright…" Une said. "I was trying to keep this as need to know as possible, but this is the Mercurius, a mobile suit first developed by the group of scientists and engineers that created the Gundams. This was discovered off the coast of Argentina, two hours ago, one of my men took it out…"

She had the president's attention. The rest of the meeting was a matter of carefully telling him as little as possible about her current plans while revealing just enough about her progress to keep him out of the political dogfight between her and the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee. In the end, the president wasn't particularly enthusiastic about any of what he was hearing but did recognize the importance of the work she was doing. She promised to steer clear of the Executive Branch during her committee hearing.

As the doors closed behind her, Une let out a deep sigh. She had left that meeting utterly exhausted. She was used to fighting, even in the political arena. In fact, that was her strategy for the committee hearing. But playing nice with the president, even the one who had initially appointed her, was never her strong suit.

Looking around the waiting room, she saw that, surprisingly, Relena was still there, chatting with a couple of the old men in grey suits from earlier. It took Une a moment, but she noticed that Relena wasn't just talking to any government bureaucrat or agency head but some members of the Intelligence and Security Committee. She furrowed her brow. And as if that mere action were some kind of homing beacon, Relena immediately turned her attention towards Une. She politely excused herself from the company of the two older gentlemen and made her way over to Une.

"How'd it go in there?" Relena asked, playing up her faux-innocence.

"I'm so glad you're enjoying this," Une remarked with great annoyance in her voice.

"I warned you," Relena said. "You could stand to be a little more friendly."

"Ughh," Une rolled her eyes. "I have to work to do."

Just as she began walking down the hall, Une received a notification on her phone. It was an encrypted message, she unlocked it with her iris print. She read the message:

Ivory has landed.

Heero. Une stopped dead in her tracks. She looked back at Relena. For a moment, she considered not telling Relena.

The Valknut, Preventers headquarters

"This new one fits weird," Duo said as he paced around, flapping his arms, trying to break in his new Preventers jacket.

Hope stared at him vacantly, watching him fiddle around with the sleeve and lapel of his jacket, seemingly utterly unable to figure out the obvious.

"It's your shoulder." She didn't say idiot but she meant it.

Duo looked at her incredulously for a moment before trying to stretch his torso and his shoulder only to be stopped by a sharp pain. She was right, it wasn't the jacket, it was his stiffened and still healing shoulder. With that, Duo gave up trying to break in the jacket and sat down across from her.

They were in the Valknut's cafeteria ostensibly for their lunch break but neither of them were particularly hungry.

Duo had just spent the morning talking with his business partner, Lawrence, as well as Hilde about how to operate their salvaging business now that Duo's involvement in Une's operation had taken longer than expected. And as the situation around Une intensified, she needed to close ranks to reduce the number of externalities, which meant relying on Duo ever more, much to her own personal displeasure. In the interim, while the political fallout played itself out, Duo did manage to catch up on some work. Although being away from his home colony and the core of his business, there was only so much that he could do and found himself increasingly relying on his business partner and his ex.

Hope had the other problem of having not enough to do at work. Since she was sidelined from the operation, Une had confined her to desk duties, loaning her out to various departments for various tasks. She reviewed daily intelligence reports, kept up with the news, although not the news that Une was currently embroiled in, monitored any unusual telecommunications traffic, and anything else her erstwhile department heads wanted. She was competent and completed her work in a timely manner, but she was bored. But more importantly, she felt ashamed.

Duo sensed this too.

"Hey, cheer up, it's not forever," Duo said as he tore the plastic off of the straw and jammed it into his comically small juice box and took a long sip. "You'll be out of the box soon enough."

"You don't know that," Hope hissed at him.

"Well from the looks of it, Une is in a lot of hot water… yes, because of me, I admit it, alright," Duo said. "But she's getting paranoid and she's going to need to rely on people she trusts."

"That's the point, Duo!" Hope said emphatically. "She doesn't trust me anymore! Not after finding my brother's name in their emails!"

"Keep it down, will ya?" Duo said in hushed tones. "If what you've told me is true. IA is going to investigate you and they're going to come up clean. You can't control the actions of your brother. You said you lost track of him years ago. They can't fault you for being related to him."

"Or my career is over before it even begins," Hope said with a defeated smile.

Duo was about to say something but was interrupted by the rumbling of his phone. He pulled it out to check it. It was a message from Une, telling him to go to University Hospital.

"I gotta go, " Duo said still staring at his phone. "Heero's back."

"Is he okay?" Hope asked with genuine concern in her voice.

"Yeah," Duo said lightly as he put his phone back into his pocket. "Told ya, he's fine. He always is."

The ride was awkward and tense. Une and Relena sat on opposite ends of Une's limo, neither of them saying a word to the other, while traffic made their progress towards the hospital grind to a snail's pace. Relena sat quietly staring out the window as the flow of adjacent vehicles drifted by glacially. Une focused on Wufei's report and tried diligently to take notes on anything she deemed important. The Mercurius wasn't mentioned in the emails but perhaps she could still connect it somehow to Toro Campana.

"I can't believe you didn't tell me, you found him a week ago," Relena finally broke the silence in the car.

"You haven't exactly given me any reasons to do you a favour," Une replied flatly

"I have the right to know about his condition," Relena said, sounding rather defensive.

"No, you don't," Une countered. "Not when he's on assignment for me."

"Oh fuck you," Relena said sharply as she turned her attention towards the window again.

"That's nice," Une said condescendingly.

"You know, you act like you're so above it all, like politics doesn't matter, like my feelings don't matter," Relena said as she gathered her voice again. "But you keeping the fact that you found him and not telling me, just proves how petty you can be."

"You didn't come to me as a friend, Relena," Une said, as she finally looked up from her tablet. "You didn't ask for a favour. You came in guns blazing, in all your officialdom, dressed to the nines, to demand classified information. That's what you did."

"So that's what this is about?" Relena asked snidely. "My demeanour, my manners, my airs?"

"You're so used to getting what you want, you can't even see it anymore," Une said.

"What do you want me to say? I was worried sick about Heero!" Relena said in frustration. "God damn it, Katerina! Not all of us are cold like you! I can't just get over Heero, the way you got over Treize!"

Silence. Une didn't reply and immediately Relena realized that she had gone too far.

"Is that what you think?" Une finally said as her voice softened. "That I'm over Mr. Treize…"

"I didn't mean to…"

Again there was a silence. But not one of shock but of anticipation. Relena immediately regretted what she had said in the heat of the moment.

With a soft voice with hints of pain and sorrow, but not anger, Une said:

"You're a fucking bitch."

University Hospital, Brussels

Despite the heavy traffic, Une and Relena arrived ahead of Duo and Sally. They both simultaneously inquired about Heero's condition. The attending told them that the Argentine doctors did a great job stabilizing Heero but the very fact that he was alive was nothing short of a miracle. They both were immediately relieved but somehow, also felt, with the benefit of hindsight, that this wasn't surprising. Since Duo and Sally hadn't arrived yet, Une decided to hold off on Heero's debriefing until after the rest of the team arrived and allowed Relena to go in first.

Relena entered Heero's room with the nurse. But little did she realize, how utterly unprepared she was to see him like that. She felt as though someone had punched her in gut. And all the pain that had been relieved the moment Une told her that they had found him alive came rushing back as though this whole thing was just some recurring nightmare.

The nurse waited for Relena. And once she had wiped away her tears and stiffened her resolve once again, she nodded at the nurse, signalling her to wake him up.

He came to slowly. Little by little, he began to show signs of life. His breathing increased, his fingers began to move, and finally his eyes opened. Relena stood still, at the foot of his bed, staring at him, as he came back to life. A bittersweet rush of emotions overtook her. She couldn't breathe.

He opened his mouth.

He said in a whisper, "Relena."

"Don't try to get up," Relena said. "The doctors said you almost died."

"They exaggerate," Heero said, ignoring the command and shifted himself into a seated position.

Relena smiled at his stubbornness. It was heartwarming and infuriating at the same time. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm fine," he answered in his typical way.

"Okay, that's good," Relena said with a gentle sigh of relief. "Then next question… WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!"

That question carried the weight of what she had suffered for the last month. Her uncertainty, her worry, her pain, both physical and emotional, her haunted dreams, her foggy days, her desperation, her anger, her love.

But of course, she wasn't expecting an answer. She already knew the answer. She had implicitly known this about him all along. She knew that he was fearless, undaunting in the face of danger. She knew that he was determined, even against hopeless odds. His courage never failed him, it was one of his best qualities. But he was also reckless, brash, and thoughtless when it came to his own life.

Staring at him then, in the glow of that sterile fluorescent hospital lights, with his myriad of bruises, cuts, and bandages, was agonizing. Did he know? Did he even care what effect this was having on her?

She supposed that he had been in this state many times before and through experience he had learned not to take his injuries seriously. With enough perseverance, with enough force of will, he could get through anything. She didn't doubt that. She just wasn't sure if she was could handle it.

"It's not as bad as it looks," Heero tried to explain.

"No don't," Relena said impatiently as she folded her arms across her chest. "Don't diminish this and pretend like it's no big deal. This is a big deal!"

"Alright, I'm sorry." It was all he could say. He could see how much he had hurt her. He didn't want to fight with her now.

"You know at this point, I don't even know if you mean it or not," she said bitterly. "But I can't bear this, Heero. I just can't…"

A silence fell upon them. Relena tried to hold back her tears. Heero did nothing as he sensed anything he could do would upset her more.

"There were mobile suits in that ship, Relena," he said softly, almost in a whisper. "What was I supposed to do?"

"Call for help, call for backup, call me!" Relena shouted. "I would've helped you! You don't think I don't know anyone in the territorial government that could've helped?"

"You don't understand…"

"Then help me understand, Heero!" Her voice quivered, she couldn't her back her tears any longer. "Because I can't go on like this…"

"Relena, there's things about me, about my past…" Heero said.

"Of course, this again," Relena said with great frustration as she threw her arms in the air and began to pace back and forth. "Your tortured past, woe is me! The Gundam Pilot. The martyr of peace! I didn't ask this of you!"

"I know you didn't!" Heero said emphatically. "But it had to be done!"

"I don't want to hear your excuses anymore! The war is over, Heero!" Relena retaliated. "You want to keep fighting it? Fine! Just know you're not doing it on my behalf!"

Duo and Sally arrived and joined Une in the waiting area just as Relena left Heero's room. She flashed Duo a disdainful look as their eyes met. Upon entering, they found Heero looking out the window at the city below. Evidently, the reunion of the two had not been as rosy as one might have predicted.

"She's not happy to see me," Duo said as he entered.

"You did stab me in the leg," Heero reminded him. "But for what it's worth, she's not exactly thrilled to see me either."

"Not in this condition I'm sure," Sally said as she made her way around Heero's bed to the far wall. "Give her time, she'll come around. It's good to see you, Heero."

"You too, Sally," Heero said. "Where's Hope?"

"Out of commission for now," Duo answered.

Heero looked at Une.

"Don't worry, she's fine," Une said as she took the seat on the chair next to Heero. "So, we got a lot to talk about."

"You're not going to yell at me?" Heero asked.

"I'm done yelling," Une said plainly.

"Yeah, be glad you missed it," Duo said has he rolled his eyes and looked around the room.

"Whatever," Une said, dismissing Duo's comment. "I couldn't expect this job to stay quiet forever."

"Two years between major incidents is a pretty good run," Duo said.

"Yeah but the question is, now that the major incident is here, what do we do?" Sally opined.

"Well, we did arrest a guy from Lucio, so at least the mission wasn't a complete bust," Duo said. "Well you know, ignoring the mobile suits you blew up. Good job, buddy..."

"Yeah but as of right now, he's not exactly being cooperative," Sally added.

"We're still combing through the data you provided, it's incomplete unfortunately, but it's still a mountain," Une explained. "We're hoping we can build a case on Campana. We already know he's been in contact with Rinus Van Der Deen. We're trying to see what else is in those documents."

"They're working with some serious people," Heero said.

"What do you mean?" Une asked.

"What do you have on Operation Meteor?" Heero asked.

"Be more specific," Une said.

"Jay Null had another candidate to be the pilot of the Wing besides me," Heero explained.

Silence descended upon the room.

"He was piloting the Mercurius that night," Heero continued.

"Who is he?" Une asked sternly.

"I don't know his real name," Heero said. "I was called Alpha Black during the majority of my training period with Doctor J. He was called Alpha White. I was only given the code name Heero Yuy towards the end when I was selected to pilot the Wing."

"Physical description?" Une asked.

"My height, my build, Doctor J picked specifically because we were similar," Heero said. "He had red hair, red eyes."

"Wait," Une said abruptly.

She drug out her phone from her inner coat pocket and input her biometric data to unlock it. She frantically began working on it before setting it down on the night table beside Heero's bed. A thin blue colored beam shot up from the emitter and projected a Preventers personnel file of a man with red hair and red eyes, dressed in an Alliance military uniform.

It was the man Heero knew as Alpha White.

"Is this him?" Une asked.

"Yeah," Heero answered.

"Shit," Une said under her breath.

"You know him?" Heero asked.

"Yeah, OZ had a few run ins with him during the war. He went by the name Vincent Kurien, or at least that's the name we have on file. Nom de guerre, Il Condottieri," Une explained. "We first encountered him in Indochina, fighting alongside the Alliance holdouts after the coup. He routed our initial strike force, and held out long enough to allow General Tran's forces to abandon the southern stronghold of Saigon and retreat into the mountains."

"Wait yes, I remember hearing about this guy. This was around the same time I met Wufei in China," Sally cut in. "I heard he had some custom mobile suit, a heavily modded Ares, I think."

"I heard similar stories," Une said. "Although all unconfirmed. No one ever managed to get a good look at his suit at that time."

'Wait," Duo interjected. "So if this guy was such a hotshot, how come we never encountered him during the war?"

"He didn't have a cause, he wasn't fighting for the Colonies, " Heero answered. "He just wanted to pilot the Wing."

"He came to us later in the war and offered his services when Romefeller and the White Fang's conflicted started to effect our operational readiness," Une added. "He's an old school mercenary."

"So what ended up happening to him after the Armistice?" Sally asked.

"Lost track of him," Une answered.

"Wait, you mean to say there's another soldier with Heero's abilities out there, with no moral compunction about profiting from war and in fact played both sides just to enrich himself and you lost him?!" Duo asked emphatically.

"We were dealing with a worldwide disarmament," Une replied condescendingly. "The status and whereabouts of a single mercenary had to wait."

"Well now he's back and he knows about Heero. And from the looks of it, the remnants of the Barton Foundation has teamed up with the last fugitive of the Romefeller Foundation and has a psycho killer on their payroll," Duo said as he threw up his hands. "How's that for a day's work?"

Une turned away and grimaced. It wasn't often that Une backs down from a comment, especially one from a subordinate. But in this case she knew that it was true. She knew it then too. She made a calculated decision to ignore the wild cards and deal with the rapid closure of the war after Heero had defeated Zechs and shot down Libra and to ensure that the disarmament process went smoothly. She was now paying the price for that decision.

"At least now we know what we're up against, " Sally said.

The Upper House hotel, Hong Kong

Having finally taken a proper shower after a few weeks of being at sea, Vincent Kurien managed to finally shake off the nagging feeling of anxiety and frustration that had plagued him ever since he nearly died in the detonation of Heero's Serpent. He felted refreshed and alert. As he got dressed, putting on a navy blue pinstripe suit with his signature crimson red tie and pair of black leather Oxfords, he thought about the fight, reexamining what had happened with a clearer mind. He had been outsmarted by his old rival again. He had underestimated Heero's cunning and overestimated the relative power of the Mercurius. As a result, his mobile suit had become too damaged to salvage and subsequently had to be abandoned.

After barely surviving the encounter, he made his way back to Hong Kong with what he little he did manage to retrieve from the Mercurius' onboard computer. Hoping that while he failed to deliver the mobile suit itself, he did manage to save previous combat data. He hoped that the data coupled with the information that Heero Yuy, pilot of the legendary Wing Zero, was still active and was trying to stop their operation, would be valuable enough to his employers that they would keep him around.

Vincent inspected himself one last time in the mirror and fixed his hair before he left his hotel room and went downstairs. In the lobby, he was greeted by several men in dark grey suits, only two of which were of any consequence.

The first was the long faced, grey haired, man known the world over as Marquess Rinus Van Der Deen of Heusden, right hand man to Duke Dermail, who had fled disappeared after Dermail's assassination. He wore a grim expression and stared directly at Vincent as he descended the stairs.

The other man was of a noticeably lighter disposition. He too was rather old like Rinus, but unlike Rinus, and despite his wrinkled face and white goatee, he had a certain youthful energy to him. He wore a black fedora and a pair of rounded sunglasses and carried an unlit cigarette in his mouth. Vincent only knew him as The Merchant, or Mr. M if addressed directly.

"Welcome back," Mr. M said as he held out his hand.

Vincent shook the man's hand hesitantly. "It's good to be back."

"Yes yes, I heard you had a rough trip," Mr. M said as he invited Vincent to sit down.

"Yes well, I ran into an old friend," Vincent said as he sat down on the couch across from Mr. M.

"Ahh, do tell," Mr. M said as he signaled for a waiter.

"I told you in the beginning that I was trained by one of the best…" Vincent began. "That I was originally selected to pilot the 01."

Despite having his eyes obscured under his opaque sunglasses, Vincent could feel Mr. M's gaze focus as his expression darkened.

"Go on…" he said.

"Well, that's the old friend I ran into. And you know what? He's still active and if I had to guess, he's looking for you guys."

After Heero's debriefing, Duo stepped out of Heeros' room and went down the hall to grab a cup of coffee. While at the machine, he noticed Relena sitting in one of the waiting areas, legs crossed, slumped over, and feverishly and mindlessly scrolling through her phone. Seeing the girl in such obvious distress, he sighed and ordered another coffee.

He cautiously made his way over to her, careful not to disturb her too abruptly.

"Hey," Duo said.

Relena's gaze snapped up to meet his.

"I come in peace," Duo said as he held out a coffee for her.

Relena, paused for a moment, then relented. She took it and took her blazer off of the seat next to her and silently invited him to sit down.

"I'm sorry about earlier, I was just…" Relena's voice trailed off.

"Ahh, it's alright, I get it. No apologies necessary," Duo said as he sat down. "So it's been a while. How've you been?"

Relena let out a big sigh and said, "don't pretend like you don't know… You've been back on Earth long enough."

"Alright, alright, I heard ya," Duo said. "He can be a jerk sometimes."

"You're not exactly helping either," Relena remarked.

"Okay, that's fair. Sorry about the…" Duo made a clicking sound with his tongue and gestured a quick little stabbing motion.

"You should be!" Relena said emphatically. "Seriously, what the fuck was that?!"

"We were... blowing off steam!" Duo said defensively.

"By stabbing each other?!"

"Yeah, he got me too! It wasn't like it was just me!" Duo shot back as he pulled off the sleeve of his jacket and yanked down his t-shirt underneath to reveal the small corner of his bandages.

"You guys are insane," Relena said.

"Okay, guilty…"

"Why can't you guys be normal?" Relena asked with a flip of her arms.

"You wouldn't like us if we were…" Duo answered.

"That's not true," Relena said defensively.

"Heero thinks it is," Duo said.

That caught Relena off guard. She didn't quite know what to say.

"Yeah, you never thought about that, did you?" Duo asked rhetorically.

"That's… that's stupid." It was all Relena could muster at that moment.

"I didn't say it wasn't stupid," Duo said. "I'm just telling you how he thinks."

"How would you know?"

"Because that's how I think!" Duo shouted. "Because we have no concept of normal! Relena, you have to understand… at this point, it's in our blood. You can't… you can't do what we've done, gone through what we've gone through, and just… let go. It's like our hands are clamped shut and even if try we can't…"

Relena let out a deep sigh, as tears began to well in the corner of her eyes again. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do."

"I don't know either," Duo said as he softened his voice again. "All I'm saying is that… yes, Heero is a piece of shit. I'm not denying that at all. He is a grade A fuck up. But the thing is… and I don't know if it makes up for anything, or if it should at all… but that piece of shit loves you."

Relena looked over at Duo wearily. She was tired. She was tired about hearing about love. If Heero loved her so much, he wouldn't hurt her this way.

"Yeah… I used to tease him about it all the time," Duo continued. "He used to threaten me, he used to ignore me, but he never denied it."

"Sometimes, he makes me so angry…" Relena said.

"As well you should be!" Duo agreed. "I mean he fucking almost blew himself up… again! You have every right to be pissed."

He didn't sound like he was finished. Relena waited.

"And…" Relena prompted when Duo didn't say anything else.

"I dunno, be pissed I guess," Duo said with a shrug.

Relena let out a sharp laugh. It was the exact relief she needed from the heaviness of the day.

"I thought you were really gonna bring that home with something poignant," Relena said with a hint of a chuckle at the end.

Duo leaned back against the stainless steel and hard leather back of the chair, took a sip of his coffee, and smiled. "The God of Death doesn't do poignant."

"I got into the habit of going to church every morning and praying to God so that He would protect Heero and bring him back to me, and now that he's here…" Relena said as her smile faded once again. "I'm not even sure if I want him."

"God's got a sick sense of humour," Duo said.

Relena vigorously wiped away her tears with her free hand, turned to look at Duo again, and forced another smile.

"How's Hilde?" she asked.

"We broke up," Duo answered as neutrally as he could.

"What? Why?" Relena asked in shock.

"Ahh you know, for this same shit really. She was right about me," Duo said. "But I think you're wrong about Heero."

Again, there was a silence between them. And suddenly the coffee, the pep talk, Duo's fervent and poorly constructed defense of Heero all made sense. It was a cautionary tale. And he didn't want Heero and Relena to make the same mistakes that he did.

"I'm so sorry, Duo."

Une and Sally made their way into the emergency stairwell after finishing up Heero's debriefing to confer privately. They found a little alcove in the landing between floors where their voices didn't echo nearly as much. They looked over the railings, up and down the to check that they were alone and once they were satisfied that they were, they began to talk.

"We both knew this day was coming," Sally said.

"I was hoping for a little more time," Une said.

"How much time did you expect to get?"

"I dunno, a generation or two," Une said as she folded her arms and let out a slight chuckle. "I was hoping it would last long enough so that it wouldn't be my problem."

"The war ended in a hurry and I'm sure everyone was sick of the fighting at that point but the abrupt ending left a lot of fundamental questions unanswered," Sally said.

"I was hoping democracy was going to iron those problems out," Une said.

"No, you didn't," Sally said with a laugh. "You're too cynical for that."

"But one can hope," Une said as she looked over at Sally.

"We're going to need a lot more than hope, if we're going to get through this," Sally said. "How did your meeting with the president go?"

"I convinced him to back off… for now," Une said with a deep sigh.

"That's one down," Sally said.

"Something tells me the committee won't be nearly as easy," Une said.

Sally let out a deep breath, leaned against the wall, and slid down it slowly.

"You wouldn't happen to remember where you put Noin's Ares and the Tallgeese, would you?"

The sun had all but set. Duo, Sally, and Une had already left. Relena had simply lost track of time with work emails. And if it weren't for her phone's low battery indicator tipping her off, she might've just sat there in the hospital waiting room and worked through the night. It soothed her, it took her mind off of the stressful circumstances at hand. Not that work wasn't stressful in its own way. But Relena had a method for decision making at work that was simply incompatible when it came to her situation with Heero.

After making a call to Pagan, asking him to come to the hospital to pick her up, she tossed her phone into her bag and was about to head downstairs to the lobby to wait for him when she was intercepted by the nurse from earlier.

"Ummm, I'm sorry to disturb you Miss Relena," the nurse said nervously.

"Oh, that's quite alright," Relena said warmly and with a smile, trying to put the poor girl at ease. "What is it?"

"The thing is…" the nurse said. "The patient put you as his emergency contact. Frankly, we were all a little surprised when we read that. But then you actually showed up. He says, he has no family, no friends… only you."

Relena didn't say anything. Heero had put her as his emergency contact. In another time, that would've delighted her to no end. But in that moment, she wasn't so sure. She wasn't sure about anything with him anymore.

"If you want, I can remove it and try to find someone else—"

"No…" Relena said instinctively but she didn't finish her thought.

She couldn't do this anymore. She didn't want to be his emotional lifeline. She didn't want to be his sole reason for living. It was too much. It hurt too much. She didn't want to be his emergency contact.

And yet...