Previously in Silk Road

Relena brought her face as close as possible to his, eyes searching every angle of his face. Heero noticed her eyes lingered on his mouth.

"Who are you, really?" Relena whispered. "And who am I?"

Ch. 10

This was dangerous.

Relena was staring, waiting for an answer. She was sitting so close to Heero that he could smell her— her scent reminiscent of his kosode, his clothing. She smelled like him.

Like she was his.

Heero was ready to tell her anything she wanted to hear, if she would grant him access to her neck. He wondered how warm it was, how soft it could be. What would it taste like?

Relena was becoming more and more familiar with Heero's body language, how that was possible in such a short amount of time, she couldn't make sense of. Nothing about Heero made sense to her, and yet she felt completely in control. She felt as if she could command him.

"What do you want to know?" He managed, voice dry.

"I want you to tell me what you know about me. About that locket you have. About your stupid plan. Your plan to convince me I'm royalty and sell me."

There it was. All his shame thrown back at him. He immediately felt flooded with guilt.

"So you still speak Mandarin." He smirked. "I know it's you, but... you should be dead." He lifted his hand to tuck a lock of her hair behind her ear. His voice could break, the moment was so fragile.

Relena stifled any urge to argue. There was something about the comment that felt so far away. Like he didn't believe she was real.

When his hand hovered at her ear, she couldn't stand it. 'Go ahead Heero, touch me' she whined to herself.

"Princess… how are you alive?"

"Why do you keep calling me Princess?" She whispered, throat thick with the threat of tears.

"What do you remember?" Heero whispered, patient.

What was he talking about? 'My childhood?' She realized. What did she remember about her life before the Abbey? Just about nothing.

But, recently, there were snippets that felt like dreams. Since she'd been captured by Heero and his group, little things felt familiar, like a nagging memory tugging at the back of her neck. A name on the tip of her tongue.

The way he looked at her, the way his eyes penetrated the dark. She wasn't afraid of his intense glare, it was as if she had known it all her life.

"What do you remember before the Abbey?" He pleaded. And she felt herself on the brink of tears, wishing she could give him a real answer.

"I remember nothing. Please, if you know something, please tell me." She brought his hands up to clutch his sleeves. She was trembling with anxiety and perhaps a bit of something else.

"I know you. We know each other." Heero offered. His voice was hoarse. He wasn't playing Wu's game anymore. Relena could tell that his words were true.

"Is Heero your real name?" She asked. He nodded yes. "How do you know me? Did we know each other before… " she trailed off. Before what? Before what? He was desperate for her to remember something, she was sure of it.

She removed her hands from his sleeve, moving them to grip his face. She stared, searching. But nothing came.

She had never seen his face before he found her... he was not someone to be recognized.

But this feeling of safety and security she had been struggling with since they first met, why was the 'feeling of him' so damned familiar?

Heero didn't want to push her. He didn't want to go too far, in fear her mind would break. He decided that he had gone far enough, for now, when it came to poking and prodding at her mind.

Then, the door to the barn opened with a shriek, startling the flock of chickens and flooding the entire building with cold light.

Heero pushed Relena forward, covering her body with his and making sure they couldn't be seen behind the crates. He watched two kitchen hands walk towards the birds and make their selections through gaps in the wood.

Relena dared not breathe and be caught in such a compromising position. One, she was alone with a man, and two, they were trespassing. Heero's movements were efficient, and she knew that if she let him lead, they wouldn't be found out.

Heero cradled her head closer to him, both to protect her from the dirty loft floor and to muffle her breathing. She leaned in and came face to face with the tan skin at the base of his neck. She closed her eyes, her lashes flittering like downy feathers against his skin, and felt him tense. She let herself breathe him in. He smelled of cyprus trees and incense. Relena listened to the pulse that throbbed beneath his skin as it quickened. For some reason she felt tempted to kiss him there, but her piousness won out. She was a model in restraint. Holy Mary mother of God... she tried to remember her prayers.

Relena heard the kitchen hands make small talk as they exited the barn with a slam of the creaky door. Heero kept her still, waiting a few moments just in case they were coming back. When he was satisfied, he loosened his grip on her and reluctantly peeled away from her body.

Heero studied her face, searching her for some type of reaction. Or was he looking for permission?

"I'm sorry," he managed and she knew he meant it. It was at that moment, she decided he had been talking too much. She lifted her mouth to his.

Relena had never kissed a man before, and wasn't sure what it meant, but her body and bones knew what to do. She pulled him by the neck, lowering them both onto the wooden platform of the hayloft. She felt his weight settle above her, and resisted the urge to let her hands explore his body.

Heero was stiff in her grasp. He was doing everything in his power to resist the magnetic charge between the two of them. He wanted nothing more but to deepen their kiss and move himself between her legs, but he knew better. He broke away from her lips and kissed her temple. Looking down on her, ruffled and flushed, he forgot his guilt for a moment. It was as if they were just two normal people, meeting for a roll in the hay. What would life be like if they weren't who they were?

If ten years ago, Relena hadn't been taken hostage by knights from the neighboring kingdoms, if Heero had only been older then. He was only a boy, barely able to land a blow with his sword. He thought he saw the group take her. He thought all was lost. All at once, the memories of the day flooded back to him.

The day the hordes came, Heero had spent the morning frantically going room to room, searching for Relena. According to her father, when her older brother rode the battlefield, it was up to Heero to protect the crown princess, to keep her safe. To keep her alive. It was his duty as her betrothed. As a future prince consort of Sanc. When he heard Milliardo's hushed whispers from the hall, rousing the staff of Relena's wing of the castle, Heero felt his instincts kick in. He dressed as quickly as a 10-year-old could, seeking out the tantō he kept beneath his pillow while he slept every night.

He was fully equipped and ready for anything when Milliardo burst through the door.

"Is Relena with you?" The young man growled, baring teeth that hid snarls of panic. Heero stood silent, waiting for orders. Milliardo's companion, a young female knight with long hair so dark it seemed purple, flitted into the room, barricading the door with a block of wood.

"She's not in the wing's escape passages," She huffed, wiping sweat from her brow. Heero was so nervous his eyes began to well with tears, but he tried his best to blink them away.

"Come young master, pack your things." Milliardo's companion said, searching the room with her eyes.

"Where's Relena?" He managed, hand trembling on the hilt of his dagger. The maiden offered him a sad smile, eyes rimmed red. She put her hand on his shoulder and leaned so she could reach his eye level.

"We're going to find her Heero, it's going to be OK. But it's not safe here, so you need to go with Milliardo, understood? He will take you to the eastern gate."

The sound of canon fire and screams came from beyond the castle's walls.

"I am needed at my father's side, I cannot babysit this bastard prince."

"Milliardo Peacecraft!" The woman hissed. The two locked eyes, and a strange staring battle took place. It seemed that Milliardo had won. "Fine..." The woman relented. She went on to instruct Heero to use the wing's hidden escape passages to make his way to the kitchen. Take a day's worth of bread and vegetables, if he could find them, in his pack. Use the passages to meet her at the eastern gate within two hours. She would continue searching for Relena during that time, and hopefully the three would meet again at the gate to make their escape.

Only, Heero didn't have a keen sense of time at that age. He took it upon himself to search other parts of the castle for his princess, and lost track of time, by the time he had made it to the eastern gate, the sun had begun to set. By nightfall, reinforcements from Relena's mother's side of the family, the Romefellers, had arrived to fight off the invading hordes. Heero slept in tall grasses near the eastern gate, just in case the woman returned for him. Just in case Relena met him there.

But by morning, when castle hands had come to collect the bodies strewn about the keep, Heero heard their crestfallen whispers.

The entire Peacecraft family, massacred. Gone. The king and queen were beheaded outside the castle, and there had been no trace of the crown prince Milliardo or the princess Relena- they were likely burned alive in one of the fires set by the White Fang invaders. The Romefellers were here to stabilize the city and restore "peace" in Sanc. They were too little too late, the men said.

Ten years passed and Heero had spent the decade crashing in and out of life. His return to his homeland was short lived, bad enough to be a bastard son of the emperor, even worse to squander his family's one last grasp at power as the Shogunate continued to dominate the country. The union between the Yuy and Peacecraft families were supposed to build a bridge with the west, an alliance that would rise to the emperor's call should he need an army. Yuy was not his father's heir, but he was a spare son, something still useful in an age of royal alliances built by marriage.

Heero swore his father could have killed him then, or at least he had wanted to. But a spare, illegitimate son was a son nonetheless, and in a family of mostly daughters, Heero was still more useful kept alive. The emperor sent him away to study across the world, and every time Heero got expelled from a different school in a different country, his father's patience grew thinner and thinner. On Heero's 18th birthday, his father's last words to him were "stay alive and stay out of my sight."

Now, two years later, Heero held the very reason for his life's chaos in his arms.

"Heero, are you alright?" Relena whispered from below him. He sat up, taking her with him in his arms and settling her in his lap. He stroked her hair and closed his eyes as he buried his face into the crook of her neck. Relena shivered. She wanted to kiss him again.

"Okay. I'll tell you everything," he said.

Glossary

tantō - A dagger, visually like a short katana, that originated in the Japanese Heian period (late 8th century to 1100's).

novena - a set of Catholic prayers, typically prayed with the help of Rosary beads to keep track. Novenas are often employed for specific intentions and can be associated with various saints.

a/n: Surprise double update! This chapter is longer because it didn't make sense to me to split this up. I believe this may be my last update of the weekend. If you've read my fics before, you'll remember I go through weird spurts of updating multiple times at once and then I dip for ... a while. I am still writing in the background so that I can update when the moment strikes. Thank you for reading and supporting! And happy Valentines Day ;)