Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ A Different Circumstance (Arc) ❯ #7 - Distorted ( Chapter 7 )

It wasn't that Heero never asked himself how long he intended to carry on this illicit affair, this double life. At home, the distance between Relena and himself had opened up into a yawning chasm; he'd noticed it the moment she'd tried to touch him last night, in the soft yellow glow of their bedroom. He'd been unable to deflect her, too ashamed to make his excuses, and he'd only gotten through the ordeal by closing his eyes and pretending that it wasn't her in his arms. She'd clung on tightly to him after, whispered that she loved him and would always be there for him, and he'd listened, without replying, to her quiet breathing slowly stilling into the rhythm of sleep.

 

It always remained unspoken between them that Minister Darlian was the one who'd revived the company, contributed the funds and pushed on the transparency of the corruption disaster that had incriminated Quinze and saved Heero in the end. It had been subtle, it had been covered up, and Heero knew it had been done purely for Relena; there was no true familial feeling between him and his father-in-law. Miliardo Darlian's investments also unraveled in the same direction. Heero had looked over the papers that Relena had brought home in a folder, and realized very quickly that it consisted of promising ventures tied to the nature of his business, backed by very considerable capital. He would've been a fool not to sign. The debt he owed the Darlian family only seemed to increase with the passing of time, as did the weight of his guilt and the fear that anyone would discover his betrayal.

 

He brushed the random thoughts aside; he'd been doing too much thinking lately, and he was getting tired of his own increasing paranoia and fruitless fretting. There were still stacks of papers to be gone through, and it was past midnight now. The office was ghostly silent, save the occasional clicks of the mouse, and the tapping of his keyboard as he went over numbers and balanced the accounts efficiently.

 

Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

 

He grimaced, and pushed the files away from him, rubbing his eyes to try and clear the heavy weariness from his mind. A soft 'ping' alerted him to the pop-up window at the bottom right corner of the screen, indicating that he'd received new e-mail in his personal account. There were few people, and fewer friends, who had access to this address. Stretching his arms above his head, shaking out his stiff muscles and rolling his neck from left to right, Heero sat up and clicked on the prompt, typing in the string of symbols and numbers that made up his password and reaching for the cold coffee with his other hand. Some days, the extent of which he'd encrypted and proofed the security system on his private laptop made him feel like a terrorist; other days, he was terrified to have so little between his secrets and the rest of the world.

 

The email was from Duo Maxwell, a respected editor and celebrity of the media giant Umbra Corp., and also one of his oldest and most-trusted acquaintances. They had known each other since way back, when they'd met and clashed at the local sector's annual digital gaming competitions. Heero had been the new kid on the block at North-side, but even then, he'd already been interested in software, programming and technology, and gaming had been his twelve-year old self's outlet of experimentation and focus. He'd lost to the defending champion, also a twelve-year old, a boy with huge, sparkling eyes so violently blue that they were almost amethyst, and a girlish ponytail that reached all the way to the knees. From there, they'd gone on to attend the same high school a few years later, but where Heero had zeroed in on the pursuit of his interest, eventually dropping out at the start of his final year to set up the company, Duo had flourished at just about everything else, and graduated at the top of the batch. He'd been headhunted by Umbra, and the rest, as people remarked, had been history. Through it all, they had remained fast friends, if irregular correspondents.

 

It was equally well-known that Duo Maxwell never told lies. In a world where embellishment could sell a million more copies, Duo was an indisputable champion of old-school truth and integrity. Ironically, his stories never failed to hit the mark, never failed to be bought out. His rare appearances on television as Umbra's poster boy, his interviews on radio, all raked in more money for the company than was probably appropriate.

 

Heero opened the e-mail, and abruptly spilled the coffee over himself.