Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Reasons to be Queen ❯ the news ( Chapter 1 )

Title: The Reason for Being Queen

By: Nix

Warnings… emotional, but if it were a deathfic, I'd have said so here, right? Now for get you know that. I'm not sure if this will be come massively AU or not. It was just written for my amusement. If you enjoy it too, way cool.

Pairings.. Relena and Duo… both with eyes on Heero Yuy

Disclaimers… I don't own them… I'm just playing with them.

The Reason for Being Queen

By Nix

The report of Duo Maxwell's death seared into Relena deeper than her father's death. She sat in the solar, surrounded by plants and sunlight, the print out of the report lying in her lap. Perfect fingernails tapped the paper. She had to send a copy to Heero, to Quatre and Trowa. Thoughts jumbled in such a tangle in her mind that action just wasn't possible.

Her father's death and the knowledge that she was a Peacecraft, not a Darlian had settled to the back of her mind, under a warm blanket of action, under the need for revenge and actions that she should take. Just like any story book tale, she'd done what a good daughter should do. She'd cried and she'd fought for revenge and she'd wrestled with the pain of lose, pinned it to the ground with her knew knowledge of who she was and her role in the world.

Staring out the glass wall of the solar, into the wild garden, the space of her private home she'd given over to Duo, she found no prescribed way to deal with this pain. She could not scream in the streets because she'd loved a nameless peasant from L2, because her life emptied out of meaning without his flippant commentary on her writing, without his nearly constant rivalry. She could take revenge on no one for the pain he'd felt, for his death in the darkness of space. She could not wear black and ashes for the death of her lover and best friend anymore than she could email Heero the transcripts of when she and Duo had role played all three of them at the beach. So she sat in her chair, clutching the report to her chest, to the silk that clung to her braless chest, wet with tears that had no meaning at all in the polite world of Relena Peacecraft.

Just three steps away, outside the sparkling clean glass of the solar, grew wild flowers, bright yellow sunflowers, blue daisies, three rose bushes all carefully braided together. She and Duo had done that together. A blue rose for Heero, violet for Duo, and yellow for her, and they'd knelt in the dirt, ruining her favorite pants, straining his still broken arm, and braided them all together. He'd told her then, that if he died, he wanted her to steal his body and put him here, in the only bit of land that had ever really belonged to him. She'd promised, finding death so far away. Death hadn't been real then.

Even the battle in the Antarctic, Heero had seemed to die, but he'd come back. People died in mobile suits all the time and yet it was distant like some story. Duo's death had to be like that, she thought, trembling fingers shuffling through the printed out report. One page of text. Terrorist caught, interrogation unsuccessful, escape attempt, truth drugs authorized, unsuccessful interrogation, second escape attempt, prisoner terminated, such simple words. They could talk about anyone. It was the photos.

She laid them in her lap, one hand holding her chest as she turned them over. Duo's smiling and rebellious face, his wrists in chains, a guard on either side of him. Duo's face, bruised, one eye swollen shut, abrasions. Rocking faster now in her seat, a scream silent in her throat, she turned the page. Duo on the floor of a cell, hair loose, shirt off, red welting, bruising over his back, his side caved in slightly, unmoving. That was before the first escape attempt.

This feeling. It was anger. Fury. The ruin they made of him, the careless use of power, the unspeakably vile torture of her best friend in all the world, the only true friend she'd ever had. As if it would be different this time, she turned the photo. This time he was on his feet, falling backwards, blood spraying from his shoulder, hair still loose, as he fell backwards, arms up, held up by inertia as he fell. The look on his face though… it wasn't one of pain and hurt and the broken little kitten look, as Dorothy had once called it. Duo wasn't fragile and waiting for rescue, even as he fell from this bullet wound. He was pissed, he was so pissed, his face furious, snarling, as if he were looking for escape even as he went down.

She stacked the papers all neatly again. It wasn't allowed, this anger. Nice ladies did not get angry. They negotiated, they might take revenge, but that was only hysterical need to avenge; it wasn't this primal rage that Duo radiated, even in the final days of his life. She pulled the report close and rose from her chair.

"Be Queen of the World," he teased her from her memory. It took an anger, perhaps, to want it, to need it. A strength of will that came from more than just doing the right thing, a raw passion settled into her. She could not find his body. The report said that he'd been spaced with the garbage on the ship he'd been a prisoner on. The warm affection she'd felt for everyone before was nothing like this screaming raw need.

Her feet were bare as she walked out of the solar, into Duo's wild garden. Kneeling among his, she set the report down on the softly worked black dirt and dug with her hands. Dirt under her nails, watering the ground with tears, she ripped up a whole in the ground, thrashed all the rules of her life, all the right behaviors, and when there was a hole, she shoved the report of Duo's death in, pounded it with her fist, until the paper tore and mixed with his plot of Earth. "Duo!" She screamed as she punched, rocking now here on the ground, until she dropped forward, drawing the dirt to her as if she could hold him again, as if she could bury herself with him, "DUO!"

"Miss Relena," Dorothy said, standing in the doorway of the solar, a pleased smile on her face. "I fear I was delayed. I have news for you."

Relena closed her eyes, and sighed raggedly. "Get away from me."

"Now now, Miss Relena." Dorothy chided, reaching into the hole in the garden with two fingers, picking up one of the photos of the ruined report between two fingers, as if it were used toilet paper. "Is this any way to treat the gift of information. I'm so surprised at you!"

Relena sat up, not caring about the dirt in her hair or her ruined clothes. Shinigami settled around Relena in her mind, with a passion that needed to vent, that needed to bleed of some of the agony in her soul. "I will end this war."

"Oh, I expect you will, but don't look at me as if you're going to kill me. I bring you good news. I just couldn't bear to see you in such pain, Miss Relena," Dorothy said, her eyes glittering with pleasure. She pulled a small recording player from her coat pocket and held it out. "I am always thinking about you, Miss Relena. I'm so sorry I couldn't contact you and let you know that the report wasn't everything."

She pressed play, and a very weak hoarse voice, hissed, "Don't listen to her 'Lena. Don't do what she wants."

Dorothy rolled her eyes, looking towards the sky for a moment, before replaying Duo's words. "He's such a stubborn child! I just wanted to offer you a better understanding of war, Miss Relena. How would you like the opportunity to save Duo Maxwell's life? Going once, going twice."

Relena was up out of the dirt before three, fists tangled in Dorothy's coat lapels. "Where is he?!"

"Now now," Dorothy said, rising to her feet, pulling Relena with her. "One step at a time, Miss Relena."