Author: Becca W
Fanfic: Starting Over
Chapter: Ch.21
*Summary and pairings given*

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Disclaimer: *Sits on Disclaimer* Usual applies.

Finally! I am SO sorry for the long wait - I had only 10KB done until last Saturday, at which point a dear, good friend of mine (*glomps Chelsee* This is for yas'!) gave me something to start on again and..here's the outcome!

Enjoy, and thank you!!

 

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Enveloped in what seemed to be a never ending fog of white, Heero watched from his seat at the aisle as the cloud they were in thinned and thickened at different intervals. He doubted many could tell the difference; when he did not stubbornly concentrate on it he often could not tell if what pressed against the glass was close or three feet farther than it seemed. Monotony at this quickly made him take up the water the steward had brought him.

He sat in his seat holding it, with no intention of actually drinking, and glanced to the front. A balding man sat three seats from him, as was required for a proper plane ride. No one got away with a flight where there was not some obese passenger in the row over, sprawled in every direction, crowding his or her neighbors, or someone balding who seemed addicted to passing a brush on what remained of his hair every fifteen minutes. If only he had learned the lesson long before, but the paranoia case sitting behind him, the one with the stuffed parakeet on the brim of her hat, interested him to the utmost.

Her smell was thick, rising in waves from her body to the people around her. She kept rummaging through what luggage she still carried with her, muttering in so low a voice her own neighbors had long since ignored the very sound. But Heero found them fascinatingly odd.

"...stupid dog..."

"..wild turkey, where's that wild turkey flask..."

"..oh, so loud, stupid yappers..."

"...heaven, I'm seeing heaven out there..."

He understood that, normally, people would not be listening to this with something resembling a happy expression settling on their face - they had not listened to the wild turkey lady before, though. But he did not eavesdrop for more than a minute at a time; even the raspy, throaty murmur behind him did not bring his attention to rest but gave it all the more reason to change direction and follow some other, absurd course. Like the stewardess' shoes; who would wear those on a mobile aircraft?

The magazines were old and of no interest to him, as was what was being shown on the television screens hooked above the passenger's heads; all that was left was to sleep the rest of the trip out. Ignorant of the louder cries of alarm coming from his squacking paranoia case, he leaned the seat back. First class was indeed comfortable he thought with a sense of triumph.

Vaguely thinking of what Lady Une's reaction to his early flight might be Heero dozed off, eyes not entirely shut but enough so that his eyelashes brushed his cheek. With a groan of expectance he let himself turn off what activity went around him and as he did so, his face turned right and nestled into the cushioned seat.

What was really a twelve hour trip, laborously uneventful and boring, passed by quickly for him as doze turned to nap turned to true sleep. Perhaps he sensed, lightly, the shadows over his face as people passed by - and an anonymous hand that held a finger under his nose to make sure that he was sleeping, not dead. His sleeping state was of such rest and inmobility that he seemed a happy corps in his plush, first class seat, hands overlapping themselves in his lap, hair covering most of his upper face.

But the thin stream of breath that blew out at normal intervals was the needed reassurance. After, he was left well alone.

 

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School ended with a whoop of joy errupting from the majority of the student body, some teachers included, and a silent minute later the sidewalk lining the front of the building was overrun with people. Miss Duboise stood from her window, an unlit cigarrette in her mouth: once Denna caught sight of her she winked optimistically, waving for added emphasis. The teacher's expression of disgruntlement was constant, though, and any change through facial contortions could not be distinguished from her usual look of sanity deprivation at the moment.

Lark hobbled over, her crutches under one arm. With a grunt she found stable footing on which to stand still and looked first at Denna, then at Relena. They were one of many small groups that had formed once the initial joy of school ending - in the technical sense - had washed passed them. Now, in the settling-down moments of the afternoon, the bright light that had lit up the entire day waned to reveal matted sunlight filtering through low-hanging clouds. Denna glanced around, her grin brightening as she thought private things to herself.

"Excellent." She said in a matter-of-fact tone. Lark, feeling pangs of bitterness at her foot, did not glance up but responded with the appropriate remark.

"It's going to rain, how's that excellent?"

"Excellent in that we have two more hours before anyone is needed at home."

Relena listened with only one ear.

She felt frustrated.

Her eyes settled distantly onto Lark and Denna, their mouths forming words that she did not hear. Such good friends. They were the friends she had hoped she could know a little more about every day, learn something important about their personalities, without thinking of how truly short her time was to find out these things. And she was standing across from the end with her face turned unwillingly to the side. She did not want to leave. She did not want to leave them, or the comfortability that came with being Lena.

It was so easy. She rarely found something that could be immediately easy in life, and yet, this persona was a well-fitting glove to her.

She had thought up undeveloped plans of leaving the Darlian life and recreating a new one through Lena Burg - all that was silly, and very amateur in its making. She felt not only an obligation to her job because of the people she was in service for, but to herself as well. The occupation of Vice Foreing Minister needed her as much as she needed it - she had fought for it, she deserved it, she was capable of accomplishing things through it and under the name of it.

Actually, she found that now she could work as Vice Minister better with what she gained throughout the last year. Friendships, different perspectives, a respect for humility and humbleness. A reverance of normality, no matter how overrated Lark thought it, no matter how much Denna was opposed to her version of it. She had experienced a different form of privacy and independence.

Truthfully, it had all been for the better - Relena's eyebrows slanted together, her forehead crinkling in thought.

"Come on, I know were we should go - Lena, you're going to have to keep up!"

They left for a district of Montreal Relena had never been to, although she might have heard of it. She could have thought up were she had heard it if her mind were not cluttered with other things, mangled with repetitions of chidings she gave herself and nostalgia.

She had come to learn and advance as a person and as herself. She had done that, and had no complaints about it. Why did she feel so hopeless? A person in her situation had every reason not to. She had felt things not many could. She was lucky to have gotten this far at all. Why, then? Why was she so tangled in her own sentiments? -

They ran into a crowded, yet wide street. Denna began to laugh, and she felt a single patter of rain splash onto her head. It soaked through to her scalp, and that one tiny area of cool felt strange in the middle of what was a sheltered place.

- She was being ridiculous. She should have been happy. She was happy, she simply did not feel that a person in her situation should be. Hypocryte. She would have encouraged other behavior if another person were in her present mood. Relena's eyebrows lifted a little and her steps quickened, hastening over the uneven territory of the cobbled street. -

Lark's foot, sprained during a dancing lesson, seemed to have relented at its pain and gave the girl some leeway. She was hobbling and hopping as best she could, the expression of a toiling drudge gone for the moment.

- Relena was responsible for so much, so many dreams and fears and hopes. So many laws. So many, many laws. The responsibility weighed heavily on her but she enjoyed its heftiness. It was hers, hers to keep, hers to ruin, hers to share the products of her labors with others. There was not much anyone could call theirs in the sense of ownership, and responsibility was sometimes overlooked - an obvious possession that most neglected from time to time. She could not neglect hers. She had an obligation to it, it meant so much to her, it gave her present existence a name. -

Denna had somehow come in possession of several cheap, touristy paper fans - two of which she managed to hang around her neck, the others she gave to Lark and Relena. They were large, cumbersome things; they waved it around them as they splashed into puddles that grew with the increasing fall of rain, coming together in the dents where the ground had sank and cobblestones made a ditch.

- She had felt so mechanical all month. Ever since the end had come too close for her to forget it or ignore it, she had not thought of what needed to be thought of but instead turned to unnecessary whines. She had gotten so far - farther into confusion, but at least she was farhter ahead into that mire than she was a year ago, the direction she was heading in a tiny bit clearer than before. Her socks suddenly felt soaked and she looked down, surprised to see herself standing in water two inches deep. Her sneakers - of course, they were of thin material. -

The sweater she wore began to cling to her shoulders and she lifted her face to the sky, eyes open, mouth slowly curving up, eyebrows pulling back. Denna was twirling awkwardly between the drifts of people, the ones who had decided the sidewalk too crowded to find footing on, in the street and Lark's crutches slammed against a tire.

- She had been so unbelievably stupid to think this the end! She had let herself become robotic in seeing a facet of her life giving way to something else, something new - was she not the one to always repeat that new things were not to be feared? She would never see these people again, they would never how much they had affected her, but they would not have approved of her ridiculous, spoiled self-pity. Relena turned, her upper body leaning farther back as the rain seeped into the thicker yarn of her sweater. -

Why had she worn a sweater? The school was always too cold in the warmer months of Montreal. She had not remembered the first few days of school, when her hands had become to heavy and clumsy because of the dry, cold air constantly blowing around her.

- It was going to be alright! She could feel as confused and tired and tied down as ever, fettered and tacked even, but someone would get up and begin a needed upheaval! Her responsibility did not have to rule her feelings - she did not have to be the supposed hero of peace - why was this all feeling so new to her when she had thought it all before? -

Relena felt a spray of water slam into her thigh and glanced around, finding Denna's sprite-like grin bouncing around her. With a grin of her own she responded by sending a kick of water in the tall girl's direction, making her jump back with a loud laugh. Lark, on her one good foot, performed a slightly rickety ballet move, her dark hair pasted to the sides of her face and her neck.

- The sense of being robotical did not fade. But now she knew it could be persuaded to leave. Everyone had their down moments, granted, but they could be lifted, she would lift hers, she had to if she did not want to feel this way again and, Heavens, great green Sally! did she ever want to feel normal again, like she had before, like she usually felt or thought she felt -

"Beat that kitten with a DOWN feather, DOWN feather - " Denna sang, her voice lacking the needed harmony but comical anyway. Lark's hair whipped around her face as she moved to the irregular beat in half-way jumps and hobbles, Relena laughing at their own antics and joining in from time to time when she broke apart from the well of her thoughts and looking up the sky, getting soaked. Their shirts swung around their bodies, momentarily plastered to their sides before being shaken and thrown around. For a moment, Denna disappeared from their peripheral vision, were she had been dancing around like a circling woodsprite, before reappearing with loud music following after.

- Relena leaped, enjoyment ruling her movements, the patrol of gloom leaving its perch on her senses, the weight of its stay gone. She was a person, and was allowed and accepted as being a person and feeling like a person; she was also used to voicing her feelings, to giving herself into a conversation and thinking out loud. To suppress so many things had been like the heavy, leaden feeling of a suddenly gray and rainy day on a person who had many headaches - it hurt, and left a bruised stain on a usually clean surface. Oh, she wanted to not feel so robotical, she wanted to feel free, and if not free, sure of herself, she wanted to feel her responsibilities like a sharp knife on skin, it would make her feel the heaviness of humanity, a feeling that was not all good but not all bad, either -

Relena was not sure if it was the rain or wind that caused her eyes to tear up, but the water that ran down her face was warm and thicker, contrary to the lukewarm feeling of rainwater against her neck and hands. Her sweater now sagged from her body, thinner than she remembered it to be even though she had never noticed the weight loss during baths, and her pants hung from her hips with pathetic grace. She felt at a loss of words and what she did say or wanted to say came out incoherently, in blubbering, ranting form, without surface value but carrying a sort of broken depth that one had to pause and think through it to make sense of it, which no one did, of course.

She felt free, physically, her clothes representing none of the usual constraints or confinements, drenched through to the underwear, loose and beginning to grow cold in the air. She felt robotical, senselessly and irrationally robotical because she had no control over the things she so wanted to keep at least a light pressure of the hand on, but at the same time ultimately alert in this suddenly softly outlined world - she only then realized they were dancing and hollering in the streets of Montreal's China town, and blinked hazardously into the downpour.

"Luck be a Lady To-onight!" Lark sang brokenly, swinging on her crutches, letting both feet dangle, uncaring of the pain it gave, dull as it was. Denna joined in and they finished the song in frumpy fashion, unaccompanied by Relena as the lyrics were new to her. They then went on with "That's why she's a tramp" and other such songs, no order in them, some foreign, all at random. Relena managed to croak out some words, her voice lost in a tidal wave of things that had no term for them, unfortunately, feeling caught in a spider's web and too lost to tell down from up.

- And then it occured to her that she need not think, not then, not ever if she wanted to give up all she had achieved, which she did not under any circumstance, but the comfort of acting out of character and being slightly wilder than usual was tempting, so she danced as best she could with rain sloshing in her sneakers and flattening her hair and making each step unbalanced and slippier and therefore, exciting. -

"Enough! This is enough! I can't breath!" She gasped in a hoarse tone. Denna's laugh, triumphant, rang out from behind her and the girl swerved around to meet her. Denna's hair, in her wild array of colors, swayed in front of her eyes and coated her ears, making her look the complete clown. Through the slits that did appear, though, she looked with glee down at Relena and lifted her ripped, touristy fan.

"Dance till you die - not breathing is not putting enough EFFORT into it!" The last part she screeched, much to the sidewalk-sissies' dismay, and leaped around in circles from one side of the street to the other. Relena, as soon as she had wiped some rain drizzle from her face and eyelashes, joined her with the best of intentions - namely not to fall down in the middle of a sprint.

She bumped hips, hard, with Denna, then ran off to clap hands with Lark, then made the most ridiculous attempt at a handstand in the world. Their laughter dimmed in her ears and it dawned on her that her mind had pulled a blank ever since she had given up that inner argument in herself - never lost, never won, and always to be continued later on, as were all inner arguments in a person, these being perfectly unavoidable no matter where one hid.

The hopelessness, the humor and the motivation it served to give was something she took in stride as best she could - as did everyone around her, every day of their lives. Humanity had no other choice and she was not going to add that to her list of impractical worries. If she ever did, she would rather pay someone to kick sense into her rather than have it heaped atop everything else.

Denna glanced at her watch and gave a loud yelp. Lark, long since having been resting under an umbrella - it was on sale, along with the chairs around it - looked up from shaking out the water from the hems of her pantlegs. She looked curious, without the usually cross look that served to remind people she could be vicious at worst, venom at best. Her personal shield and at the same time, a deep fault Relena hoped could be mended by someone with as much patience, endurance and density as Denna herself.

She only regretted she would not be there to see it happen, or hear of it.

But frankly, that was her only regret now that ranked itself according the amount of pain it caused.

"It's a little after six, guys - we need to split, or Harriet will be raving ma-a-a-ad at me!" Denna's grandmother was the only person she truly feared. "See you later - bye!" Without much else, other than a hasty wave, Denna stumbled over her own feet to reach the curb and an alley that led northeast, hair flashing from the light of a nearby lamp being the only thing they last saw.

Relena glanced over at Lark, who struggled up onto her crutches, gave them a dismal grump, and bundled them under her arms. Straightening as best she could under the conditions, she gave her a watery, but happy smile. The playful banter had done her well; her cheeks shone pink. She blinked away raindrops and waved once to Relena.

Relena came up and gave her a light hug, something that mildly surprised the other girl. After a brief, but friendly farewell they parted, Lark insisting that she could beat off anyone too curious and not to worry about leaving her to her own ways to get home and that she would see Relena later, anyway - this one time, she missed the light wince that came from her friend at that last part.

Now, alone and wet in a still-crowded area, in the middle of the street, awash rain, Relena raised her arms and gave a yell - one of hurt and relief and thankfulness. It was all too good, too easy, for her to truly believe.

Part of the way home she took a taxi, but knowing that what money she had on her was little she only took one part of the way. Once she had reached the limit, she requested a stop and thanked the driver, paying him a little extra and forgoing the request for change. She actually staid to wave him off, standing at the curb in the rain, thoughtful and happy, even content.

She went home, sometimes walking in the gutter - her shoes and pantlegs were soaked through, it would not hurt - and sometimes, when the traffic was too intense, she would meander along the sidewalk. At coming to her street, from where she could already see her house, her temporary home, a small, picture-perfect haven in the haziness of the rain-soaked world, she gave a smile - a real smile. She waded toward it, sometimes yanking at the waist of her pants to keep them around her hips, having beforehand to push up the sleeves of her sweater - it was stretched out past her fingers and, she was sure, would never be the same again. That did not matter - it was all the same to her.

At one point she stopped and checked to make sure her keys were, indeed, in her pocket. At another moment, right before she reached her doorstep, she ran the flats of her hands over her hairline, smoothing the hair back, and then thrashed her head around till the water flew in large, thick droplets around her. A throaty laugh followed. Fun fun.

At her doorstep she buddled in her pockets for the keys again, having briefly forgotten in which they sat. Finally, she found them - only to have them spill out onto the doorstep. The rain had calmed down, now coming down in a soft, yet continously thick drizzle, and she hoped it was not strong enough to knock the keys away for her to find in a sewer.

She bent down onto her knees, searching for them, again hoping they had not been washed away, when something strange, completely unexpected and condemning happened -

The door opened on its own, hinges squeaking. Relena raised her head unbelievingly, feeling lost and hopeless again, but then, she remembered, remembered her thoughts and the rainy afternoon - she clearly remembered locking that door that morning as well, and then she returned to remembering what had happened a short hour ago -

She stood up slowly, head tilted at an inquisitive, but blank angle, her expression one of very mild, almost reluctant curiosity, hair hanging in a mess from the side of her head and some plastered to her forehead, arms at her sides.

Without anything in her mind to make her hesitant or speed her up, she stepped in, finally sheltered from the rain.

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More to come, but the wait might be, again, long. These are going to be some of the longest chapters I've ever done - exceptions being the first few in the fic - but they will be the best; hints? - Think Heero and Relena....think soft romance....think ending. Please be patient, I promise it'll be worth your while.

Thank you so much for reading, I truly appreciate it!