CHAPTER VI- The Past....and then the Present

(WARNING: This is where the lovely PG-13 rating this fic received comes in. I won't be explicit in any love scenes (tell me if you want a lemon on the side sort of thing to accompany this and I will comply), but you will know that they weren't playing Parcheesi all night.)

He just showed up one day, and that should have been Relena's first warning. When she returned from lunch that particular Friday afternoon, he was at HER desk, in HER chair, with his shoes up on the writing mat. In his hand he had a file. She recognized it immediately.

"You lost this last week when you left it in the park." He told her, "I thought you might need it."

Indeed she did. He had no idea how much. Within it was her speech for the next convention, and she had been tearing her office apart for it.

"How...." she began, but, by the warning expression on his face, decided to let the subject drop.

"Open it." He commanded.

She gave him a confused glance and then pulled out the papers within.

A piece of paper fluttered to the ground, scorched and yellowed with age.

She looked up at him, shocked.

"It's your birth certificate," he said dispassionately, " The original one from the Sanc Kingdom. You did say to deliver your next birthday present in person, did you not?"

She smiled at him, eyes glittering with tears, "Do you have any idea how much this means to me?"

Heero got up and walked towards her, and she gave him a confused look, "I have an idea."

And that's when he kissed her.

"You don't mind 'Heero' that much, do you?" Relena asked cautiously as she untangled herself from the sheets, smiling gleefully at him.

He shook his head, looking up at her, "I don't know what my original name was, I mean, I went by Odin for a while, but my first name had been long ago lost. The first Heero Yuy was a man who fought for peace. I don't believe that's such a bad name to adopt as my own."

She buttoned up her blouse, "You are very lazy."

"It's my day off."

She sighed and pulled her hair out from the collar of her shirt, "Well, it isn't my day off."

"But I thought you had no meetings planned for tomorrow."

She shrugged, "Several officials want to speak to me about an environmental act."

"Any chance of saying you're sick?"

She shook her head, "Not one. Heero, if you want this relationship to work, you have to understand that I'm tied down to other obligations, the same as you. Fortunately," she slipped on her skirt and zipped up the back with practiced ease, "the fighting part has ended. Now it's up to boring old diplomats like me to clean up the mess."

"So, I can't convince you to stay?"

"No."

He sighed and pushed himself up, "Then it isn't my day off either."

She looked at him quizzically.

He walked over to the dresser and pulled a paper out of his discarded pants. He tossed it to her, "Colonel Une asked me to formally become your bodyguard, and seeing as I do that anyway, I said yes." He pulled out a green and black jacket from the dresser, "See? I'm an official preventer now."

She hoped that he had chosen to stay there by her side forever. She was young, and she was foolish.

She was so lonely.

She had expected that their happiness would end, for she had never been able to believe that such joy could last. But she held off that doubt. She held it off with every fiber of her being, telling herself that he would stay this time, telling herself that he wouldn't leave her.

When she woke to an empty room and an empty window, it was not entirely unexpected. She had known he wasn't ready. He had warned her. But she simply hadn't cared. They had both wanted to indulge their fantasy so badly, they hadn't waited for the appropriate time, hadn't bothered to resolve inhibitions instead of setting them aside.

At first, Relena believed that her resulting pregnancy was a curse, a payment for her impatience. But then she realized that her child, her precious daughter, was all she had never needed. For the first time in her life, Relena had a family, and even though she did not have the person she loved, she had something of him to cherish.

She knew he loved her, but she had decided that it was not destined to be. The last time she had seen him was at Sidra's birth. She didn't want to bind him to her with the threat of a baby, so she had said nothing, but the news had leaked out somehow, and after Sidra was born he had broken into her room in the maternity ward.

He had been silent, looking at her and the child with shock and -could it be?- passionate interest. He touched the crown of the child's head with a wondrous hand, and Relena was assaulted by the memory of those hands on her flesh.

"Take care of her," he murmured, looking up at her carefully.

She couldn't tell him, couldn't confirm the paternity of the child. He knew it, and she knew it, and to say it would indenture him to her involuntarily, and she could not do that.

"I will manage well, Heero. I wish you the same luck."

He looked slightly confused, but he left quietly.

And now, now she was looking upon him for the first time in six years. What was he doing with her daughter?!

And then it hit her.

Duo and Hilde would die.

But not after she got her child back.

Fury overtaking reasoning, Relena entered the store. He looked up before she got to them, and she cursed his heightened senses. But then she almost laughed. Heero Yuy had actually paled. Sidra looked up at him, and followed his line of sight to her mother's slender, shaking form.

"Relena."

"Mommy!" The little girl ran forward and took her hand, "I just asked Uncle Heero if he had met you! He said...." she looked up to her guardian questioningly, "what did you say again?"

He captured Relena's eyes with his own, their blue depths brilliant with intensity, "I said yes."

Relena grasped Sidra's hand firmly in her own, "What are you doing with my daughter, Heero? Did you kidnap her?"

It wasn't the accusation that hurt him, but the cold look in her eyes. That had always been his department, "Duo dropped her off and then left. I had no choice but to take care of her."

He didn't want to be there anymore, for the very sight of her, the delicate smell that detached itself from her skin and into his nostrils, the way her golden-brown hair stirred by a slight breeze of a nearby fan, everything was telling him to go to her, to touch her the way he had so long ago. The fear that sparked in his eyes was the fear of losing that control, not the fear of obligation, as Relena interpreted it.

"I'm sorry that Duo troubled you in such a manner, Heero," she said sadly, "I hope Sidra wasn't a burden."

She was turning to leave. Heero didn't know what was possessing him, "Wait."

She turned. Sidra looked up at her mother.

"Sidra's things are at my apartment, and you are bound to be very busy at your meeting. I can take care of her until then."

Please, his mind begged. Please!

She sighed, looked down at the tiled floor. Sidra smiled, "Come on, Mommy. Heero and I have been having lots of fun together! We played horsey and I made him breakfast-"

Relena jerked her head up at Heero, "Breakfast?! Is that why...." she motioned to the store.

He nodded grimly.

She mouthed the words 'Sorry' over the head of her daughter.

His heart nearly burst.

Sidra reached over and took one of Heero's hands in her spare. She was linked to both of them, unaware that she was standing beside her mother and her father simultaneously.

Heero would make sure she stayed unaware. If that was what Relena wanted, he would do it. He just didn't want to be torn from her so soon. In fact, he was slightly surprised at how much he had wanted to spend the week with his only child.

"Let's go together?" the girl queried.

Heero saw Relena start nervously at this.

"I'll leave it as a mother/daughter outing," he said, releasing Sidra's hand, "I know that I will only end up carrying boxes."

Relena smiled in relief, "I think that would be for the best."

But both of them knew it wasn't.

They parted anyway.

((A/N: Okay, so she didn't kill Heero. That surprised me too. But trust me, he isn't going to be let off the hook that easily. Relena is going to have a talk with Heero about Sidra's habits, and we will see quite a bit of strain there. And for those cute-fans, their will be Mother/Daughter action, as Heero sulks in Lonelyville. I'm a little hyper right now (I just got nominated for an award thing!) so forgive my writing binge.))