AN:I know, this took me forever and isn't that long, but I have so many ideas floating around in my head, that it's difficult to give proper attention to each one. See what you think, and hopefully you'll like this, because it sets you up for things to happen later ^_^. Okay, you can read now.

Disclaimers: I don't know why I bother to type this, it just take up space *sigh.* I don't own Gundam Wing... too bad.



*She's going crazy, going completely and utterly insane because she loves me,* Heero thought to himself in culpable guile as he paced about the room--running his hand through his tresses that he may hopefully be able to sort through this conflict amongst his reason and his doctrine to find something to say to Relena in response of his former aspersion that can reconcile their hearts--taking a vigilance outside the bathroom door.

As he stood there, a sentinel which guards the entrance to his lady's reside, he took particular notice of the lack of sniveling through desperate petitions for his love and how she seemed--to his acute sense of hearing, anyway--to be resting there in silence, almost in denial to what fallacy he just admitted as truth to her in hopes of her fantasy's protection.

He remembered how she left him just a few moments ago: her eyes glazed over in a sentiment of hesitancy and resolution held so dear in the depths of her soul been broken, and so weak--using all of her strength just to glide her feet along the floor to get her to the entranceway--in frailty as to collapse at the gentle howl of the wind in sacred chant of its breath. He had to resist every temptation in his being to keep from running over there beside her and just crushing her to his breast, telling her that all was fine and at morning's birth they could start anew in their realization of affection, but such a thing would contradict the action he just took for her security... for her prudence. No... no he would not yield from his decision, and he would continue to gradually distance himself from her life; for then, perhaps, she could find a way back to her former confidence, her former adamancy... her former integrity.

Still, no matter how much he told himself to just leave her alone and let her handle this crisis by herself, the disturbing resonance of tranquility in her hollow just now, unnerved him to such an extent that he felt he should just shoot off the lock and at least check on her... regretful that he didn't, though.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

*He doesn't care, he never cared... I'm just a rose... a thorn in his side,* she kept reiterating to herself, a subtle mantra in an effort to hopefully allow the acknowledgement of this fact and find conviction to her unrequited passion.

She wouldn't cry anymore... she'd be damned if she'd let another tear flow down her cheek in its translucent beauty of her soul for his rejection... just not anymore. She had to get through this, let go and move on... but she's already given so much to grab his attention to her devotion, and to just dismiss these sacrifices because of words didn't seem to balance out the merit she surrendered. It was hopeless, completely despondent from the beginning, and she was a fool not to see that until now... until it was too late.

"What's the matter, princess, you seemed disheartened tonight?" that familiar voice of whimsical valor and unsheathed corruption echoed around her presence--filling her ears with its dejection.

"Nothing..." she replied, too abruptly to confirm its validity, "... nothing, I'm fine, thanks," she went on to mutter, turning her head from the call and keeping her eyes attentive to the marble of the floor.

"Normally, sweetie, I wouldn't question your judgment, but I have a hunch you're trying to hide something from me... what happened?" he asked again, the summon now conforming from mere reverberation into the actual trace of a figure leaning over her in relevance.

Keeping her eyes fastened to the tile--trying to keep her mindset out of the range from his influence--, she replied, "I told you, nothing's wrong, I just don't feel well."

"Dear, sweet child, I suggest that you don't toy with me, because I CAN leave you here in the dust, in the remnants of your own shattered dreams without any method of escape," he threatened by his advantage, a smirk pulling at the corners of his lips as he noticed the sudden drooping of her shoulders at the mention of his admonition.

"I'm perfect, things couldn't be better," she seethed in response to his caveat, willing to deny that the incidence ever happened as long as he continued to question her.

At first it seemed as though he was about to give a rejoinder to her defiance, when he closed his mouth before a word could be spoken--lips easing into a smile--, and said, "Fine, if that's the way you want to play, then I can be difficult as well."

Turning himself that he faced the door, he continued, "I guess then I'll just have to have a conversation with the soldier about your behavior... perhaps he can shed some light on the subject where you refused."

"No!" she pleaded to him restlessly, her eyes immediately tearing themselves away from the ground and straight into the devil's orbs, hoping for mercy. "No please, just leave us alone," she cried out, glass beginning to frost her lashes over in desperation.

"That's better," he muttered while taking her head in his hands and resting it upon his thigh in succor. "Now that we're finally getting somewhere, I don't have to be so forceful."

"Just go away, I don't want this anymore," she continued to supplicate, letting her tears glide along his inner-thighs and come to rest at a puddle under her throat.

"Why princess, you seem so sickly, and you're not nearly as feisty as you used to be... what's wrong with you little babe," he cackled in his victory, mocking her pain with his constant sarcasm that plagued her thoughts like venom, causing her to cringe in his wake.

"How can you even say something like that, be so cruel as to flaunt my mistake without any solace to accompany it?" she hissed, trying to pull herself away from his grip, but his strength holding her close--keeping her within his embrace.

"Listen child, whenever you make a pact you're also accepting any terms that come along with that deal... my criticism being one of them."

"I never accepted your offer! You used your powers to influence me... I had no choice in the matter!" Relena screamed in heated apprehension, finally pulling herself away and standing before him--rage her only ally for the time.

"But you never renounced it either!" Crorta pointed out, he too standing and towering over her now, a ferocious gleam to his irises as he devoured her remark.

"Well I renounce it now!" she wailed in her disillusionment, the tears beginning to fall steadily now in a brook of sparkling essence to perfume her satin already cloaked in its own shimmer of radiance. "You can have the courage back, whatever you want, but please return what's been taken from me."

Giving her a coy smile and cocking his head in what he could manage of innocence--still only littered with deception--, he replied, "Sorry, can't do that. We had a pledge, and that pledge will be kept until my end of the bargain is fulfilled... basically, you getting Heero's heart. Until then, my hands are tied."

"No, please," she begged, falling back to her knees in hopes of his leniency toward her soul, "don't do this anymore..."

But before she could say another word, he reached out and grabbed her throat--slowly letting the life and breath that kept her body in vitality and her own realm of imagination in dreams seep away through his grasp--she slowly, after choking from the taut skin that closed off her intake of sustenance, collapsing to the floor--unconscious from the lack of oxygen to the brain.

As soon as she became limp in his arms, he set her gently to the ground, in a delicacy of her precious state, and leaned against the wall--barely being able to suppress the laugh that yearned to bellow from his recesses in his triumph once again.

Upon finding himself in a comfortable position, he brushed a few stray locks away from his face in all his arrogance and began to recite, "Seder, master of dejection and deception through illusion, I call upon you to come to my side and serenade this young maiden in your hymns that canter only sorrow and error in verity. Play for her upon your reeds, that perhaps she may now confront her harsh reality... with caprice," then snapped his fingers in beckoning for his servant to oblige.

From the shadows that lurk at the corner of the room--in what a child dreams of horrid creature and ghostly fingertips upon his skin--emerged a mist of shrouded haze in all its blackness to permeate the chamber through sinister intention and desecration. The form was first anomalous at its master's call, but as assembled to the devil's side in that place it distorted into the vague figure of man and beast combined by twisted demeanor. It rasped in the darkness, the hot tenderness of its breath causing the temperature of its surroundings to rise at least five degrees in the matter of moments, and it dragged its hooves along the floor as incentive for the marble to split under his disposition--impatient to find the one whom he must perform to capture in disgrace. His face was concealed in the shadows, starved of light--never to be comprehended by human touch or witness--, but his stalwart chest built of reigning sinew that bulged in the dusk of his shallow morals rippled by the dim blaze which the glow of his orbs cast throughout the chamber in their wicked disgust--discouraging anyone from coming near this goat plagued with the wits of man.

Looking over to his lord in question of his task, clenching his pipes to his chest in a signal of pride, Crorta turned to him and commanded, "Seder, lull this child into the prance of speciousness that she may be caged within my ploy of her encumbrance."

With an obedient nod, the beast trotted from his master's whim and approached the lady that slumber upon the floor--unaware to the pending falsity that will surround her in accordance to his hymn--, and bringing the instrument to his lips to play, began to blow in a steady rhythm that resounded along his exhales a dissonance to cause infant to weep in pain of the chords and pup to howl through its lament for its conclusion as it echoed along the wall of its ears.

From the reeds of these pipes flowed musical notes in a tangible scrutiny throughout the ambiance, eighth notes hand in hand with their elder sisters, the sixteenths, who are in turn reprimanded by their mother the half rest, and as they dance along the aura withholding the pitch of utter silence in their depths, they seem to transform into an even greater malevolence as they flutter by the sleeping woman. They encircle her in their snare, changing from the strokes of blotches crowned with the rising of their flags about the staves into creatures whose very physiognomies reflected nothing but vileness in their gestures. Hawks whose very down was scorched black and glittered with ashes from the tongues of hell's blazes and sprinkled in the cinders of their fowler's armory eyed her in their stare, just waiting for her arm to extend that they may perch upon her wrist, and snakes whose rattles quivered and keep the tempo of her coming misery--bearing their fangs to kiss her skin in their sweet poisons--curled around her legs--finding great comfort against her satin.

As they began to close her in their circle to bring nothing but depression, she--by the screeching of the bird to her flesh and the hiss of the snake to each of her bones--rose to her feet and began to twirl amidst the animals in their dire--dancing upon her toes a profane ballet that only these numes(1) and creatures that originated from them could appreciate from their perverted conception of their own canticle, doomed to waltz alone in the transgression of her sins.

Her tresses cascaded about her breasts, her own feathers traced in the tears of her innocence of beautiful wings to leap from this yonder height and take her to her destiny away from these monsters that can only stain her virtue, and shimmered by the swan's own grace in the psalm; and her irises betraying a luminescence so immaculate in their chaste reside--steadily being enveloped in the brutal nature of the malice--that her luscious physique in its hourglass splendor just enhanced her radiance more than mortals can imagine in their own pleasures--poor, naive virgin at the hands of the lecher.

"Just wait and see what I have in store for you and your lover, my dear, because I think you'll find out that playing with fire can be the most dangerous element to tease with of them all," Crorta laughed to himself in his delight as he beheld her lost in the drear of the visions she would soon create...




(1) numes were the first resemblance of modern (written) music notes--I think, but don't quote me on this, that they were developed by Catholic monks


AN: Sorry, I know that chapter seemed a bit pointless, but you'll see why it was so important later. Anyway, I wanted to clarify now, that if you didn't pick it up in this part, that Heero was NOT possessed by Crorta in the last chapter... I did that purposefully. I wanted you to think he was, but he really just said all that to keep Relena away from him-out of protection, of course ^_~. Thanks everyone, and until the next part... remember... review!!!!