Edge of the Chase

Chapter 14

A/N: This is the final chapter. Edge of the Chase is officially COMPLETED. I'm working on something new which should be out by the end of the month at the latest.

Relena jarred against Heero's back as he ran across the parking lot, using the building corners to cover them from fire. His shoulder dug brutally into her stomach, making it extremely difficult for her to take a breath without feeling as though it was going to be knocked out of her. Heero didn't seem to care, and Relena really couldn't blame him for wanting to put as much space between them and the hotel window as possible. She didn't exactly want to get shot. Her nose bounced against his muscular rear, and she'd have been horrifyingly embarrassed if she wasn't so furious at him for hogtying her up.

She tried her best to hold still despite the fact she wanted to wriggle into a more comfortable position and more importantly boot Heero in the face. Her survival instincts kicked in and warned her not to do anything which could possibly compromise both of them getting out of this with their lives. If Heero went down because she managed to knock him out with her heel – a highly unlikely occurrence in any case – she would still be bound and unable to run. She could now feel that he had also tied up her ankles while she slept, though she hadn't noticed back in the hotel room.

She'd dwell on how he had even entered the room later. Right now she was trying her best just to live, which was exceedingly difficult because she had absolutely no control over the situation, and Relena was a person who liked to be in control, at least nominally.

Heero took a sharp corner, causing her forehead to smack sharply against his butt. "Heero!" she protested through her gag.

He didn't pay any attention to her.

Seconds later, Relena heard a van door open, and then she was rolling across carpet, her bones jarring sharply as he tossed her to the floor with no care to her person. Relena's shoulder smacked against the opposite side of the van as the door slid closed. The interior was dark and empty, and smelled like molding material and old cheese. She could hear a front door open and close. The engine started and the vehicle jerked forward.

Slowly and methodically, Relena rolled onto her stomach, her tied hands digging painfully into her body as her weight rested on top of them. Her arms tingled and her fingers had gone numb from the tight binds. It took her three tries to push herself into a sitting position on her knees, her ankles folded beneath her.

She should be more scared, she reasoned. Heero had kidnapped her against her will and had thrown her in the back of a van, still tied like a criminal or a prisoner. Anyone else and she'd be worried that she was on her way to cemented feet and a watery grave, but a part of her still trusted him implicitly, despite everything of the past few days. This was reinforced by the fact that everything else aside, he had still just saved her life.

Of course, that didn't mean she wasn't going to try to escape.

Relena took stock of her surroundings, noting that the only light coming into the cabin was from thickly grimed windows in the back and through a heavy metal mesh wall separating her from the front compartment. For a moment she debated whether she should try to open the back doors first, or the sliding one to her right, or if she should get closer to webbed separator between herself and Heero in an attempt to see where they were going and perhaps communicate how displeased she was with the current situation.

The van drove through a well-lit area, and even in the dim she was able to see that both sets of doors had no internal opening mechanisms. Relena sighed, dejected, willing back the frustrated tears gathering under her eyelids.

Heero braked suddenly, unbalancing her and causing her to stumble forward sharply. Her tied hands caught her before she completely fell back to the itchy wool carpet, and she pushed herself back into a kneeling position, suddenly furious.

It took her far longer than she could have imagined to move her way closer to the front. Each inch gained was through a shuffling motion with her knees as she rubbed her legs together, the ties around her ankles making it impossible to move more than a fraction. Relena wasn't often an impatient person, but she found this to be incredibly trying and exasperating. By the time her fingers brushed against the mesh, her knees were screaming in pain and blood was seeping out of friction burns on her bare ankles.

Through the thick, welded wires she could see the open expanse of road and the shadow of Heero's head. He was staring intently at the highway in front of him, his eyes darting towards the rearview mirrors. For a moment he met her eyes through the dark, her own reflected like a caged animal.

"Mmmfh," she told him, brushing hair out of her face. For a moment, the movement didn't occur to her, but then suddenly she realized the stupidity of her actions. With only a tad of humiliation – more embarrassing things had happened to her in the past hour, so she couldn't really dredge up much of the feeling – she ripped the tape off her mouth, biting back a groan of pain as half the skin from her lips came with it.

Her eyes shot quickly to Heero, not entirely immune to hoping he didn't notice her idiocy. He hadn't. In the past when she had what she defined as blond moments, and so long as they weren't during life and death situations, his eyes would always show a hint of amusement, and she couldn't see any sign of that now. Possibly, he was still considering this a life-and-death situation, but it was far more likely that he had gone cold on her.

Maybe Duo was wrong. Maybe Heero really did hate her.

No, Relena reminded herself, she was just trying to focus her attention on something besides the fact she had just gotten shot at. Obsessing about Heero was a common pastime for her, after all. Having men burst into her room like the SWAT team from hell was not.

"Who were those people?" Relena asked, using her teeth to bite at the tape around her wrists.

"The enemy."

The tape was particularly sticky, and he had wound it around on itself a few times so that biting through it was like trying to gnaw through hemp. For a moment his response didn't even register, and when it did her eyes narrowed as she observed him. If she didn't know any better, she would say they had somehow been transported back to 195.

"The enemy, Heero?" Relena reiterated cuttingly. "Your enemy or my enemy? You know what, don't answer that. I don't even want to know right now. If I asked you why it was necessary to tie me up like some kind of wild animal you tracked and captured would you answer me?"

Heero remained silent.

"Are YOU my enemy? You can at least tell me that, right? Are you saving my life or are you transporting me to an empty field like some serial killer psycho?"

"Stop talking," Heero said tersely.

"Stop talking!" Relena responded shrilly. "Is that the polite way to say shut up these days? I can't believe you!" Relena fell silent, not out of any desire to obey him but because she had nothing left to say.

"If you say another word," Heero warned, not finishing the thought.

You'll what? Relena wanted to ask, but she didn't want to dignify his threat with a response. It would be childish at this point to say something back just for the sake of getting in the last word. The silence was terse. "Can I at least sit in the front with you?" she asked with a sigh, suddenly exhausted of life. The past few days had been a rollercoaster of highs and lows, and she just wanted it all to be over.

In ways, she got her wish.

Heero slammed on the brakes, bouncing the van along the side of the highway until it coasted to a stop. The jarring motion flung her forward, and Relena's face smashed against the divider, her forehead and the bridge of her nose taking the brunt of the fall. Relena toppled to her side with a groan of pain, blinking at the dim overhead light as the door slid open at her feet and Heero stood on the side of the road looking in at her, his tense shoulders a dark shadow against the backdrop of night.

Relena glared hatefully at him for a moment, confused as to why he would be angry enough at her to do her harm. She didn't even consider the notion that it could have been an accident. Heero never misjudged the force of a moving vehicle.

His hand shot out, wrapping his long, cold fingers around her tied ankles and jerked her towards him.

Relena kicked out with her bound feet, unable to dislodge his grasp. She was finally and truly frightened, realizing that this man was not the benevolent character she had attributed to Heero in the past ten years of quasi-friendship. She had never had any reason to be afraid of him or distrust him, but in a decade of observing him, she had seen that he was never a man to take lightly. She struggled against him now, instinctively knowing that it was a hopeless battle.

He had taught her any edges she might have in a fight.

Relena jerked as the needle punctured her thigh, giving him a look of the deepest betrayal before her eyelids grew heavy and she plummeted into unconsciousness.

She awoke sharply, quicker than she usually did even on the best mornings. It was as if her senses were suddenly online, and she could feel everything. Her heart hurt, and though medically it was probably from a combination of the drugs Heero gave her and adrenalin causing the organ to beat harder than usual, psychologically the reasoning was far more obvious. There were wet tears on her eyelashes, but her eyes were curiously dry.

So was her mouth, feeling as though she had swallowed cotton and chased it with sandpaper.

Her cheek was against a cold, smooth surface, and light was shining from both the clear evening sky and strategically placed lights. Relena managed to push herself to her knees again, knowing from the moment she awoke that she was no longer in the back of a van. She could tell from the architecture of pillars and marble that she was on the parameter – possibly the front entrance – of a large, official building that could range from anything between a museum and a bank. Relena thought that it looked a lot like the parliamentary building she was supposed to hold a press conference in front of the day before.

For a moment she felt relief at being somewhere so familiar to her, but her hands and feet were still bound, and though parts of the structure were shrouded in shadows, she could still feel the prickle of being watched by unseen eyes.

Then she saw him. He didn't move or make himself known in any way, but it was as though the shadows opened up and revealed him surveying her. She knew it was Heero through shape alone. Relena stared at him silently, knowing he was returning the gaze. There were a million things she wanted to say to him – yell at him – but she remained stubbornly quiet.

She thought it might have to do with the gun in his hand.

As though realizing she could see it, Heero stepped towards her into the light, the gun extended before him. For one irrational moment, Relena thought that he was pushing it closer to her so she could see it. It was a nice delusion for the fraction of a second it lasted, but she knew that the weapon was aimed and that he meant to kill her.

Who knew Heero had a flair for the dramatic?

Relena's heart raced and she gasped, wanting to cringe backwards in fear. Instead, she forced herself to stay still and look at his face with the mildly defiant gaze she had given him years ago the first time he had aimed a gun at her, back when she had reason to doubt her instincts that he wouldn't kill her.

Relena searched Heero's countenance for a sign of remorse, a sliver of doubt, or anything that would convince her that he didn't mean it. She found it in his eyes, in the way they crinkled at the corners with a hint of pinched grief she never thought to see on his features. A wave of cold despair went through her.

He meant it. Oh God, he really did.

When they had been fifteen and he had threatened to kill her, she had convinced herself that he wouldn't so long as his face remained impassive. She knew Heero, she thought, and beneath the shell was a boy with empathy and principles. She had been naïve then, but faced with the facts now she thought there may have been an inkling of truth to it. That mask had broken to show that he really would regret firing the gun, but he would do it.

Relena raised her chin, allowing him to see the knowledge in her eyes. She had never been so terrified in her life: kidnappings, bombings, and death threats were nothing compared to the sheer nightmare at realizing that in the end it would be Heero. This wasn't the way it was supposed to go. She was a princess, dammit, and she was never meant to look down the barrel of a gun at her prince charming. "Will you answer some questions first?" she asked calmly, belying the cold fury and fear turning her thoughts to crystalline clarity.

Heero nodded curtly, the gun not wavering from the middle of her forehead.

They were a tableau of death.

"If you were planning to kill me, why did you just save me?" she asked. Of the millions of questions she had for him, that one was the least important and yet integral to her understanding of the situation.

"I wanted this to be done properly."

"Don't," she responded stiffly at his limited response. "I think I deserve a more in-depth explanation than that. I want to understand why I'm going to die."

For a moment, she thought he was going to argue, or in true Heero fashion, remain silent. "It's not personal. You were never meant to rule for any length of time. You were set up to be a figurehead for the new peace, but you've become too powerful in your own right to continue with your flawed political ideals. The same people who gave you your position are taking it back now."

"And I have to be dead for that?" Relena asked with a raised brow. She didn't argue that she had earned her spot as the Foreign Minister under her own power, nor did she correct him in saying that her ideals were flawed. She'd be the first to admit that there were holes in her philosophies, but she truly did believe that they were superior – and more importantly, possible – overall. What she didn't understand is why these "people" didn't just remove her in other ways if they wanted her gone.

At this question, the shape of Heero's eyes changed, flickering perceptively with some reaction she couldn't read. "No," he responded curtly. Relena finally identified his response as anger from the tone of his voice. "You didn't have to die. You forced their hand when you ran away from me. Their plan wasn't going accordingly to begin with. The scandal of you running away from the Wattmeter estate didn't completely discredit you as they intended. The people love you, Relena."

"Yes, they do," she responded sharply. "So what makes you think that they won't love me after death? I'll be a martyr."

Heero looked down at the gun, taking his eyes off her face for the first time. "Because I'll be the one who kills you. They've thought it out."

"So what?" she asked, feeling a bit hysterical. Why weren't any guards checking the grounds, or pedestrians cutting through? Where was Duo? She thought that a time like this needed a hero or at least someone to distract Heero's trigger-finger. He was the one who was supposed to keep armed crazies from killing her, so who was there to protect her from him? The answer, Relena supposed, was herself. "This is some kind of lover's quarrel scandal that they hope completely ruins my character so that all my politics are questioned? You know what, Heero? You might create a scandal, and oh look, I just caught on to the irony of you murdering me in front of the parliament building, but you won't ever defame me. I'm more than just a figurehead: I am peace, and the reason I haven't resigned yet, after everything I've been through, is because my idea of peace might be flawed, but the universe would be so much worse without it."

Relena took a moment to breathe. Heero was observing her evenly, but remained silent.

"I think," Relena said slowly as she thought through what she was trying to say, "that I'd like to know who 'they' are. Who could possibly convince you that this is a good idea?"

Heero didn't respond. Relena wanted to know who could have infused so much loyalty into him. It was starting to dawn on her that he wouldn't do this for just anyone. She couldn't be mistaken about him. She just couldn't.

"Do you love me?" Relena asked softly, cursing herself for sounding so naïve – like such a sentimental fool. She couldn't take her eyes off his face, frightened that she would miss the answer, but also equally as terrified that she wouldn't. She thought that dying might not be so bad.

"This isn't about us as individuals. What I feel for you has no bearing. It's above me."

"You won't be able to live without me," she told him with sudden certainty. "The world won't get better. It'll get so much worse."

They stared at each other for a moment. Relena closed her eyes, tears clinging to her lashes but not tumbling down her cheeks. She could feel the strength in her dissipate.

"I'm ready," she told him, meeting his eyes and feeling everything in the world fall away until there was only the two of them. There were no unknown world leaders playing them like puppets, no symbolism of her dying on the front stairs of the parliament building, and no gun.

Heero's eyes narrowed and he went as cold and still as ice. The gun was steady in his hand as his finger tightened on the trigger, and then it wavered.

"We'll go away," she told him steadily, reading his uncertainty and giving him another option. "Just you and me. We'll go into hiding and I'll give up peace, and we'll do our best not to be threatening so that if they find us they might leave us alone because I'll no longer be Relena and you'll no longer be Heero. We'll just disappear."

"I am… unable to complete my mission." Heero responded coolly, disengaging the gun and putting it away in the blink of an eye. Suddenly, it was just gone and Relena felt free for the first time in her life.

"Australia?" she asked as he pulled out a pocket knife and freed her wrists. Her heart was still beating from the risk she had taken in not fighting him. Even if it hadn't been apparent, Relena had been trying to maneuver him into not killing her, first by attempting to waver his convictions through time, and secondly by reconnecting with him as the person he knew and not the figurehead politician he was sent to assassinate. Relena thought, if she knew Heero at all, that he wouldn't be able to kill her.

Who, though, would have so much hold over him that he would even try to kill her?

"No," she exclaimed with a gasp as he pulled a syringe out of his pocket. Her heart leapt into her throat, and she couldn't breathe through resumed fear and uncertainty. Heero deftly slipped the protective cover off the needle, plunging it into the side of her neck and holding her upright with his spare arm. His face was shadowed, dark pools under his eyes masking his expression.

Relena coughed once, her eyes widened in terror. She clawed at his arm with her fingers, trying to get him to release her, but Heero's hold was firm. Blackness started to edge in on her vision, her hands going numb and falling limply to her side. His cruel visage was the last thing she saw as she slipped away.

Completed©RelenaFanel.June11.2008

A/N: For those of you who think Heero could never be talked out of a mission, even if it is Relena, you're absolutely right. For those of you who are thinking 'wait... how did we get here?' well, I would like to know that too. You see, it started with this dream I had last week and escalated...

But you'll have to wait for the sequel for those questions to be answered (and probably so many more). Feel free to ask if there is anything you want to know, but if it's currently classified I won't be answering back.

Please review! It's always much loved.