---------------------
 No Place Like Home
~ A Moment of Haven ~
---------------------
	The Preventers' Main Headquarters hadn't always been the grounds 
of a paramilitary organization.  It would have taken the Preventers far 
too long to mobilize effectively in the post-bellum years if they had 
had to build from scratch.  Consequently, it was surprisingly pleasant 
to look at.

	It was a nice, sunny day, and that always helped immensely.  
That was why Relena was waiting outside, seated on a stone bench warmed 
by the sun, next to an expansive lawn between two of the buildings.  Her 
omnipresent bodyguards, escorts, and all around buddies from the last 
few months, Heero and Duo, attended her.  There was a bit of a breeze, 
though, and when it kicked up, it felt like taking Relena's light sun 
hat with it.

	The two ever-vigilant young men simultaneously swung themselves 
over the bench to give chase.  "Got it," Heero laid claim to it.  The 
wind had settled down and dropped the hat square in the middle of the 
grass.

	Duo paused for only half a breath, before deciding to be 
contentious.  It was boring waiting for the bureaucracy to clear up and 
give Relena her meeting with Une, after all, and it was unlikely that 
anything would happen to Relena here, in the middle of Preventers' HQ, 
if they strayed a few meters away from her.  "No," he called out after 
his partner, easily catching up with him.  "I got it."

	Heero was equally bored.  Standing up and walking was a very 
good thing at the moment, especially after the long shuttle ride and the 
long limo ride to get here.  They had walked a bit, but then Relena had 
to organize some papers, and that was hard to do while taking a stroll 
around the grounds, so they had had to sit again for a bit.  He wasn't 
about to stop.  Nor was he about to stop Duo, who not only had been 
sitting still for as long as Heero had been, but also hated being locked 
in cramped spaces for significant periods of time.  Therefore, he puffed 
out what might have been a "hn" and kept right on walking.

	They got to the hat at about the same time, but Duo swooped down 
and snatched it up first.  He spun in an extravagant motion to gloat at 
Heero for no particular reason at all, only to find his partner staring 
off at a flock of birds wheeling their lazy way across the sky.  Duo 
blinked at him, then blinked at the birds, habits of the last few months 
making him automatically assess the birds for any threats.  His mind had 
just started wondering if the birds might be carrying small bombs in 
their feet with which to assassinate the Vice Foreign Minister, and how 
they might be controlled, when he suddenly remembered that they were 
birds, and even less of a threat than that small mob of school children 
that had crowded them on L3.  But then again, it was always what you 
least expected.... Argh, but they were just birds.  He shook his head 
slightly to clear the strange thoughts flitting through his brain, and 
blamed it all on Heero.  Whenever he started staring at something in the 
background, Duo had to assume that Heero was seeing something there that 
he wasn't.  But that was usually with narrowed eyes.  If he had taken 
the time to take a closer look at Heero's face before reflexively 
glancing out to where he was looking, he might have seen a distinct lack 
of narrowed eyes.

	"I like Earth," Heero suddenly murmured as the birds flew out of 
sight behind some trees.

	Ah.  So that explained it, Duo supposed.  "Yeah.  It's got a 
sky.  And birds flying in the sky.  Normal birds.  Not killer robot 
bomb-carrying birds."

	Heero waited all of a second before turning his head to the side 
to transfer his stare to the braided one.  He opened his mouth to say 
something, then apparently thought better of it and let the comment 
slide.  Some things, he was just better off not knowing.

	"And trees.  Trees that don't spit out insidious poison gases 
that would warp our minds and make us all think we're fluffy bunnies."

	Some things, though, just invited comment.  "I'm beginning to 
understand why they insist we have these regular psych exams," he said 
mildly.  And the Preventers did.  Insist that they have regular psych 
exams, that is, just in case they were suppressing some horrible war 
memories that would break out at just the wrong times, or the like.  But 
while seeing conspiracies was sometimes a symptom of post-traumatic 
stress disorder, fluffy bunnies probably didn't figure into that very 
often.  And it didn't help that Duo didn't take the first exam very 
seriously, which led to some very concerned and perhaps overzealous 
psychologists that to this day were still monitoring him for signs of a 
variety of mood and dissociative disorders they thought they may have 
seen that first time.

	"Hey, I was just saying...," Duo responded blithely.

	"That the trees are out to get you?"

	"No, that the trees aren't out to get me.  I was just stating 
the facts, man.  Just like how the grass isn't purple.  And the sun's 
not made of cheese.  And you're not a big orange fish with yellow polka 
dots.  And I'm not a reincarnated piece of stone from one of the Wonders 
of the Ancient World.  Although I suppose I can't really know that for 
sure."

	Heero just Looked at him, an interesting mixture of slightly 
confused, yet sort of amused.

	"I'm not a little teapot, either," he continued.  "Or a 
cryptographic algorithm.  Or a guy that can make it rain with a little 
dance."  He did a mad little caper upon the grass to illustrate his 
point.  "Or a birthday arrangement of daisies.  Or that one sock that 
always gets lost in the dryer.  Or maybe it's the washer.  I mean, who 
counts how many socks come out of the washer?  Or that muffin that you 
ate for breakfast yesterday.  I don't mean that socks come out of the 
muffin, I mean I'm not that muffin either."

	The sprinklers chose that moment to turn on.  Heero stood there 
a moment actually thanking their good timing before moving to run off 
the grass.  He caught sight of Relena laughing at them from her place of 
safety.

	Duo's laugh stopped him, and he turned, eyeing the fall of water 
cautiously as it crept its way closer towards them.  "Rain!" Duo 
marveled.  "I guess really can call it."

	"Hn," he answered, and turned to leave again, only Duo's hand 
stopped him this time.

	"Hey, where do you think you're going?"

	"Rain," he pointed out rather obviously, and tried to tug them 
both to somewhere drier.

	"Oh, come on, where's the fun in that?  If I called it, I might 
as well enjoy it, right?"  He then latched himself onto Heero and began 
hauling him in the direction of one of the sprinkler heads, with the 
sure knowledge that Heero wasn't going to hurt him trying to escape.

	Relena's hat got dropped sometime along the way.

                              ************

	The only sign of Lady Une's surprise when they had walked in the 
door of her office was an upraised eyebrow.  "Vice Minister," she 
greeted instead, nodding to Relena.  "Sorry to keep you waiting.  
Please, have a seat.  And you, gentlemen...."

	"Yes, ma'am?" Duo snapped out smartly.  Heero stared straight 
ahead like a good, silent little soldier, as if nothing at all were 
wrong with the world.

	She studied them for another long moment as Relena smothered a 
giggle in her hand.  "I trust you two have spare uniforms?"

	"Yes, ma'am."

	"Use them.  Dismissed."

	"Yes, ma'am."

                              ************

	OL1 just got back from the coffee machine to find OL2 over at 
the next desk staring at the Commander's closed office door.  "What, did 
I miss something?"

	OL2 blinked her attention back to her fellow office assistant 
and managed to get her jaw closed.  "Miss something?  Did you ever!"

	"What could possibly be so attention-worthy in the Commander's 
office?"

	"Only two of the most gorgeous guys in the building walking in 
there, dripping wet!"

	"Pardon me?"

	"God, I almost died when they came in!  The way their shirts 
clung to their skin.  The way their *pants* clung to their--"  She broke 
off suddenly as the door opened and the two watered down men in question 
walked out of the office again, made their way across the room and out 
the other side.  The one with the braid seemed to have been stifling a 
smile, but then again, the ladies were hardly looking at their faces.

	"Oh.  My.  God."  They left the two gaping ladies staring and 
drooling in their wakes.

                              ************

	They were back in the Commander's office later looking a little 
more respectable.  Although the ladies outside were a little 
disappointed, they swooned nevertheless, gossiping amongst themselves of 
how incredibly lucky the Vice Foreign Minister must have been to have 
the two of them close by her side for months.

	Relena was gone by this time, but she had stopped by to say bye 
to them first, and they said they'd maybe drop by her place first before 
taking off for home, since it was so close by.  Both Preventers HQ and 
the office of the Foreign Ministry were near the center of Earth 
politics.

	At the end of their debriefing, Duo brought up the issue of 
Relena taking a vacation.

	"Yes," Une said.  "She mentioned something along those lines."

	"Really?" Duo blinked.  "I would have thought she'd be eager to 
get back to her work.  Not that she hasn't been doing work for the last 
few months."

	"She mentioned it.  She didn't say she particularly endorsed the 
idea."

	"Ah, that sounds more like it.  Do you endorse the idea?"

	"She would, of course, need protection," she pointed out.  "I 
don't think she'd want to impose on your time any longer than she 
already has."

	"She said that," Heero stated rather than asked.

	"Yes."

	"She is just like you, Heero!" Duo said, comically frustrated.  
"Can't you guys be a little selfish sometimes?"

	"I agree with her," Une refuted.  "This last tour was long 
enough.  You need some downtime.  Besides, you two aren't even full time 
Preventers.  We can easily find someone else to look after her."

	"No."  Heero's negation came swiftly and automatically.  Duo 
looked at him with a shadow of a smirk, but Heero said nothing further.  
It didn't need to be said that he wouldn't trust anyone else to guard 
Relena if he hadn't met, reviewed, and tested them himself.

	"Then we have a problem, gentlemen."

	And they cogitated upon that problem for a little while before 
Heero came up with a quiet suggestion he directed more at Duo than Une.  
"She can come with us."

	Duo thought about that for a moment before spreading his lips in 
a slow smile.  "Yes.  Yes, I think she could."

	"Are you two going somewhere?" Une inquired.

	"Yep.  If we're all on vacation together, then it wouldn't be us 
working then, right?"

	The commander cast what may have been a wry look at Heero.  "Do 
you really think you could relax if you thought she needed guarding?"

	Duo cut in with the answer.  "If she's somewhere secure, sure.  
Somewhere that won't be leaked to the media.  Somewhere very low key.  
Somewhere that we're really familiar with already."

	"And where would this paradise be?"

	"Home."

---------
OL stands for Office Lady.

_________________________________________
This piece of fiction is the intellectual 
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The basis for this fic, i.e. Gundam Wing, 
Kyuuketsuki Miyu, et al., is the property 
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http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~jchew/misc/gw.html

last modified : 3/9/2002 16:28:46 PST