Disclaimers: I don’t own Gundam Wing or anything affiliated with it. I’m not making money from this fic.

Meaningless Advice

"You are such a coward."

Not the statement he had expected to hear as he entered the house, but in retrospect, perhaps he should have. The sentence didn’t bother him much, he’d heard it before and they both believed it to be true. He didn’t respond. He wasn’t in the best of moods at the time, not that he ever was, but now he was particularly, ah well, upset was not the right word. He wasn’t sure what was though.

"Well?"

He turned back to the other occupant of the room, still not saying anything.

"Aren’t you going to tell me what happened? You’re practically a brother to me, Heero, you even have your own room here. You can talk to me about whatever you want, including where you go. Not that I don’t already know."

Still no response. Then: "How do you know?"

He was met with an amused chuckle. "You think I don’t keep tabs on you?"

He glared.

"Look, I know you feel like you have to protect her, and I know where you go when you’re not on an ‘official’ mission or at home."

"Home?" he asked.

"Oh, you know you’re welcome here. Like I said before, coward, you’re practically family. I would hope you’d consider this place you’re home by now. It has to be a friendlier environment than where ever it was you grew up."

"That wouldn’t take much," he scoffed.

"Look, Heero, why don’t you just tell me what happened?"

"She saw me." A short, simple statement that didn’t fail to impact Heero’s ‘family’ member the way he had intended.

"Then what happened?"

"I left. I couldn’t stand to be so close to her..."

"Is that all?"

"No."

"Maybe you should elaborate."

Heero considered the suggestion.

"I can’t let her see me. I can’t protect her if she’s aware of my presence; she’ll try to get too close. I can’t afford that."

"She really affects you that much?"

"NO!"

A stifled giggle. "Go on."

"I was watching her, last night. I normally don’t stay so long, but I just didn’t leave then. She had a nightmare, judging by her body movement. She sat up abruptly and was breathing heavily," he clarified before there was a comment on his mention of her body. "She got up, turned on the lights and saw me. So I left."

"Mm-hm. And neither of you said anything? You just disappeared? I don’t believe that."

"She asked questions," he conceded.

"Not surprising."

Heero smirked, the closest thing he’d have to a smile at the moment.

"And then I insulted her a bit. She got mad and threw the bear I gave her at me. And I left. I stood underneath her balcony until she cried herself to sleep and put the bear back. And then I came," he paused. He had planned on saying ‘here’ but didn’t. "Home."

"I see. Can you explain one more thing to me, though: just how long it takes a ‘Perfect Soldier’ to get over his bouts of denial when he realizes he’s as human as the rest of us?"

"Shut up, Sylvia."

"Are you going to go back?"

Heero paused. "Where?"

"You know what I’m talking about. Back to Relena, watching over her, are you going to go back?"

"Yes. I told her I’d protect her, and that’s one promise to her I intend to keep. She just doesn’t need to know." Heero turned away from Sylvia to go to the room that somewhere along the line had been designated his. "I’ll go back," he murmured to himself, softly enough so that Sylvia couldn’t hear. "Just not right away. I’ll protect you, Relena. No matter who your enemies are, no matter where you are, no matter where I want us to be, I’ll protect you."

"Heero, Heero, Heero," Sylvia Noventa scoffed as she watched Heero retreat upstairs, "Didn’t Grandmother’s letter teach you anything? You’re still such a coward. You just can’t face anything but battle. Feeling something shouldn’t affect people the way it effects you. You’re human, Suicide Boy, and the sooner you realize that, the better off everyone who cares about you will be. Because you’ll be that much happier."

~Owari~

Author Notes: Heero tends to disappear between missions, and for some reason I like to think he hangs out with Sylvia Noventa. Don’t ask why, it’s just something. ^_^

And one more thing: I only wrote a sequel to ‘Worthless Dreams’ because I wanted to say the following: Unlike all the cliched fics where situations like that in ‘WD’ are the beginning of the fic, in my story it was supposed to be the ending. It was an anti-romance because it doesn’t leave the reader with a warm fuzzy feeling, the characters are just left thinking ‘Now what?’ ‘WD’ left Heero and Relena thinking that, and now, I’ve added Sylvia into the mix.