~~Mother, I've been good, and I've been kind,
Mother doing only what I learned from you.
Why then am I left behind?
Is there something else that I should do?
What is wrong with me, Mother?
Something must be wrong with me....~~

Relena shut off the music with an irritable sigh. Normally, the musical relaxed her, played admirably into her natural tendency for drama. But today, today she just wasn't up to hearing Cinderella's mother's reply. It floated up from her memory, anyway.

/Are you sure that what you wish is what you want?/

"No," she said into the emptiness of her richly appointed bedroom, "I'm not sure. But what else can I do?" Her lips quirked in amusement, and she sang lightly, "How can I know what I want 'till I get what I want and see if I like it?" She shook her head ruefully. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't abandon her habit of talking to herself. Chalk it up to one more relic of a lonely diplomat's daughter, one that had spent far too many days on her own in empty hotel rooms, staring out the windows and dreaming of doing something meaningful.

Well, that particular wish had come true /Wishes come true, not free.../ and she had found that she did, indeed, like it. As the head of the Sank Kingdom, Relena Peacecraft was able to finally work to fulfill her father's -- both of them -- dreams of peace. And peace was a worthy goal... wasn't it?

So why was she in love with one of the most perfect warriors in the world? A young man who was almost the living embodiment of everything that she hated, of all the death and coldness and terror that was the "glory" of violence. One who would have no place in the ideal she worked for... Relena just couldn't see Heero ever being able to break out of his warrior's shell. He was meant for the cold steel of a Gundam; Relena simply could not imagine him as a shopkeeper, mundane college student... or as the consort for the Queen of the pacifistic Sank Kingdom. Even the image was absurd.

Relena sighed again. And yet. When she looked at Heero, fierce-eyed and dark, something in her heart cried out. It made her foolish, she could admit that, but it also made her strong. Without his example she'd never had had the courage to challenge OZ, and to take up the thread of the ruined Sank monarchy once again. "How strange, Father," she murmured to the picture by her bedside, "even I, dedicated to the principles of total nonviolence, Even I ultimately gain my strength from a warrior. Is Dorothy right? Is humanity doomed to love war and those who fight it, regardless of the human lives it costs us?" For a moment, her blue eyes were clouded with sadness and pain.

"Miss Relena?" She turned towards the door, the hurt receding into the graceful, perfect mask that the Peacecraft heir had perfected when she was only a Dorlian.

"Yes, Pagin?"

"President Edrick has come to call. His Council has decided to side with the Sank Kingdom and their nonviolent principles."

Relena smiled, feeling the small shiver of rightness in her heart. "I'll be right there, Pagin. Thank you." She checked her hair and make-up in the mirror. Maybe she was not the perfect paragon of Peace... but if she could save even one life, then she'd count her life well spent.

With measured steps, the Queen of the Sank Kingdom went out to face the world once again.