Yet another story by the lovely me.  Disclaimer, shishclaimer, why is that necessary?  I don't own it, I just like writing about it.  Aia and Kenyu and all those other kids that are mentioned but aren't major characters are mine, though.

Live and Love

    Aia awoke suddenly, sitting straight up in her bed.  She was short of breath and sweat was pouring down her face and body, making her shorts and tank top night clothes stick to her skin.  She laid a hand to her forehead.  The nightmares…..they were back, more frequent, more real.  She pulled off the bed sheets as her father ran into the room, his gun drawn.  She had screamed as she awoke.  He had heard her and thought something was happening to her.
    “The nightmares?” he asked as he put away his gun.  He walked over to the bed as the 18-year-old slid out of it.
    She simply nodded before walking past him into the bathroom.  She closed the door behind her and stepped into the shower, turning the water on.  She let the cold water fall like icecicles on her face as she peeled off the wet clothing.  She threw them into the sink and stepped out of the shower after turning off the water.
    In her bedroom, her father, Heero Yuy, looked around, checking all the dark corners, her closet, under her bed, anywhere that someone could be hiding.  He looked up as she came back into the room in a bathrobe, drying her hair.  She put on a pair of slippers and threw the towel on the floor near the foot of her bed.  She picked her comb off the desk as she walked to the door.
    She stepped into the hall to see her Uncle Milliardo and Aunt Lu standing just outside the door.  She walked past them and headed down the stairs.
    “I’m going to go get some tea.”
    Heero was about to follow when Noin stopped him.  “I’ll go.”
    He nodded and Noin followed her down the stairs, not saying anything to her.
    Milliardo looked to Heero.  “The nightmares?”
    Heero nodded.  “They’re seeming to be more real now.  She knows he’s back.  We can’t keep that fact from her.  It’s not helping to protect her.”
    Milliardo nodded.  “I know.  But if we tell her, what do you think she’s going to do?  She’s got too much of you in her.”
    Heero nodded.  “That’s what I’m worried about.”  He closed his eyes a moment.  “I wish I could have done something to save her.  Maybe Aia would have been less like the suicidal soldier I am and more like the pacifist she was.”
    Milliardo laid a hand on his shoulder.  “Aia’s chosen her own path.  There’s nothing either of us can do to change that, no matter how hard we try.  In that respect, she has more of Relena in her than we realize.  There’s nothing either one of us could have done to save Relena.  We did all we could.”
    “But it wasn’t enough, Zechs,” Heero replied through a broken voice.  “It wasn’t enough.  And I refuse to let Aia live through that again.”  He slammed a fist into the wall, nearly punching a hole through it.

<<<Flashback>>>

    Heero pulled the trigger on his gun and blew the door knob off of the door.  It had been locked from the other side, and his shoulder was too badly bruised to ram it.  With a swift kick, the door flew open.  He rushed in to find Relena’s office in shambles.  Pieces of glass from the window behind her desk were everywhere.  Shards of it were even stuck into the wall across the room.  Shelves were overturned, books all over the place.  Not one thing that was in her office was intact.
    In one corner of the room, farthest from the window, his 4-year-old daughter sat, clutching her knees to her chest, rocking back and forth, her eyes never blinking, never looking away from the site of what lay next to the desk.
    Heero fell to his knees next to the body of his beloved.  He just stared at her blood-stained dress, unable to bring himself to do anything.  The shape her body was in was indescribable, humanly impossible.  How could this have happened?  Heero closed his eyes for a brief moment before placing the barrel of his gun next to his temple.  He was about to pull the trigger when he re-opened his eyes.  Aia could be seen in the corner of his eye.  She hadn’t moved from her spot in the corner, and wasn’t likely to until someone picked her up and moved her.
    I can’t leave her like this.  I have to be strong, for Aia.  He forced his gun away from his head and placed it in its holster.  He forced his eyes away from his love and crawled on his hands and knees over to Aia.  He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close.  He sat next to her and just held her close.
    The minute she felt the warmth and safety of her father’s arms, the 4-year-old broke down into tears.  She had seen everything, heard everything.  Every attack was etched into her mind, every scream, burned into her ears.  As soon as her mother had fallen silent, the large man turned to the girl, began walking towards her, then suddenly turned and exited through the window behind the desk, from where he entered.  She knew, one day, he would be back.

<<<Present>>>

    “There’s nothing you could have done, Heero,” Milliardo kept telling him.  
    “Yes, there was, Zechs,” he replied coldly.  “He was after me.”

    Aia pulled her robe tighter around her as she reached the bottom of the stairs.  She stared at the lighted Christmas tree for a few moments.  Of all nights to be having the nightmares, it was Christmas Eve.  She sighed and looked at the grandfather clock that stood on one side of the fireplace.  It was just after midnight.  Christmas Day, now.  She shook her head and looked to the stairs as her aunt approached the bottom.
    "Are you --"
    "--Yes, Aunt Lu.  I'm fine."  She walked into the kitchen and put some water into a kettle and set it on the stove.  She turned the fire on and waited for the water to heat.  She pulled two mugs out of the cabinet and two tea bags.  She really didn't mean to cut her aunt's sentance off, but they all know better than to ask either one of the Yuy's if they're "alright."
    Noin nodded and followed her into the kitchen.  She sat down at the table and looked up at her niece.  "No you're not.  You just say that.  I've known you for 18 years, Aia.  I've known your father for longer.  Both of you are the same.  We've learned to tell whether or not you two are alright."
    She turned her head to face her aunt.  "I'm fine.  Just....sick and tired of having these nightmares.  Why won't they go away?"  She looked back to the kettle as it began to whistle.  She poured the water into the mugs and placed a tea bag in each one.  She carried them to the table, setting one in front of her aunt.  She sat next to her.
    Noin shrugged.  "I don't know, hon." She sighed as she stirred her tea.  She decided the best path to take, to lighten Aia’s mood, was to change the subject.  “You know everyone’s going to be here tomorrow, right?”
    By ‘everyone’, she meant the entire ‘Gundam’ family.  Wufei and Sally had married, much to everyone’s surprise, the year before Aia was born.  They had a son, Kenyu, now 18 years old.  Duo and Hilde were married, and had three children; 17-year-old Duo Jr., 9-year-old Brendon, and 4-year-old Emily.  Quatre had married Trowa’s sister, Catherine, also much to everyone’s surprise, and had a 15-year-old son, Jackson.  Trowa, still single, had somewhere, somehow, adopted a 3-year-old, Kindel.  Milliardo and Noin had 18-year-old twins, Alexander and Adam, and a 16-year-old daughter, Alexis.
    They had all remained pretty close since the end of the war. And on all holidays and the kids’ birthdays, they got together.  The older kids would spend the late morning and early afternoons together and parties would be in the evenings, except Christmas, that was an all day event.
    They heard a loud thump upstairs.  Noin looked up.  Aia continued to stare into her tea.  “It was just Daddy,” she said quietly, “hitting the wall……again.”
    Noin nodded and turned back to her drink, also to the conversation.  “Please don’t drag Ken and Duo Jr. into another fight.  The three of you have already been expelled from school for the rest of the semester because of it.”
    Aia raised her eyes to look at her aunt.  “It wasn’t my fault.  It never is.  Maxwell Jr. just can’t keep his mouth shut.  It’s his loud mouth that starts it in the first place.”
    Noin chuckled. “Unfortunately just like his dad. Just…try to control your ‘Yuy’ temper in front of Kindel and Emily.”
    Aia nodded.  “I’ll try, but I can’t promise anything.”
    Noin nodded.  “That’s fine, dear.”  She took a sip of her tea.
Several minutes went by with silence between them.  Noin set her empty cup in the sink and sat back at the table.  Aia hadn’t drank very much of her tea.  She just stared into the liquid, silently, occasionally taking a small sip or two.  She looked up as Noin sat back down.
    “You don’t need to stay down here, Aunt Lu.  I’ll be alright.”
    Noin looked at her niece skeptically for a moment the nodded.  “Okay, Aia.  Just don’t stay up too much later.”  She pushed her chair in after getting up and headed towards the door, giving Aia a kiss on the head as she passed her.  “And please, for goodness sakes, control that temper tomorrow.”
    Aia gave a small smile.  “I already told you, I’ll try.  But you know the ‘Yuy’ temper as well as anyone.  It’s difficult to control.”
    Noin nodded, with that skepticism again, “Yeah, right.”  She patted Aia on the shoulder as she turned to leave.
    “Aunt Lu?” asked Aia, shifting in her chair to face Noin.
    Noin stopped in the door and turned back to her.  “Yes?”
    “Is there any possible way we can NOT invite the Maxwell’s and Chang’s for Christmas?”  Aia’s smile grew in a half-joking manner.
    A chuckle escaped from Noin.  “Think about it, kid.  It wouldn’t be Christmas around here without them.”
    Aia laughed and nodded.  “Yeah, you’re right.”
    Noin laughed and left the kitchen.
    Aia stretched her neck from her chair to make sure her aunt was upstairs before she stood up, dumped what was left of her tea down the drain, and set the cup in the sink.  She walked to the back door, pulled off her robe and her slippers.  She had put on a pair of shorts, a pair of socks, and a white sweatshirt while she was in the bathroom.  The back door was right next to the washroom.  She stepped into the room and pulled a pair of black jeans out of a basket of clean clothes.  She slipped them on over her shorts.  She put on a pair of tennis shoes she had left by the back door.  She took her black leather jacket off of the coat rack next to the door and put it on as she opened the door, quietly.  She stepped out into the snow and pulled the door shut.
    She zipped up the jacket and jogged across the snow-covered lawn.  She slipped through the bars on the fence that outlined the property.  She jogged down the street about a block or two before opening the gate on a picket fence.  She closed the gate and walked into the back yard.  There was a large oak tree in the back yard where a tree house had been built.  She climbed the ladder into the tree house and through one of the houses windows onto a limb that reached over the yard to brick house about 20 feet from the tree.  She slowly crawled across the limb and knocked on the second story window.
    She waited a few moments before knocking again.  A small lamp on the nightstand beside the window was turned on.  The dark haired, dark eyed, young man looked at her from the other side.  Quickly, he opened the window.  He shivered as the cold air hit his bare chest.
    “Aia,” he whispered.  “What the hell are you doing out there?”  He grabbed her arm gently to help pull her inside.  “What do you think you’re doing, going out there at this hour, in that weather,” he paused a moment, “and with wet hair?”  He shut the window behind her.
    “Shhh, Ken,” she whispered.  “You’ll wake your parents.”  She opened his bedroom door a crack and peeked down the hallway.  Seeing and hearing no sign of movement coming from his parents’ room, she closed the door again, just as he placed a dry, warm towel on her head.
    She pulled the towel off of her hair and gave him that famous ‘Yuy death glare’.  “I am not a child, Mr. Chang.  Do not treat me like one.”  Her glare fell in a matter of moments of just staring at him.  She sighed and placed the towel back onto her freezing hair.
    “The nightmares?” he asked as he walked over to the desk, picked up a T-shirt, and put it on.
    She nodded.  “I can’t stand this, Ken.  They’re getting more real.  I’m getting them more often.  And lately…there’s been something there that hasn’t been there before.”  She wrapped her hair up in the towel.  “I can’t really explain it.”
    “Aia,” he said as he took a seat beside her.  “Why do you keep coming to me with this stuff?  If anyone should be hearing this, it should be your dad.  No one understands what you are going through.  If you’re going to get through this, you need his trust and he needs yours.”
    “Is trust the reason we haven’t told anyone about US?”  She looked up at him.
    “That’s getting off the subject.” He stared down at her.  “You always do that.”  He stood up and walked to the door.  “That’s one thing you and your father have in common.  You both find some way around your problems.  You, at least, admit to your problems.  Your father doesn’t even do that.  If you want help, Aia, go talk to your father.  I care for you, Aia, I do, but this is something I can’t help you with.”
    “Shh, Ken,” said Aia as she stood up, pulled off the towel that was around her head, and began walking over to him.  “You’ll wake up your….” She paused as his bedroom door opened.  Sally and Wufei were standing at the door. “….parents.”  She laid a hand on her head and muttered under her breath. “Dammit.”
    Sally shook her head a moment and looked to Wufei.  “Heero was right.”
    Wufei scoffed.  “As usual.”
    She looked back to Aia.  “Go call your father, young lady.”
    Aia nodded.  “Yes, ma’am.”  She gave a look to Kenyu as she made her way towards the door.
    "On second thought," said Sally, glancing out Kenyu's window.  "It looks like the weather's picking up.  I'll call him.  You'll stay here tonight.  Wufei, go make sure there are sheets on the bed in the guest room..."
    "Why can't she stay in here..?" Wufei started before glancing to Sally, receiving one of the coldest looks possible from her.                "...Alright, woman, alright..." He steps out the door and down the hallway, muttering to himself.
    "Ken, take Aia into our bathroom and get out the hair dryer and dry that hair of hers." She made her way down the hallway to the stairs.
    Kenyu nodded and took Aia's hand.  "Come on...." he said as he pulled her out into the hallway.

    Heero placed the phone back on the cradle and turned to Noin and Milliardo.  He'd known that Aia had snuck out again, when Noin had returned upstairs and Aia didn't.  He'd known that Aia was sneaking out for a while, now.  Aia had thought she was careful about it, but you can't hide something from Heero Yuy, especially when his little girl is involved.  And he'd always known that she was sneaking out to the Chang's house.
    He looked past the couple through the window of Aia's bedroom.  "Sally's right," he said.  "This weather has the feel of a blizzard."  He looked back to Noin's and Milliardo's worried faces.  "She's at the Chang's.  She'll stay the night over there.  Hopefully this blizzard will be over by the morning."
    "Why the Chang's?" asked Milliardo as he walked over to the window and stared at the snow and ice that was beginning to fall harder, and harder.
    "Didn't you know?"  Noin turned to him.  "Aia and Ken have been, quote unquote, 'secretly' seeing each other.  Naturally, all the kids know about it.  I heard from Alexis."
    Milliardo glanced to Heero with a glare as if to ask 'And how do you know?'  He quickly looked back to the window after receiving a certain glare from Heero.  He nodded to himself.  He should have known better than to even think that question.
    Noin hid a chuckle as she tugged on her husband's arm.  "Let's go back to bed.  It'll do us no good to stay up and worry about her.  Especially since the Maxwell's insist on showing up at the break of dawn every time we get together.  She'll be alright at the Chang's tonight.  If they can't keep her safe, aside from Heero, no one can."
    Milliardo gave a sigh, indicating that his wife was right.  He stepped away from the window and took her hand.  "Get some sleep, Heero."  He let her lead him to the door.
    Heero nods as they leave the room.  He walked over to the bedside table and turned out the lamp, leaving the only light coming through the bedroom door in the hallway.  He stood in the darkness for a little while.  As he was leaving the room, a picture frame on the dresser by the door caught his eye.  He stopped at the dresser and picked up the frame, turning so he could see it in the light from the doorway.  A small smile came to his lips as he ran his fingers down the photo.  One of the few photographs with just the three of them.  A two-year-old Aia was sitting happily in her mother's lap, her father standing next to the chair.  The little girl had her tiny arms wrapped tightly around her father's arm.
    That picture was taken the day of Aia's second birthday.  She was dressed up in a very cute yellow sleeveless sundress with a daisy print and white sandals.  Her mother was dressed to match, except there was no daisy print on her dress, and her sandals had about an inch heel on them.  Heero was in a pair of khaki shorts, his green tank top, and a pair of white tennis shoes.
Heero smiled again as he set the photo back on the dresser before a cold chill ran down his spine.
    “They grow up so fast, don’t they?”
    Heero’s hand immediately settled on his gun as he heard the voice behind him.  He didn’t turn to face the source of the voice, however, not yet.
    “This isn’t how the perfect soldier was designed, Yuy.  You were designed to follow orders.  You weren’t designed to have a conscience.  You certainly weren’t designed to fall in love, have a family.  I own your life, Yuy.”  There was emphasis of disgust on certain parts.
    “I am human, Old Man.  Every human’s life is his own.  Every human life has a conscience.  Every human has the right to live and love as he sees fit.”  Heero spoke calmly and softly.
    The man behind him scoffed.  “Very philosophical, Yuy.”  He laughed.  “Very well spoken, indeed.”  He laughed more.  “You weren’t designed for this, Yuy.  I had hoped that killing the pacifist would put you back in your place.  If it weren’t for having to go into hiding because of your Preventers, I would have taken care of the little girl, as well.”
    Heero clenched his fist slightly, trying to hold his anger back.
    “I really do hate injuring children, Yuy, especially children as young as your daughter was back then.  But she’s not a child, anymore, is she now?  She’s a beautiful young woman, Yuy.  And I really would hate to do harm to that beautiful body.”
    Heero’s grip on his gun tightened as he turned, slowly, towards the voice.  Because of the darkness in the room.  Only his shadow was seen in front of the open window, flakes from the falling snow outside drifting in onto the carpet.
    “Stay away from her if you know what’s good for you, Old Man,” he said, his calm voice turning to anger.
    The man laughed again.  “If you had followed orders, you wouldn’t have to worry about it.”  Another laugh.  “I promise you that she’ll stay safe and sound.  As long as you are capable to resume your duties as my perfect soldier.”
    Something behind the old man caught Heero’s eye.  He let his grip on the gun loosen.
    “I can’t do that, Old Man.  I would gladly put my life in her place.  But you’re asking me to resume a war that can end only in death and destruction, with no victor.”
    “You’re willing to give up your daughter’s life for the lives of strangers?  You’ve grown more foolish than I’ve thought.”
    “He’s not foolish,” came the girl’s voice from behind the old man.  “He just knows where his priorities are.”  As the old man spun around in surprise, Aia balled her hand into a tight fist and threw a punch into the old man’s face.
    In the darkness, it was a little difficult for Heero to see the battle that went on between his daughter and the old man.  He was about to reach for the light switch when a loud crack was heard outside just before the rest of the house went black.  The strong wind had blown down an electrical line.  All he could do was wait.

    Milliardo and Noin hadn't even gotten to their bedroom door when the electricity went out.  They heard someone running up the stairs.  Milliardo had his gun drawn by the time the person reached the top of the stairs.  The light from the person's flashlight shown in his face.
    "Zechs, it's me, Ken," said the person as he lowered his flashlight.
    "What are you doing here?" asked Noin as she stepped around her husband.
    Ken motioned his flashlight down the hall.  "Aia said she had a bad feeling about something not long after Mom got off the phone with Heero.  She raced back down here."
    All voices quieted as they heard loud thumps down the hallway.
    "Aia's room," said Milliardo as he took off down the hallway.
    Kenyu and Noin followed, Ken's flashlight leading the way.  The three of them stopped in the doorway behind Heero.  Noin was just about to ask Heero what was going on when a gunshot rang through the mansion.  Kenyu dropped his flashlight, causing it to lose its batteries.  They all stood in darkness and silence.  Not one sound was coming from the room.
    "Aia?" asked Kenyu, softly, his heart caught in his throat.
    There was no answer.  Nothing could be heard.  Kenyu held his breath.
    "Aia?" he asked again, softer.
    Heero laid his hand on the boys shoulder.  He knew what happened.  He knew, very well.  "Just wait," he said.
    Kenyu glanced in the direction of Heero's voice just as the electricity came back on.  He immediately reached around Heero to flip on the lights in Aia's room.  He turned back to the room, shocked at what he saw.
    Aia was lying on her back in the middle of the floor, breathing heavily.  The old man lay face down on top of her, a bullet hole running through his chest from front to back.
    "Do me a favor....," she said, in between breaths.
    Kenyu walked into the room and knelt beside her.  "Yes?"
    She looked up at him and smiled.  "Get this son of a bitch off of me?"
    He chuckled.  "Sure."
    Heero and Milliardo walked in, each taking one of the dead man's arms, and pulled him off of her.  They dragged him out of the room as Kenyu helped Aia into a sitting position.  Noin walked into Aia's bathroom and started drawing a hot bath.

    Aia plopped onto the sofa next to Kenyu after grabbing a bagel from the table in the dining room.  She tore it in half and gave one half to Kenyu as she bit into the other half.  She looked at the grandfather clock that stood near the stairway.  It was nine a.m.  She looked back to Kenyu.
    "The Maxwell's are late," she said, after swallowing a piece of the bagel.
    "You're tellin' me," she heard from behind.  She turned around to face Duo, Jr. as he walked around the sofa and collapsed in a recliner to Aia's right.  "The car stalls on us halfway here and Pop gets this wonderful idea for me an' him to push it here."  He shook his head a little, bits and pieces of snow falling all over the recliner.  He was dressed in a pair of Heero’s sweat pants and shirt since his and his father’s were being dried.  He sighed and laid back in the recliner.  “Wake me when everyone else gets here?”
    Aia raised a brow.  What, no picking? No fighting? She smiled and looked at Kenyu.  “Poor Junior.” She chuckled and nodded.  “Sure, we’ll wake you up.”  She leaned closer to Kenyu as she saw Duo Jr. close his eyes.  “Wanna just let him sleep?  It’d be a hell of a lot quieter,” she whispered.
    “We could do that,” he whispered back before he took a bite of his half of the bagel.  “But then, it won’t be much quieter since his dad’s bugging yours.”
    She nodded.  “True.”  She stood up off the sofa and started walking into the dining room.
    Kenyu stood up and followed her.  “So, did you sleep well last night?”
    She stopped in the doorway and looked back to him.  She nodded and smiled.  “In, what, four hours, I slept the best I had in years.  No nightmares, no dreams.  Just deep and restful sleep.”
    Kenyu smiled as he stood next to her in the doorway.  He nodded.  “Good.”
    There was an eerie chill in the air for just a few moments, causing them both to shiver.  They both looked around in the two rooms.  Aside from Duo Jr. asleep in the living room, no one was there.  The front door hadn’t been opened, so there was no cold wind from the outside.  Their eyes met briefly, then both looked upward.  Hanging in the doorway was the faint image of a single sprig of mistletoe.
    Thanks, Mother, thought Aia, in the back of her mind.
As their lips met, the mistletoe disappeared.