“You’re the only piece that fits.” In the darkness of the peaceful night these whispered words fell on deaf ears, and were swallowed by the stillness of the cool air.

Outside a chilly breeze blew, carrying the salty sea scent that was dominant everywhere. Waves pounded the rocks, pushing and pulling them with the tides creating the grainy sand and sending a misty spray into the air. There was no reason to be awake, nothing preventing him from resting, but here he was very alert and yet tired and unable to sleep.

What would he think if eyes really glowed in the dark like the ridiculous cartoons he had been so recently introduced to?

“Though it doesn’t make any sense,” he continued voicing his earlier thought.

Relena still wasn’t listening; she heard nothing. She didn’t need to; it was understood before now, even if never said aloud. Silence talks with a different tongue and some things just speak in their own language and they both knew this. For a while the only sound was her steady breathing, the only movement her chest rising and falling, barely perceptible in the absence of light.

“A puzzle, but you’re the only one that fits, and the only one that shouldn’t be mine.” The dark-haired man smiled at the gentle, foreign feeling of delight in him. Yes she was his, beside him now as she had sweetly promised to always be—with him, no explanation needed. He thought of the soft light and shine in her cerulean orbs when she seriously looked at him.

“Like a jigsaw puzzle. One of those seventy-eight or one hundred piece cardboard toys,” he continued. “Not a one thousand or five thousand one, I won’t pretend to be that complex, because I’m not. But somehow you’re the only piece that fits.”

Heero pulled his tan hand from under the blankets and held it above his own face, examining the palm. Before he could only picture them holding a gun or the controls of a Gundam. If his hand was empty he knew it would only be a short time before he once again had to pick up one or the other, but that had passed as all things do; sand in the hour glass, rivers to the sea. Her hands, Relena’s pale, smooth, and tender hands, one resting lightly on her stomach, so close, they fit. It seemed so natural the first time, and every time after, she had slipped those slender fingers between his own. They fit—they belonged.

“A border and other scattered pieces,” Heero expanded his analogy, rolling on to his side and talking in a hushed voice to his sleeping princess. “Some colorful and vibrant,” he thought of Duo, a part of his life he couldn’t overlook, a piece that refused to be ignored. “Others gray, some misshapen, warped—lying inside and out of the frame. Many placed using the philosophy, ‘if it doesn’t fit get a bigger hammer.’” The dark-haired man paused thinking how to continue after that uncharacteristic remark.

It didn’t matter how those other things came into his life, or if they could never go away. They were there, as simple as that; permanent, unchangeable, some unpleasant, but none were as real as the honey-colored tresses snaking across the pillows. Not one was as tangible as her delicate skin or the warmth coming from the body just below the down covers.

Lying on her side, Relena shifted her position, bending her legs closer to her body for the added warmth. Heero ran his fingers through the silky strands that had moved as she pushed her head further into the embonpoint pillow, thinking of those times when embracing her that he had placed his cheek on those same locks and smelled the lingering scent of her shampoo. They slid so easily across his hand. Felt so soothingly right, pleasingly normal, like when he held her close, the way his arms carelessly, naturally wrapped around Relena, pressing her to him, the way she would rest her head on his chest. No gaps; there in each others arms, she belonged.

Heero slid closer to his stability, his love, his no-longer-missing piece, his wife. Gingerly he brushed his hand across her back feeling the satiny fabric of her gown as he moved his arms to wrap them around her. He bent his legs to match the curve of hers. Without waking she accepted his intimacy, folding her fingers around his, slipping even further into his embrace.

“You’re the only one. The only one that belongs, the only piece that fits.”