Sorry- I screwed up sending this the first time.
The site addy is: http://www.method.org/gundam
This is by Quicksilver and Gerald Tarrant- Sainan no Kekka.
ACT I : PART II
tooi yoake made yorisotte sugoshitai yo
nani mo kamo nakushite mo yasashisa dake nakusazuni
kotoba yori kisu de tagai no kodou kanjite
jounetsu wo hikiyoseru isshun dakedo eien
setsunaku hageshiku mitsumetai
nakitai kurai ni anata dake ga itoshii
Until the far dawn comes, I will be near you
We can lose everything as long as we keep gentleness
>From words to kisses we feel each other's heartbeats
Bringing us closer to passion for a moment, for eternity
Gazing at fierce sorrow
In the weeping dark only you are beloved
Scene V : Reuilding Kingdoms on the River
"You drive me crazy; I just can't sleep."
--Britney Spears, Crazy
There was only one thing in the world that Relena Peacecraft really hated, and that one thing happened to be the former Gundam pilot known as Heero Yuy.
Everything else she could handle. Politicians bent before her like soft grass in a breeze. Servants and underlings bowed to her every wish. Affairs of state were flowing along smoothly, and she was enjoying a nice long break from work in her summer home on the Cinq River.
Heero drove her insane.
Intelligence had turned no leads on the missing boy, reporting to her again and again that no person of this name existed anywhere on galactic records, responding patiently to her endless request for information, glancing at her with that look in their eyes that she had come to know. They thought she was crazy.
Maybe she was crazy...crazy for the Japanese boy who had disappeared at the end of the war and who she had so briefly known.
The sun was bright on the river, and there were pleasure cruisers going up and down the waters. Occasionally the odd decrepit fishing boat scuttled by, a relic of pre-war times, but one of the first things Relena had done was to get the Cinq economy back on its feet after long years of neglect. Her advisors had scoffed at her efforts. Stocks? Shares? When the mostly agrarian economy was barely producing enough food even to feed half of its meager population? She was dreaming, they said.
Barely a year later, she had proved them all wrong. The Cinq economy was booming, converted from agrarian to industrial, trading with other nations and reaping a fair profit in return. The bombed out cities had been repaired and tourists were flocking to the "ancient" kingdom, gawking at the classical restored architecture, and returning to their own countries to write glorified accounts of the magnificent kingdom and its amazing ruler.
Who just happened to be Relena Darlian Peacecraft, Queen of the World.
She really didn't mind the title, though use for it had really passed and been forgotten long ago. Treize Kushrenada...the Romafeller Foundation. Zechs Merquise...Milliard Peacecraft.
She was pleased when he cut his hair. She had seen him three weeks ago and still couldn't get over how different he looked with his hair short. He looked younger, boyish, almost innocent. Though innocent Zechs Merquise certainly was not.
She had thought he had died in the war...after that furious last battle in which the very stars seemed to have been destroyed. Until one day the mysterious visitor appeared at the gates of the palace, demanding to be shown entrance. When he had taken off his hood and cloak and she had seen the long blond hair and the blue eyes, and she had known her brother had come home at last.
He never told her why he had decided to come back or how he had survived. Just that he was glad to see her. She had asked him, of course, but he simply shrugged and smiled and left her to her own guesses.
So she decided if he wanted to play his games with her, she'd do the same to him, to show him that she was not to be played with.
"I don't want you to go by that horrid name anymore," she had told him.
He'd stared at her. "Why not?"
"The war's over, oniichan. You're a new man."
He had laughed. He had thought she was kidding.
Until she had launched the startling headline in the paper: ZECHS MERQUISE ANNOUNCES FORMAL NAMECHANGE TO MILLIARD PEACECRAFT.
He hadn't been happy about that. In fact, he had been downright furious. Milliard, he said, was someone he had created during the war to keep his identity separate from the Zechs that had served Treize Kushrenada and OZ. "I am NOT Milliard Peacecraft!" he had stormed, grabbing her and shaking her. "I have my own identity and I don't need you of all people taking it away from me!"
"I'm not taking it away from you, oniichan," she'd said, standing in the pool of sunlight from the high windows that framed the desk in her audience chamber. She placed her small hands over his large ones on her shoulders. "I'm giving it to you. To start over. A new life. With me. You want that, don't you?"
And of course she had won, like she always did.
Except with Heero.
He infuriated her. Anywhere she got, he was always just one step ahead of her. Always just one wild card ahead of her in the game. She didn't understand. He was just a mere Gundam pilot, and she was the Queen of the World. He could not have won the war without her. She had gotten him out of more tight spots than he could name, and still he was not grateful. He just kept running away.
Her brother had simply shrugged. "Do you know the boy?"
She'd almost screamed in shock. "KNOW him? I practically LIVED with him! I dragged him out of every major situation he's ever been in. He would not have won the war without me!"
"Relena."
His quiet voice had drawn her to him, unwillingly.
"That's not what I meant. Did you know him? Did you know his faults and his flaws and his dreams? Did you accept him for who he was?"
She hadn't answered that, and he had finally left the room.
Milliard hadn't understood. Heero had no faults or flaws or dreams. He was the perfect soldier.
And she was hopelessly in love with him, the one thing she could not catch.
The memories had stirred a sore spot within her and she stood from her sunchair, placing her cold lemonade on the table, and paced to the railing, watching the cruisers.
"Lady Peacecraft."
She turned. One of her bodyguards and her chief advisor, standing there with eyes bowed respectfully.
"Yes? What is it?"
"We have a call from the Head of Internal Affairs back at the capitol. He said there has been some problems with the irrigation plan and he is wondering if you have time to speak to him."
Irrigation plan. The whole plan was a ridiculous affair. Cinq was moving out of agrarian status and had no need for an irrigation system, but she had let the Head dish up a plan of his own, just to humor him. Apparently he hadn't realized that her interest in his plan was merely a cover.
Relena Peacecraft wanted industry. She wanted technology. She wanted an economic boom like the country had never seen before, because she was the Queen of the World and they had said it was impossible for her.
Nothing was impossible for her.
"Tell him I am busy. I'll call him later."
The men bowed and left, leaving her. The breeze stirred the butterfly clips in her hair and she smelled the scent of blooming flowers.
The grass was green and the water was blue...as blue as his eyes.
Heero...
Scene VI : The Boy With no Name
"Burning up, don't know just how far that I can go..."
--John Parr, St. Elmo's Fire
It wasn't any face that haunted Heero Yuy's dreams, but always that buzzing through his head of the entity that he had both come to love and hate, that intangible force that had been known as the Zero system.
It spoke to him in the night, telling him of the power he could have had and the weakness that he was made of not to have taken full advantage of its abilities. It came to him, wrapping him tightly in its embrace and he would struggle and fight until it was no use anymore. And he'd give in to the madness and feel his brain become a mass of wires fused to the parts of the Gundam and his limbs go lax and his body surrender.
And then he would wake up.
He wondered sometimes if it would have really been like that. If he had given into the call of the Zero system, if he would have become a mindless killing machine, just like Wing Zero. Never mind that he thought he already was. After all, it was what Doctor J trained him to be.
Duo had always insisted he was something more than a mindless killing machine. Heero wasn't quite sure if he believed the other Gundam pilot. Duo was secure in his role as Shinigami, never quite facing his past but never quite running from it either, fully aware of why he was fighting and why he had to win the war. Quatre was the same way, fighting for a higher ideal that he believed in. Wufei fought for Nataku. Whoever or whatever that might be or have been, Wufei fought always for something else. Never for himself.
That had left him and Trowa.
Trowa was the most like him, but Trowa had been noble. The pilot of Heavyarms carried himself with a dignity that was far above the common bearing of a killer.
Heero, on the other hand...
Heero Yuy was nothing but a killer.
It was what Doctor J had trained him to be.
After the war had ended, he'd wanted to kill himself. Had decided to, after the semi-party the pilots had had with the crew. Duo had gotten smashing drunk, as he had expected. Quatre had drank very little, but had spent the entire evening shadowing the drunken pilot of Shinigami and making sure the other didn't jump out of any portholes. Trowa sat in a corner, alternately sipping his drink and taking deep drafts of a cigar. He had never figured Trowa to be much of a smoker, but war did change people. Wufei had gone off with Sally somewhere.
Heero had figured he could be alone.
He'd have preferred seppuku, but that would have required someone else to be present, and he had wanted to die alone. There was a dagger that Doctor J had given him for this very purpose, still sheathed in its leather case. He had never taken it out, had never felt the need. Before, there had always been the self-destruct button.
This was different. This was a conscious choice, personal. He would have to slide the blade into his own flesh, watch as the blood pooled around him and as he slid slowly into painful oblivion.
All this he knew.
He positioned the point above his heart and lifted the dagger high.
"Heero! What are you doing??"
Arms flung themselves around him and the dagger was knocked out of his grasp, clattering away behind the drawer that held the leather sheath. He felt warmth pressed against his back, blond hair flowing at the corner of his vision.
"God, Heero, what the hell do you think you're doing?"
He didn't know what to say.
"Omae o korosu."
"Yes, you will! If you killed yourself, you would just as well have killed me too! Don't you know that? Don't you have any common sense? Heero!"
"Relena," he said. "Step away."
"No! I won't let you do this to yourself. Heero, I-"
He heard footsteps in the hallway, a startled gasp.
"Heero, man, what-"
Duo. Duo must have lost Quatre somehow and wandered off on his own.
"Shit!"
That meant Duo had spotted the dagger. Duo, even drunk Duo, was bright enough to know what a dagger meant when he saw one. The other pilot pounded into the room, stopping when his eyes came to rest on Relena.
"Is he-"
"He was going to kill himself!"
"I know that," Duo said. He sounded perfectly sober. "Heero? Are you ok?"
"What kind of question is that?" he snarled, not caring how the words came out. It was a moot point now. "Get out of here and leave me alone! Both of you!" He struggled, but not hard enough to break Relena's grasp on his arms.
He could have, if he wanted to. He could have easily extracted herself from her death grip with a twist of his body, dived for the dagger, brought it up and into his heart before Duo could even move. But he didn't. Instead he just stood there, looking at Duo, when he could have so easily done what both of them were afraid of him doing. And Duo knew that. Their eyes met, and Heero blinked.
The braided pilot sagged against the wall, one hand covering his eyes. "Thank God. Heero, don't scare me like that, man."
"What are you talking about?" Relena's voice was muffled behind him. "He's still dangerous! He's still-"
"My dear," Duo said wearily, "if you're going to go after Heero Yuy, you gotta learn a few things about him. And one of those things is that he's always dangerous, armed or not."
"But-"
Heero leaned forward and slipped out of her grasp. He could feel her gawking behind him, her gasp of horror as he leaned over and picked up the fallen dagger...and handed it to Duo, along with the leather case.
"Keep this for me," he said roughly. "I might still need it in the future."
Duo had taken it, not looking at him.
"I hear you," he had said. "We all might. One day...or another. What's the difference?"
They had all left him, then. Wufei had gone back to Earth. That was all Heero knew and all he cared to find out. Trowa was back at his beloved circus, reunited with Catherine. Quatre...Quatre was an executive now, almost on level with Relena in the political arena, with not quite so many connections. And Duo...
The boy was nowhere to be found.
Granted, Heero hadn't looked far. Duo hadn't wished to be found, and Heero respected that, just as he knew the other pilots and crew respected his wish not to be found. Still, he wondered where the braided pilot was, the boy who, though they both did not care to admit it, had been the best friend he had ever had.
Heero had gone back to his colony, back to face Doctor J, who had basically told him to leave the laboratory and never to come back. Heero had expected that. After all, no one in their right mind, or even in their wrong mind, would want to keep a sixteen year old killing machine around.
So he had gone out in the streets with his meager possessions and his killing ability and people had hired him.
He didn't take dirty jobs, but he took most of what paid. The higher, the better. He had enough common sense to research the jobs before he took them, to know which were the right kind of jobs and which were the wrong kind. Before long, he'd fallen in with a group of semi-professional assassins who worked the streets hunting dirty-dealing crime lords and double-crossing agents. It wasn't the best living, but it paid.
The name he gave to others was Zero, or Wing. There was another boy like him, the dark-haired, dark-skinned leader of the group, who called himself Darkflight. They made a good pair. Soon, there were more jobs for them as a team than the group of them, and the others began to get jealous. So they split.
They called themselves Darkwing. No one who knew anything about the lower levels of humanity in the dredges of Colony L1 was sure if Darkwing was a living human, a ghost, or simply a myth made up to cover more down-to-earth assassination jobs. Except no human being could work the job as perfectly as Darkwing did. They slept in alleyways and hiding holes, taking jobs by word of mouth and demanding payment on word of honor. If the client refused to pay, they killed him too. It was that easy.
And slowly, he forgot.
Except at night the dreams came, and then he would remember. When he jolted awake, and he would have to climb out of the dirty blankets he called a bed, step over the sleeping Darkflight and to the door or opening of whichever hideaway they happened to be staying in that night. Step outside and fall to his knees, remembering the feel of the dagger in his hand.
The memories would be gone by morning.
In waking he was Darkwing, part of something that kept him from remembering, and in sleep he was Heero Yuy, prisoner of the Zero system, Gundam pilot.
The perfect soldier.
He figured as long as he kept killing, the memories would never return completely. That if he kept on killing, maybe someday someone would kill him in turn and then he would be truly free.
Until then, he lived, slept, killed, breathed. Never wondered about his present or his future or his past, except once in a while he thought of a golden-haired girl who had been the very definition of broken innocence and a Gundam pilot who called himself Death and who had once upon a time taken his dagger from him.
Scene VII : School Lessons in Many Languages
"Did you write the Book of Love And do you have faith
In God above If the Bible tells you so"
--Don McLean, American Pie
Duo stood on the edge of the cliff, looking out at the gray waters below. North America was the land of his ancestors, and he had come here to find the roots he had no where else. The war was over; the need for soldiers was gone. He couldn't return to L2; much as he loved the Colonies, he couldn't forgive them for betraying him when he had been fighting for them.
He had tried, lord knew he had tried. Duo had wanted to return to his life before Shinigami, but he couldn't remember when death hadn't been his best friend. He had spent the first three months after the war with Hilde, the girl who knew him better then anyone else. Together they had worked in her salvage yard, buying scrap that spacers brought in. Most of the scrap was twisted wreckage that came from the space battles. Sometimes Duo wondered if he was the one who had inflicted the destruction.
Hilde had tried to make him comfortable, but he was out of sync with the rest of the world. He had spent the last year of his life submerged and hiding, and now learning to re-adjust to society was a problem. Many soldiers had the same problems after a war, but Duo had assumed he would be different. He wanted a normal life.
He wasn't going to get it, no matter how much he wished for it. He was different, and it had been impossible for him to stay on the Colony that held so many bad memories. It was like trying to take a pair of clothes that hadn't fit well to start with and pretend they were a tailored suit.
With regret, he had bid Hilde farewell. She had understood, even if he hadn't. She had packed his bag for him, wordlessly handing a ticket for Washington DC. Her eyes had been terribly sad, and he knew that she wanted to come with him, but she had a business to run. If the world had been perfect, they would have been able to overcome it and go together. But the world wasn't a perfect place.
Landing in North America had been decidedly odd. The air was full of pollution, and it had been a gray, hazy day. His lungs, accustomed to the carefully recycled air of the colonies, had burned as he stepped off the shuttle onto the tarmac. Still, he felt an odd sense of homecoming. There was something inside each colonial that longed for the planet of their origin. Something about Earth called to all its children, no matter how far away they may have been born.
He had caught a cab to the nearest hotel, and started to do his work. He had already had accounts set up in his name during the war, and those accounts had lain fallow until the moment. Accessing the largest account in Geneva, he sent a sizable donation to one of North America's most prestigious academies, ensuring himself a seat, even though the semester had already begun. For large chunks of money, even the most uppity institution would accept a student, particularly if the student had decent grades.
It took Duo a week to create the rest of his legal identity. It was strange to think that this was an identity he might actually be using for the rest of his life, so he took care to be as thorough as possible, even going so far as to use his real name. There was no way he would spend the rest of his life as someone else; he was proud of his name, having chosen it himself. He might not be Shinigami anymore, but he could still be himself.
Arriving at Cliffside Heights, he had plunged gladly into the routine that the school offered. The courses were hardly challenging, but he was careful to always blow a few points off his tests, particularly the physics exams. It wouldn't do to stand out too much.
Duo had his own fan club. Most of the resident female population (and a few of the male population as well) had swooned as soon as they saw him. He wasn't handsome; Duo knew that most people would have called his appearance closer to beautiful. He had an untouchable beauty about him that lured others to him like flies to molasses. The girls all wanted to be the one he loved, but he could have told them it was useless. Still, that didn't stop them from trying.
Like now. He had finished an exam early, and taken off to the cliffs where the school was located. The school used to be a five-star hotel, but had been converted around the start of the twenty-first century. The students were amazingly lucky in that the administration had decided to leave the rooms mainly alone, giving amazingly spacious dorm rooms.
Duo wasn't too concerned about that. What he enjoyed was the untouched beauty of nature that surrounded the school. He spent time every night staring at the stars and colonies, thinking. It was such a pleasant thing to have time to enjoy the natural wonder of the world. The cliff was one of his favorite places to do so. This late in the day, he could see the setting sunlight reflecting off the Colonies.
Unfortunately, three girls he didn't really know had taken it into their small minds that it would also be a perfect time to corner him alone. Duo hated to be mean, but he simply wasn't interested in any of them. If he couldn't love Hilde, he didn't want to love anyone.
The girls came up to him anyway, and he forced the cheerful smile they expected to see from him onto his face. "Can I help you, ladies?" he said.
They giggled in unison, and Duo barely kept from rolling his eyes. "Duo, we know you're one of the best students at school. We were wondering if you could help us study our French?"
Duo shook his head. "I'm very sorry, but I simply don't have time," he said, stretching the truth a little. "I'm doing a double course load to make up for some of my credits that didn't transfer," he said.
The girls sighed, and one of them rested a hand light on his arm. "Please, Duo? Dolores said that you were a BIG help when you studied together. We won't take too much of your time up," she wheedled.
Duo felt his resolve start to waver. "Really, though," he hemmed, trying to keep from committing to yet another obligation with some ditzy girls who only wanted to spend an evening flirting with him.
"Am I interrupting something?" a curious soprano asked.
Duo looked up from the girls, who pouted and started to withdraw rapidly. When the trio was gone, Duo fell to his knees dramatically in front of the girl who had just arrived. "How can I ever thank you?"
Helena Rosenberg, president of the junior class and girlfriend to Duo's roommate Chris Johnsen, smiled at him. "Are you sure you're not upset about me interrupting?" asked the pretty blonde. The redhead looked like she had a MAJOR crush on you. Might have been interesting."
Duo looked up at Helena and bounced to his feet, painting a cheerful smile on his face. "Oi, oi!" he crowed cheerfully, wrapping an arm around her waist. "You know I could never love any but you, but you have rejected me," he said melodramatically, fluttering his long eyelashes in mock agony.
She punched him playfully. "Duo!" she protested. He was a terrible flirt. If she hadn't been well and truly in love with Chris, she would have definitely joined the other girls in longing to be the one who caught his heart.
Still, she was his friend. Along with Chris and Ilene, her roommate, she could count herself as one of his closest friends. Something about that struck her as being terribly sad. She hardly knew anything about this boy with the luxurious wealth of brown hair.
In the aftermath of the Great War, many new students had come to their school, former soldiers who wanted to be retrained and relearn aspects of civilian life. Duo hadn't been among the first wave of transfers, but he had entered about three months later.
Helena had no doubts he had done something during the war. The question was what. He seemed far too undisciplined to be a soldier, but sometimes Helena saw the shadows in his eyes that could have only come from watching death and destruction. Once Ilene had asked if he had fought in the Chinese resistance, to which Duo had replied that he'd never even been to China.
Duo didn't lie, but Helena was convinced that he was a master at not telling the whole truth. Behind his joking façade, there was a mind that was as brilliant as anyone could have wished for.
Duo tightened his hold on her, lowering his head so that their eyes were inches apart. "Dump Chris and I will sweep you off your feet!" he promised, proceeding to pick her up and toss her over his shoulder with easy strength.
She squealed as she felt her short shirt ride up. "Put me DOWN!" she protested, a hand automatically trying to keep her skirt from displaying all her wares.
Duo laughed lightly and obliged, grinning at her with childish irreverence. "You WILL be mine," he said, leering at her like a cheesy movie villain.
She whapped him lightly upside the head. "Duo, you're an idiot," she said. "You almost made me forget why I came out to see you!"
"You had a reason?" he asked lightly.
"Yes. Shinobu is having problems with one of the teachers- he doesn't understand what Shinobu's trying to tell him. We need you to translate."
"No problem," Duo said. "I assume it's Old Hickory again?"
Helena nodded wearily. "I swear, you think he'd be used to foreign students now. He's so xenophobic."
"Least we don't have any colonials here right now," Helena said. "Old Hickory really has a problem with them. I think he blames them for the whole war."
Duo started off towards the classroom, Helena following at his heels. "He's partly right. The war was everyone's fault. They should have tried to sit down and talk things through, rather then shoot at each other."
"They tried that. That's what got General Noventa and the Federation leadership killed."
Duo shook his head, opening one of the magnificent French windows that led into English Department from outside. "By the time Noventa was moving to open peace talks, it was too late. There had been too many misunderstandings, and the Gundam had already been released. The time for talking went by when Heero Yuy had been assassinated."
"Heero Yuy?"
"What did you learn in school? About twenty years ago, the leader of the Colonies was assassinated. Everything fell apart. The war was inevitable after that, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't resent it. A lot of good people died. Some of them killed each other over ideas and disagreements. We all wanted peace, we just didn't know how to go about it." Duo shook his head, and Helena saw the sad glint enter his usually happy-go-lucky eyes.
They turned a corner and heard the sounds of a loud argument. Duo sighed and walked right in.
Shinobu was the Japanese exchange student. Even though he spoke English, he would often times get frustrated by other's impatience and forget what he knew. Duo was the only person on campus who was fluent in Japanese, so Duo was constantly being called to act as a translator. "Matte!" he said, switching languages.
Helena marveled as Duo sorted out the misunderstanding with ease, bouncing between languages with no problems. As far as she knew, he spoke at least six languages fluently, and there were probably more. Duo was just a bundle of surprises. Just when you were ready to thought you knew him, he'd pull another rabbit out of the hat and surprise you like a mischievous child on Christmas Day.
Duo himself hated dealing with this. It reminded him of the times he had been with Heero. Heero had said that there was no reason that they had to use English, since Duo talked enough in Japanese and Heero loathed the thought of what Duo would say if he was permitted to ramble on in his native tongue.
Finally Duo was able to make peace between Shinobu and the teacher, carefully making sure to take the edge out of each of their comments.
Grabbing Shinobu's elbow, he hauled the student out of there. "That's enough," he said in Japanese. "You and I both know Wood-sensei is an absolute idiot, but telling him that isn't a good idea. We'll take this to the principal if it becomes necessary. Ne?" he said encouragingly.
Shinobu managed to free himself of Duo's grip. "Hai," he agreed, then turned to Helena and thanked her for getting Duo, using his halting English.
Helena smiled back at him. "Would you like to join me and my friends for lunch?" she offered. "You, too, Duo."
Duo looked at her. "Hai," he said. "Arigatou gozaimasu."
She blinked. "What did you say?"
He smiled infectiously at her. "Yes. Thank you," he reiterated in English. "Sometimes I forget who I'm talking to."
Helena frowned. "You know, it's a little odd. Even though you're as American as I am, you always speak in Japanese first. Was it your native language?" she asked.
He shook his head. "No. But I had a friend who was Japanese and hated when I started yammering at him in English."
Helena smiled. "Really?"
"He was a character," Duo said, then his expression grew shuttered. "But that's past. You're right, I should get out of that habit."
"I never said that!" she protested.
Duo tossed his long braid over his shoulder. "No. But someone should have," he said. "It's time I stop dwelling on the past- I can't do anything about it."
Shinobu and Helena looked at him with confusion.
He smiled suddenly, his glum mood forgotten. "Saa. Let's get something to eat. How about making it a picnic? I know a really good place to watch the stars. It's one of my favorite hobbies. Come on, I'll show you."
Scene VIII : A Thoughtful Morning in Enemy Hands
"I'm no heroine, at least, not last time I checked
I'm too easy to roll over; I'm too easy to wreck."
--Ani DiFranco, I'm no Heroine
Lucrezia Noin woke in a cell.
It wasn't the conventional definition of a cell. The ceiling was high and sunlight streamed through the triangular, modern windows and skylight. The bed she lay in was soft and there was the smell of breakfast wafting through the air.
Still, she was a prisoner in a cell.
She blinked, trying to clear her eyes of sleep, and rolled over and swung her legs over the side of the bed. It was cold, she realized, as the chill air hit her bare legs. She rarely slept in anything more than a long shirt nowadays, and it might be some time to ask for some comfortable pants for the colder nights that were sure to come.
Her cell was not large, but not too small, either, a bedroom of sensible dimensions, with a queen-sized bed at one end of the room, a dresser and mirror, a small desk, and a closet. The only windows were set high in the walls overhead, and there was a small skylight. Escape was not impossible, but it was far from easy.
Her captors liked a challenge, she knew.
She had been careless. That was how she had been captured. If she had considered all her options, hadn't gone foolhardily into the enemy compound with only limited intelligence information, she would not be here.
They had taken her comm equipment to make sure no one knew where she was. Maybe they were hoping her troops would think she was dead, and retreat. She hoped they wouldn't do that. Granted, there were not many of them...but surely they didn't think she was this easily beaten?
The end of the war had been an anticlimax for all of them, Noin included. She thought of herself as Noin now. She had always hated her first name, and going into the military was just one of the excuses for her to be known simply as Noin. Everyone at the academy had called her Noin. Cadets were surprised to learn that the lieutenant was human enough to have a first name. She'd heard the stories, and laughed. Even...
Even Zechs had called her Noin.
She had gone to the L2 colony to help with the rebuilding effort. Colonists had avoided her warily for a few weeks, knowing her only as "That OZ Bitch" who had been with Kushrenada and Merquise. But in the end, the need for money and supplies had won out over hatred, and Noin had connections to both. In the meantime, she spent her days proving to the colonists that she was not really that much of a bitch and really did have their best interests in mind.
And she did. She'd grown to respect Duo Maxwell during the short time they'd known each other, and the least she could do was to help rebuild the colony where he had grown up. Maybe someday he would actually come back to L2, see the things that had happened there, and learn to let go of the bitterness and the loneliness she could detect in his voice every time he had mentioned his childhood.
Maybe.
Then she had heard of the Preventers. At first it was only a word on the lips of one of the puzzled colonists, and she had dismissed it as some new group or hearsay. Then it was in the newspapers. Then it was on the holovids. The Preventers, created to keep peace across the galaxy, headed by the woman known as Lady Une.
That gave Noin a shock. Une?
She wasn't surprised when the call finally came one day, asking her if she wanted to skip off L2 at last and join the cause of the Preventers.
"I know we were never the best of friends, Noin," Une had said. "But you're one of the best we've got. With you on the team, we can recruit people faster. They respect you, Noin."
She didn't like to admit it, but she was eager to get off L2. She loved the colony but it was not her home. She'd sold her house, transferred her funds off-colony, announced to the man she was seeing that she was leaving. He had taken the news in stride, taken her out to a farewell candlelight dinner, and bought her flowers. And then she left.
She had not heard from him since, and she wasn't surprised. Maybe a little sad, but it was all right. She hadn't loved him anyway, and she had suspected the only reason he had been dating her was because of her visible status within the colony. She had always had that effect on people, both men and women; a stepping stone for them to gain something. Only one man had never treated her that way.
The only man she had ever truly loved was Zechs Merquise, and he was dead.
"Noin," said Une, a few weeks after she arrived. "How would you like to take an assignment?"
The assignment was to the part of the galaxy known as the Outer Territories, a new expansionist project by the current government to colonize several planets in nearby solar systems. Apparently, one of the new colonial governments had decided to take matters into its own hands and launch a small-scale rebellion. There were always some of these little rebellions taking place in one place or another, but this one had been going on for a while and the government wanted it halted. Quietly, if at all possible, which explained how it had not and probably would never make it into mainstream galactic media coverage.
"This is the first real chance for us as Preventers to have an effect," Une had said, pacing behind her desk, hands clasped in front of her. Treize used to do that sometimes. Noin wondered if Une knew how much like Treize she had looked just then. "If we manage to stop this rebellion, the government will have to be grateful to us. They'll have to recognize us as a legitimate organization."
"Aren't we already?"
Une pursed her lips. "All they know of us is that we are former OZ soldiers. What I have heard from Lady Peacecraft is that they think of us as our own little rebellion, 'a relic trying to stay afloat in the ocean of modern times,' as one general put it."
Noin frowned. "So why send us?"
The smile that graced Lady Une's face was not pleasant. "Maybe they can't spare anyone else. We're expendable, Noin. That's how it's always been."
She was tired of being expendable, but she went anyway because it was the only chance she had to get away from the Lady, the ghostly presence of Treize Kushrenada which still haunted the Preventers headquarters, and the memories of one Lightning Baron. Une had given her a handful of troops, a handful because the Preventers could not afford to spare more. Expendable was expendable, but there was a limit to how many could be expended at one time.
The small rebellion was larger than the government had made it seem in the information they had received. She thought back to the rebel uprising in China when the Gundams had appeared a few years back. It was little larger than that, but large enough to keep Noin and her troops on their toes. Still, it had seemed controllable, until six months ago, when the rebellion had unexpectedly gained some old model OZ mobile suits from somewhere. Noin didn't know where, but with her troops equipped only with ground arms, it was a losing battle.
If she could only get a hold of one of those mobile suits, she was sure her battle reflex was as sound as ever, and she had been one of the best pilots in OZ and the Federation. But the mobile suits were too closely guarded, and she could not spare a single one of her men. Soldiers might be expendable to the government, but not to her.
She had resigned herself to the fact that they were probably going to die here on this far planet, unknown and unmourned, because the government wished to keep this quiet and it would never be revealed to the media. Apparently, the media was more dangerous than rebels.
On second thought, that was probably true.
She had been captured on a raid into a mobile suit yard where two Aries models were kept. She hadn't seen the guard until too late, and beforehand, she had ordered her men to retreat if she was captured, promising to rejoin them later, downplaying her concern over the rebel's prison facilities. A piece of cake, she'd told her second-in-command.
"I'll be back with you in no time. Move the forces back and wait for me."
It had been two weeks, and she had not figured out a way to escape yet.
They had taken her not to a prison, as she had expected, but to the mansion of the colony governor. He'd treated her with respect, telling her with eloquent elegance that she was a fool to ever have come here, and locked her in one of his guestrooms. For all she knew, she could spend the rest of her life in here. Or maybe one day they would poison the food that came sliding into the room from the mechanical food dispenser and she would die young. That was more likely. She had always known she would probably die young, one way or another.
That was the fate of a soldier, Zechs had told her. Good soldiers die young, Noin. It's our glory.
Noin got up from the bed, grabbing the bathrobe from the floor and wrapping it around her to ward off the chill. The breakfast on the delivery tray looked tempting, but she needed a shower. The mansion was equipped with excellent bathroom facilities, and she intended to take full advantage of them, prisoner or not. She wondered if they could somehow find a way to poison the shower water.
Flipping on the light as she walked into the bathroom, she glanced at herself in the mirror and was surprised to find how pale she looked. She had been eating and sleeping well, but she had lost at least several pounds in the past two weeks, and she looked like a ghost. Maybe the food was poisoned. Or maybe she was just imagining things.
She touched a hand to her cheek, watching the reflection in the mirror do the same. If she had a comm unit, she would radio her troops right now, and if the governor knew what she would say, he would have gladly lent her one.
Go home, she would tell them. Go home, and forget this war.
The bath water was already warm when she turned it on, and she watched the smoke rise from the heated bath, filling the air.
There was a skylight in the bathroom too. It was frosted, and as she watched, something dark passed over the surface. A bird? A transport? A mobile suit?
She would tell them to go home and tell the galaxy what was happening here. The galaxy deserved to know, after all the pain and darkness they had been through with the last war. Keeping civilians in ignorance was the worst thing soldiers could do to the ones they were defending.
Of course, her ideas were old-fashioned. She had never believed that soldiers were expendable, either. She was probably wrong about that., because all good soldiers died young.
Zechs had said so.
Quicksilver
Lady of the Labyrinth
Full time student and part-time writer
http://www.homestead.com/quicksilverslabyrinth
"You haven't lived until you've danced the dagger's edge."
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