The Second Sidestory of three this week. BTW- all of
these are the work of the talented and wonderful
Gerald Tarrant.
webpage: http://www.method,org/gundam
Gundam Wing is property of Sotsu Agency, Bandai
Studios, and TV
Asahi. Sainan no Kekka and all original characters and
plot copyright
2000 by Quicksilver and Gerald Tarrant. Please ask
permission before
reposting.
SHIN KIDOU SENKI GUNDAM WING
SAINAN NO KEKKA
Dreams: Treize
"^�when it came to mind that I didn't care^�
Are you listening? Can you hear me?"
--Matchbox 20, Rest Stop
I used to watch the stars.
When I was young I used to lean out the window of my
room and
stargaze every night. I had a star chart book that I
had received
for my fifth birthday, bound in leather with a golden
leafed spine,
and a small telescope that my uncle had ordered for me
from
Japan when I had been born. He had said he would keep
for me
until I was old enough to use it.
The stars were in my destiny, he had said.
My uncle announced his decision to move to the L2
colony when
I was six years old. My family opposed him, of course,
but that
did not stop him. It was his dream, he told me. I
watched him
solemnly with all the innocence of a six year old,
though I did not
care to hear about his dream. It was not mine.
He boarded a shuttle to the colony, planning to start
a business
there, but something went wrong with the shuttle's
fuel supply
and the shuttle exploded ten seconds after takeoff.
The only thing my uncle left me was the telescope.
We had horses when I was a young boy and my second
cousin
twice removed had taught me to ride. It's easy, I
remember her
saying, holding the horse's bridle with a slender hand
and
looking for all the world like part of the horse. You
must feel the
horse. Feel its thoughts, its heart, and if you
understand, it will
obey you.
She would sneak away to the paddocks in the evenings
after
supper and race across the fields bareback, the horse
wearing
only a hackamore, she barefoot and bent low over the
animal
with its mane and tail streaming, as if they were
flying.
When I was nine, she was thrown from the back of her
favorite
stallion and broke her neck.
I joined the military because I had the potential to
be a great
soldier, I suppose. At least that's what my father's
nephew used
to tell me. He was not my cousin because my father had
married
his first wife long before he ever met my mother, and
the nephew
was the nephew of his first wife's sister. He was a
captain in the
Federation forces and used to come to visit, even when
my
mother made it clear time and again that he was not
welcome on
the Khushrenada estate grounds.
Treize, you'll make a fine soldier. Soldiering is one
of the noblest
professions in the world.
When I was ten, word came that he had been involved in
an
engagement in South America and had disappeared,
missing in
action. I don't remember if they ever found his body.
No one on
my side of the family cared enough to ask.
I could have cared, but it would have meant devoting
my energy
to something I cared less about than my studies and my
education, and I couldn't have that.
I had priorities.
When I announced my plans to go into the Lake Victoria
Military
Academy, my mother flew into a rage. You can't go, she
said.
You'll disgrace the family. You were meant for greater
things.
Mother, I said. My life is mine.
She couldn't argue with that. Not that I cared what
she thought. I
took the exams, passed, went to the academy, studied
and
graduated. The studies were not especially difficult,
and I
mastered the military life with ease. I rather enjoyed
it, even. The
instructors were skeptical at first. The Khushrenada
dynasty was
well known across Europe as one of the wealthier and
prouder
dynasties in the world, and at least three of my
professors I knew
suspected that I had some trick up my sleeve. But as
the
semesters passed by and I excelled in my studies and
in the
school, they gradually relaxed their opinions of me.
Khushrenada is a bright student, they wrote on the
grade reports
at the end of my final year. He shows an high capacity
for
learning and a great interest in the military.
Recommend him for
further specialized training after commissioning.
If they had asked me at that point if I cared, I would
have replied
no. The Academy was simply a stepping stone, and
success
came naturally to me. But as long as they thought I
cared, I saw
no reason to inform them otherwise.
Some truths are best kept secret.
I wrote to my family inviting them to commissioning. I
never
heard from them. Two days before commissioning I heard
from
the commandant of cadets at the academy that my older
half-
brother had committed suicide the week before.
I was recruited right away by the Specials
Headquarters after I
was commissioned. It came as no surprise to me, and if
I had
really cared I would have been proud. But I didn't
care about that.
As before, I had my priorities.
I pulled strings and maneuvered and got myself shifted
to the
space division of the OZ Specials forces. Space was
all I had
dreamed it would be, and more. For the first time I
thought I
understood my uncle's fascination with it so long ago,
the glory
and the grandeur and the mystery.
For the first time, I thought I had a vision, a dream,
like his.
I wanted more.
I fought in some more engagements, pulled some more
strings
and found myself at the top of the OZ chain of
command. But it
was an empty victory, like taking something I already
had and
claiming it as mine. The Federation was the giant sun
of the
universe and I was but a moon, a satellite, circling
their Earth in
an ever-shrinking circle. If I did not break free, I
would be pulled
into their atmosphere and crushed as if I had never
been.
I wanted to show them that it would not be that easy.
I wanted to show them that I meant something to the
world.
I wanted to show them my vision and that vision did
not include
them.
I cared about this, and I would show them exactly how
much,
even if it meant destroying the image of myself I had
so carefully
built up through the years.
Zechs Merquise agreed with me. Zechs, the brilliant
and
beautiful boy who was like a shadow of me, who had
graduated
from the Academy with higher scores than mine, who had
come
up to me at his commissioning ceremony and announced
that he
wanted a position under me. Just like that. One
sentence.
I was impressed.
I gave him the position of my second-in-command, and
already I
could see things changing. Zechs was fiery, a rebel,
opposed to
my careful strategic nature. He wanted change, and he
wanted it
now.
Patience, Zechs, I said. Rome was not built in a day.
He gazed at me impassively. My father used to tell me
that.
When I met Midii Une she was already out of the
Academy and
working as a weapons specialist in the lower levels of
the OZ
facilities. She had potential. She was like Zechs and
I, but
without the amount of elegance that noble birth had
ingrained in
us. But that was all right, because elegance could be
taught to
anyone. I took her under my wing as my aide and
attendant on a
whim. Rumors flew at headquarters, but I ignored them.
It was a
test more than anything else, for her as well as for
me, and it
was someone to keep me company, because it sometimes
became quite lonely in the large house I had built.
I never intended to touch her as a man touches a
woman. I had
better things to do.
She fell in love with me almost at once, I think, a
young girl
without a home being taken in by a powerful superior.
I could see
the signs. She was attractive in her own right, but I
had no time
for that. Love was a distraction, a plaything I could
do without.
I still had priorities.
When word reached me that my mother had died of
cancer, I
was engrossed in the inner workings of the Romefeller
Foundation, in conference with Duke Dermail regarding
some
operation plan or other. The servant came with the
message on
a silver platter. The Duke liked to keep some things
the old-
fashioned way.
Excuse me, I said, rising from my chair and exiting
the room.
I did not weep. I had never wept for any member of my
family,
and there was no need to start now. I simply stared at
the flowing
cursive script on the note, the first actual
correspondence I had
received from any relative since I had entered the
Academy. It
was from my aunt, telling me the simple facts and
asking me not
to come home for the funeral.
You are not needed, she wrote. Just like that.
I crumpled the note in my hand and threw it into the
fire, where it
flared into a bright nothingness of ash.
Just like death.
I returned to the mansion that night and Midii Une was
waiting for
me, ready to draw my bath as always. I had given her
the title of
Lady. It suited her well, I thought, though she
disagreed.
How would you like your water, Treize-sama?
Her soft voice was too much for me.
Get out, I snarled, raising my hand as if to strike
her. Get out!
She froze and the jar of spices and herbs dropped from
her
hands. It broke on the floor with a splintering sound,
like the
breaking of fragile bone, but I did not even look
down, only
staring at the doorway with a fierce anger until her
fleeing
footsteps faded on the marble stairs down the hall.
I remember my knees feeling weak until I could no
longer stand
but instead fell to the cool marble floor of the
bathroom, my
hands falling into the gritty spice crystals and
broken pottery
shards on the floor. I don't remember when the tears
started
coming.
I do remember hands in my hair, a warm body against
mine as I
cried like a boy that night, as she simply held me and
let me
weep. She smelled like spices.
I returned to work the next day. I could sense the
lower officers
watching me warily, as if I might snap at any minute.
Obviously
they'd heard the news about my mother through the
media
sources.
I'm fine, I said with a smile on my face when Zechs
asked me.
Don't worry about me. The plan must go on.
And go on it did, but my heart was not in it.
When the war began, all I felt was a vast weariness.
My side of
the plan was done, and I did not care anymore. I
wondered if I
had ever truly cared, or if I had been fooling myself.
When chaos
broke out I simply sat back and let it happen, let the
colonists
and OZ and the remnants of the Federation fight over
broken
space like mad dogs. Space was no longer beautiful and
mysterious. There was too much blood there, too much
death,
too much guilt. And I no longer cared. I couldn't.
My vision^�
Space was my vision, and they had destroyed it.
It was only too late that I realized the stars were
indeed my
destiny, and soldiering was truly the finest
profession in the
world. That I hadn't listened and hadn't felt the
heart of space,
and that was why I had lost.
I thought I was meant for greater things, greater than
I had ever
dreamed, and it was all a lie, because the greatest
things I could
ever want were right before my eyes and I had thrown
them
away. I cared too much but I could never pinpoint
exactly what it
was that I had cared about.
Freedom.
Happiness.
Love.
The elegance was a sham, and I was too ashamed of
myself to
break it to OZ, whom I had served, to Zechs, whom I
had trusted,
to her, whom I had betrayed most of all. I had worked
so hard to
please myself because I thought that the things that I
wanted
were the things that they would want. I wanted to make
them
happy. I wanted to make them proud, if they would only
open
their eyes and see.
I was the one who had been blinded, by the light of
the stars through my uncle's telescope.
I think^�at the end^�I did love her. And if such it was
that love
had to die for other dreams to live^�then I did.
My love, my legacy, was not fit to live after my
death. But it was
fitting, because I loved her and I loved space and I
loved
freedom most of all.
And peace.
I realized then that all I had really wanted was
peace. And it was
too late now.
I was twenty-four years old, and in those Gundam
pilots against
whom I had ordered attacks, I saw myself as I had been
so long
ago. Young. Idealistic. Loyal.
Meant for greater things.
I was not needed, as they had told me for so long. Not
needed.
The world would go on without me, and I had made too
many
mistakes and I was tired. Those who came after me
would set
my mistakes right and go on living like I had never
existed.
Everything that I had built, that I had worked for,
would be lost.
But that was all right, because in the end I had found
my release
among the stars and everything that I had loved.
In space, which was my dream.
=====
Quicksilver
Lady of the Labyrinth
Full time student and part-time writer
"You haven't lived until you've danced the dagger's edge."
http://www.homestead.com/quicksilverslabyrinth
http://www.method.org/gundam
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