For a while, as their ship crossed the infinite stars all over their way to Mars, Noin considered it that choice as well has been a mistake. For months she looked back at Earth's surface, wondering what would come next and if there would ever come a time in which people like them wouldn't be needed.
As he silently conducted the ship and they danced around each other's doubts and fears, just too broken to even consider giving the next step, Noin just wanted to shake him out of his mind and the inevitable cruelty of the thoughts only a worn out soldier could understand. They were very much alike in a way. Too damaged to be a good company to anyone and yet to addicted to each other to consider a life of solitude.
From her part the reasons have always been quite clear. She loved him. She always had and even when his lies and endless issues came first in his list of priorities, Noin remained faithful to her heart. Her life never stopped for him, though. She has lived a full life, an honest and honorable one, following her passion and her beliefs to the bitter end of it. His presence was just something she had to deal every now and then when Zechs would come along in need of a friend, a pair of ears, or an eventual lover.
If Zechs would ever be capable of reattribute her feelings was another matter entirely. Noin was certain that he cared about her, at least as a reliable friend and a fellow soldier. He respected her abilities and valued her opinion in a number of matters. He even lusted for her body and that had been something they have consummated years ago, but Noin wondered if Zechs would ever allow himself to love anything or anyone. She doubted he was capable of such feelings, especially with the heavy weight of war resting on his shoulders.
When she sent Une a message telling she wasn't coming back after Marimea's incident, her friend didn't ask questions. There was a silent understanding that a Wind has taken Noin away to a place nobody was allowed to know. There was no judgment in Une's voice. Not even a hint of disapproval and it was heartbreaking for Noin to realize that her once superior probably wished for another ghost to take her away too.
Between them there were just too many death, too many names, too much history, and endless regrets. Even when they laid on a bed of corpses every night and nightmares would crawl into their tormented heads like a plague, running away from her squalid life on Earth seemed to be a good idea. Perhaps it had been the bravest thing she ever did…To fight for his love, or whatever he could offer. That was a battle far scarier than any other she had fought before.
Is there life on Mars?...The ancient song kept coming back to her mind every now and then, when she looked at the space and then back at Zechs face, without knowing which one was the scariest.
An old song…From a time when traveling to space was still a formidable and foreign concept. A time in which thinking of colonization sounded like stuff from a bad science fiction book. And yet the song talked about conflicts, injustice, failure and History's old tune being repeated again and again, just like them going back to each other's arms after a battle just to wake up to face an empty bed. Is there life on Mars?
Once they arrived at Mars' surface there was an unspoken question hanging between them. What now?
She should never dare to demand explanations or answers from him. It was rather pointless once she chose to come along and shoot into the darkness of space. There was no way of telling what they would find there, but at least Mars was a good place to live, or so she was told.
Zechs found them a small apartment with two bedrooms downtown. Once Lucrezia stepped in she couldn't help noticing the clear message in his choosing of housing. Separate lives and yet still attached to each other. That was the ultimate metaphor of their relationship so far.
She picked her room and as Zechs went out to find someone who could provide them new identities, Noin tried to make that depressing place into something more like a home. When he arrived it was already night and he found her sitting on the floor, indulging herself with a cigarette that was hanging on her lips after cleaning the place.
"You could have waited for me. You know…Share the house work." He said as a matter of fact. She wanted to laugh at the idea of him, a prince, cleaning that apartment with her.
"I thought you knew that's not in me to wait. I wanted to feel useful at least." She said while putting off the cigarette. "My room is the one on the left and I put your things in the closed."
He just looked at her curiously, but said nothing about the room division. Zechs picked something inside his jacket's pocket and threw at her. Noin picked it in the air. An ID card and other civilian documents with her photo on it.
She checked on it mindlessly, just making sure to not forget the surname he had picked for her. Lucrezia Noin-Peacecraft…Married.
"What the hell is this?" She asked him. Zechs give his back at her as he searched inside a package he had brought with him for a bottle of whiskey and two glasses.
"We are a man and a woman living together." He answered as he poured whiskey on the glasses. "It would just make sense for us to be married. A newlywed couple living on a shitty apartment, until we figure out the next step."
"Have you considered asking me if I wanted to be married to you?" She asked angrily. Zechs seemed to ignore her annoyance while he passed her the glass.
"You came along on your own free will." He answered while sitting by her side and taking a sip of his drink. "I assumed you wouldn't mind. It's just a fake ID, Lucrezia. You can keep your own room, if you want to."
She threw her head back and sighed.
"If I want to?" A humorless laugh came out of her mouth. "Remind me again what I am doing here, because I have no idea."
"I asked you if you wanted to come and you came. That's it. That's pretty much what it is." Zechs replied sourly.
"Why you asked me then?" At that he was silent as usual. That was the forbidden question. "Yes, I came along. Perhaps I should find myself a flat as soon as I get a job here. I'm not interested in being a dead weight for you to drag around."
She drunk the whiskey in a single gulp and put the glass down feeling the alcohol and the anger burning down the path to her stomach. She could barely look at him at that moment until she felt his hand holding hers in an unusual sign of affection.
"You are not a dead weight." He said softly. "I thought…I thought this was what you wanted."
"What exactly is 'this'?" She asked while still holding his hand. "You, me and this endless abysm between us? This silence and occasional sex? The same old life we had back on Earth when there was still a war to be fought? I don't know what 'this' means."
"A life…Together." He said soberly, if not melancholic.
"It's not a life together if you insist on keeping me out of it." She sighed. "It's not together, if you refuse to let me in. It's just you and me sharing an apartment."
"I don't know how to do this." He said awkwardly. "I don't know how to…How to live without a war to fight, or how to share my life with someone else."
"Let's make one thing clear then." Noin said sharply, finally looking at him. "If you want to marry me, you'll have to ask for the privilege like any other man would have to and hope that I'm willing to endure a life by your side."
At that he cracked a smile before caressing her face with unusual tenderness.
"I guess I have nothing to fear with this sense of humor." She vaguely remembered that he had said something like that after Lake Victoria's fiasco, almost a life time ago. Somehow, that terrible day had become a huge moment of their history. A partnership built on top of dead bodies and ruins. "Will you marry me, Lucrezia Noin?"
"I guess it makes sense." She smiled lightly at him. "After everything."
"You are the only one that would ever welcome such an inconvenient person like me." He said with his mouth only inches away from hers. She could smell the alcohol in his breath.
"I'm not really welcoming you. This is just the end of the line. The point in which we run out of excuses for never trying." She answered with a sad smile.
"Let's try then." He caressed her face. "Starting with sharing the same bed, in the same bedroom."
"This is the easy part." She closed the distance between them and kissed him.
That night they didn't share the same bed in the same bedroom. The cloths fell off in the middle of the living room, along with empty glasses. Zechs laid her on the wooden floor, avid for intimacy and fulfillment. It was the first time they actually had time to enjoy sex and they didn't do it with tenderness and patience. They were just too used to the frenetic pace of war and its violence. It would take them a while to let go of old habits and make that dysfunctional relationship and that apartment into home for both of them.
Is there life on Mars?
For a year they tried to adjust to each other and slowly built a domestic sort of life, although both of them remained restless as ever in their involvement with politics and warfare, always acting on the back stage. Zechs cut all bonds with his former life, while Noin would still communicate with Une every once in a while just to make sure everything was fine on Earth. It wasn't a great life, but it was a life and a peaceful one at that, which was extremely odd from time to time. The other room remained empty.
Eventually Noin would receive a message from Relena. In those occasions there was little space to ask about family matters and there was an understanding between the Peacecrafts that knowing locations and details of domestic life wasn't exactly paramount. Zechs would never ask about his sister's wellbeing, and Noin would never say to Relena anything about him.
That was life on Mars…For a while.
At some point during their second year together, Noin started to feel sick. Zechs was out of town taking some minor mission. It was rather pointless for her to wait for him. If she was indeed sick, it was her responsibility to take care of herself and if she was diagnosed with something serious than she would talk to him, but not before that.
At the medical unit she waited patiently for her exams and diagnose while bravely trying to keep her fears away. Strange as it was, even if Zechs wasn't exactly an example of communication and moral support, she missed having him around, especially when she felt so vulnerable. The doctor said "pregnant" and for a brief second Noin wished he had said something fatal.
She went back home feeling devastated. Once she entered their apartment, that now looked almost charming, and felt claustrophobic inside it. She wanted to cry for some reason; maybe out of fear, maybe out of despair. She sat on the floor and blamed herself for whatever reason she thought to be plausible. They have always been careful about those matters and during their time together not even once the word "children" ever came up. It simply wasn't an option for people like them.
What sort of life they could offer to a child anyway? A life of hiding, false identities, broken parents, lost inheritances, endless wars and nightmares for the sake of ideals that after a while Lucrezia Noin barely remembered. And a father…Well…A father that had a hard time trying to be a human and whose nightmares would wake her up in the middle of the night just to calm him or prevent him of becoming violent.
That was the legacy of the Peacecraft name…A bloody love for peace, the ruins of a kingdom, and a broken crown.
She was still sitting on the floor, with her eyes red and puffy of crying when Zechs arrived home. During all those years of uneven relationship he had never seen her that way and it must have freaked him out to experience it for the first time. He sat by her side and held her hand quietly, while summoning the courage to ask what happened.
"What's going on?" He asked gently, in a way that made her remember of the chivalrous and regal boy that she once meat. Le Petit Prince. Noin didn't answer him. She just handed him the results of her exams instead and although he wasn't used to medial language, the "positive" written in blue on a paper should be easy enough to understand.
He folded the paper again and put aside. For a long second they remained silent, just digesting what that meant to them.
"Well…At least we have a spare room for a nursery." He said absently.
"You can't possibly be serious." She answered in a low growl. "A child, Milliard! How can we raise a child?"
"I guess human kind has been asking this question since day one, but somehow we managed to survive." He answered calmly. "It's not the end of the world, Lucrezia."
"If I didn't know you I would say that you are actually happy about it." She said tiredly.
"Maybe it's because I am happy." He answered with an odd serenity. "I just don't understand why you are acting as if it was a death sentence. I'm actually surprised that it didn't happen sooner."
"Why you never brought up the subject then?" She asked out of shock.
"Having children was never a priority, but it's not something that I wanted to avoid either." He answered objectively. "Before I knew Relena was alive…I mean, for a long time I thought that it was my responsibility to continue the Peacecraft name, even if I wasn't a good heir to my father's legacy. I just assumed that eventually it would happen for us, but I didn't want you to feel pushed in any way."
"It would have been nice to talk about it. I wouldn't feel half the panic in experiencing now." Noin said. "It's a difficult life for grownups. What sort of life we can offer to a child? Absent parents, fake IDs, a life on the run while helping one side of the other to trigger another conflict…This is not a life at all."
"It has been our life since…Since I can remember." He said. "It's has been a good life since we started to share it. I'm not the best husband in the world and I probably won't be the best father too, but…Can we be happy about it? I guess this is why births are so important. They give us hope of a better future."
She muffled a laugh at it and after a while Zechs held her in his arms. Noin tried to pretend she didn't notice how his long fingers would brush her stomach lightly, as if caressing a child that was still an abstract concept in their minds.
"Would you prefer a boy or a girl?" She asked eventually.
"A girl, I guess. One that is charming, kind and oblivious to the sort of life we live." He laughed lightly at the thought. "A spoiled little princess…My father would have loved a granddaughter like this."
"You mean Relena, before the Gundam Guys." Noin pointed.
"She had a good childhood after all. She would have lived a happy life if Une hasn't blown up Darlian's brain under Traize's command." He carelessly pointed. "What about you? Would you prefer a boy or a girl?"
"A boy, I guess. I'm used to deal with boys, specially the troublesome kind." She smiled at the thought. "I wouldn't mind if he had a sense of humor, like Maxwell. God knows I would like to have someone who knows how to laugh around here."
Once more that old song started to play in her head. Everything was changing again with the formation of Martian Federation and the parts they would have yet to play in this new world…Even with twins on the way and all the doubts she had about being a mother and having Zechs by her side, Noin couldn't shake away the feeling that one day that life would take those she loved away, and it would make her wonder if there would ever be life in Mars for her and the family she had started almost by accident.