GW LA Sidestories - SNOWDROPS
Disclaimer: Characters are not mine except for Alex. Story is for entertainment only, not for profit.
Warnings: Valid for all chapters - references to male/male affection.
Summary: Zechs resting uneasily between his memories and the future - what will win?
xxx
1. Turncoat
It hurts. How can it still hurt? It hurts to bad, I cannot breathe...
His brow pressed against the cold surface of the Gundanium shard, Zechs did not stir when he heard steps. He could guess it was Marimaia – nobody else would disturb him in this place, in this mood that still overwhelmed him when he was too exhausted to fight it.
Her hand settled lightly on his arm, and then she leaned against him. She felt warm and light. Fragile, it drifted through his mind, and he almost laughed. Not too long ago, he'd never have allowed her to see him like this.
"I made coffee," she said. "You know, I envy you. I wish I'd be in love with someone."
He clenched his hand against the scorched metal. A deep, gasping breath filled his lungs with air. The scent of spring, heady and damp. The touch of sun on his skin...
His eyes were burning dry.
Marimaia raised her hand and laid it on his shoulder.
He swallowed hard and straightened. Slowly, he smoothed out his jumper, feeling his body like that of a stranger.
How long has it been since... Years. Ages. And yet, I dream of you, every night, with every breath...
They walked back to the house in silence. Around them, the white-barked birchtrees of the driveway rose into a sky of endless blue, and birdsong filled the air that was still cool. Mud squelched under their boots as they stepped on clods of grass to avoid the waterlogged potholes that dotted the ruts. Through the withered yellow stalks of the previous year pushed the wiry green of new growth.
"You know everything about me," Marimaia said when they stepped into the vestibule to take their dirty boots off. "But I know almost nothing."
"You know I'm a turncoat," he said, without bitterness. "For all it's worth, I'm sorry. For what I did to your family, to Whitefang, to your uncle." (1)
He went to the drawing room. The scent of fresh coffee laced the cold air, mingling with the smell of ashes from the fireplace. The table was set for two. He had let Marimaia revive the house by bringing back the things he had banished in an attempt to drive out his ghosts: the old furniture, paintings, wallhangings, carpets and curtains. Even the piano was back in a corner of the library, but he had not touched it, had not dared to rekindle that kind of pain. (2)
It was the table, long and heavily carved, where he had sat with Treize for their last meal together in the house. (3) A bleached linen runner, its fine, dense weave embroidered in red-and-black crosstitch showing stylized cockerels and strawhorses (4), was draped across a corner of the dark wood and set with white china and European-style coffee cups and saucers. It was an odd contrast, Zechs thought, typical of the Khushrenadas.
"I want you to tell me about him," Marimaia said into the quiet clinking of silver on porcelain as he stirred sugar into his coffee. "I want to understand-" She broke off, searching for the right words. "Get to know... that man," she said at last, uncertainly.
Zechs leaned back and blew over his coffee. He watched whisps of steam rise from the cup and tremors running over the dark surface. He wished, for a heartbeat, that his world would shrink to that: small, black, definite.
She laid her hand on his. It surprised him how firm her touch was, even her words were hesitant. "I am asking you to open a door for me."
He glanced up. "I promised you'd not be stuck here forever," he said, evading an answer. "I could take you to Moscow. I have business there, and you might like the trip. I'll sort out your travel permit with Une."
xxx
Clods of snow where still clinging to the edges of roads and footpaths. Floes of dirty ice drifted on the churning, dark-brown currents of the Moskva, its enormity tamed and pulsing through the city's concreate heart. Zechs, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his woollen coat and his face half-covered by a thick scarf, nodded at a bench.
"He called the hotel limousine to collect us from the Bolshoi. (5) He'd taken me to watch the Nutcracker – of all things. (6) I remember being cross and embarassed but he was having a great time, and I didn't want to spoil it. We had a few drinks at the theatre bar before going to watch the ballet, and I think he was more drunk than he let on. Afterwards, he asked the driver to drop us off by the river so we could walk the rest of the way – twenty minutes perhaps – to our hotel. I thought he was crazy – he was wearing this ridiculously expensive sable coat, (7) and the streetlights here were all smashed in. It was in the middle of winter and freezing, but he insisted that we should sit down here to look at the moon. He had a bottle of vodka in his coat pocket. We drank it all, and I was worried that he might fall into the river, or go to sleep. So I tried to call a cab, but he kept... pushing and hugging me, and then he grabbed the mobile and threw it into the water."
Hugging – if that had been all, I'd been able to cope just fine, but your hands were all over me, under my clothes, and it was spine-chillingly cold but not where you mauled my-
He drew a quick, sharp breath. "I was mad at him but he just laughed and kissed me." A wry smile tugged at Zechs' lips. "He had a way... I mean, perhaps it was my fault. I always gave in to him. He was shit-" He shook his head. "I mean, he was very drunk then."
And often enough after that.
Marimaia hooked her arm under his. Surprised, he let her, oddly grateful for the small gesture.
"That's how it is, to be in love?" she asked quietly.
He shrugged. "That's how it was with us."
Ups and downs. This whole, crazy rollercoster, our lives lived in an instant... what's left now? Ah, yes. Waiting. I'll just wait.
"And then?"
Her voice drew him out of his brooding, and he carried on, images drifting through his mind like a film as he talked. "The hotel was a tatty old thing, one of those towerblocks they'd built at the end of the twentieth century. (8) Grey and worn, but clean. Gostiniza Pushkin." Zechs smiled weakly. "He liked it. He'd booked two rooms, to make things easier, he said (9), but he made sure that they were linked. Of course he liked my room better, so he stayed."
The tap on the shower was broken, and we got the carpet wet when we walked over from the other bathroom. We slept with each other – quite difficult after what we'd drunk.
He sat down on the bench and watched a few crows, pecking in the snow around an overturned rubbish bin on the opposite embankment. "Later," he said quietly, "when he'd sobered up enough, he was making phone calls, and I realised he'd gone to Moskow not for the ballet, but for business. It wasn't really a surprise. Years later I found out that he'd made his will and left it with his lawyers." (10) He shook his head. "I mean, back then... he couldn't have known. He couldn't have-" He broke off, surprised by how sharp it still cut him – the old, neverending, ever-new pain that gripped his chest and made it hard to breathe, as if a hot knife was cutting through him.
Marimaia sat down next to him, wrapping her arms around herself against the chill. "He was a soldier?"
Zechs drew a deep, cold breath to restart his mind. "Yes. But that wasn't all."
xxx
NOTES:
1 - LA Strangers ICE ON THE HEART
2 - LA Burning
3 - LA Winter
4 - Home-made linen and the kind of embroidery described are part of Russian folk art. The thinner the linen, the denser the weave, and the whiter the cloth, the greater the value. The kind of needlepoint/cross-stitch described here is typical; again, the smallest stitches were the most priced ones.
5 - Bolshoi Theatre – famed for its ballet.
6 - The Nutcracker is often considered a children's ballet.
7 - Treize is showing off his wealth, in a style that is a touch vulgar, demonstrating his power as a landowner, military man and political animal, combined with new-money confidence,: sable fur being expensive, rare, 'incorrect' and old-fashioned.
8 - Like the Lomonosov University or Hotel Moskva.
9 - To avoid being confronted about two men wanting to share the same room.
10 - LA Winter, LA My Rose