AUTHORS NOTES- i told you id have more zero4ham and dear god i love this game and i love this musical. I was listening to 'the world was wide enough' and oh god as soon as I heard that lyric i got all teary because it reminded me so much of class zero, the garden and all. Also if any of you have heard ham there's some other references to some of the other songs in there comment if you find them! So enjoy 3 ((also i would heavily recommend you to listen to hamilton not for this fic just in general it will change youR LIFE))
'What is a legacy; it's planting seeds in a garden you never get to see.'
-Hamilton
The first thing Machina does when the world becomes stable again, is rebuild the garden of class zero. He stands among the young, green bushes, on the path; while the saplings filling the corners grow. She sees him with his head tilted to the sky that once bled crimson, in the middle of the garden he built himself to remember the children history forgot. Their flag of capes flies above them all, wafting across the sky, watching it transition from dawn to dusk, each day, and every day Machina Kunagiri breathes.
Sometimes Rem joins him in their garden. It smells as sweet as it once did all those years ago. The benches at the north wall are empty, no weight bearing down on the new Lorica wood. But her and her husband cannot bring themselves to sit down, not when the benches aren't for them. In the early days after its completion, Rem would watch as Machina carefully stepped around the grass and path, almost like he was on sacred ground. And maybe he was, but the memories were nothing more than a scrape across his mind. He'd pace around until the stars gleamed, and Rem would pull him out of the last standing Peristylum and back to their home in the rebuilt city. The garden is a place of refuge for both of them, somewhere to go when they must push away what was the unimaginable to them.
On winter days snow cloaks it in a tranquil blanket. He looks out at it from his window, pausing his work to observe the undisturbed peace of the garden. The trees are bare of leaves, thin branches waiting for the spring for the buds to bloom. On days when snow fell from the heavens or when rain battled down upon Orience, their flag would rest in his and his wife's office, protected away from the forces of nature that could not be reckoned with. Rem looks up from her typing when he folds it and leaves it down on the couch by the window. Her eyes flicker down, and that aura of knowing Rem Tokimiya Kunagiri has always had in her shines through the room, through him.
"Hate for something to happen to it." Rem had said, smiling lightly at the knotted vermillion fabric the first time he brought it in. Machina only nodded back.
When she's pregnant for the first time, she sits down on one of the benches, finding cool refuge in the warm summer. The young trees grew fast in the short year since the beginning of the build, and new flowers bloomed between the cracks in the concrete. There wasn't much work that needed to go into it in the first place. It was like time had sealed a spell of protection over the small class garden, stopping all destruction. Everywhere else in Academia had to be rebuilt, renewed, and remade, after the chaos of the end of the world. But their garden was a testament to the act of war, and the battle of time.
If anything, time had healed it. Flowers may not have bloomed there, but lingering in the air, in the trees that no longer grew, in the broken benches by the north wall, and along the meandering, shattered path, were the traces of a broken cycle. The hum of a song, the leer of a flute, the laughter of a boy; memories that didn't exactly haunt, but could never return.
Rem sighs when her stomach drops at her hand, almost as if her unborn child is sensing her odd mood when she thinks she hears the gruff voice of someone she once held dear. Machina and hers office is on the second floor, with his desk just at the edge of the window. Their shared office had become a home-away-from-home when the world of Orience was only just out of its cog-status of a machine. The plush rugs, old couches, old Militesi computers, the piles of paper censuses, handwritten by her hardworking husband when he was only seventeen. He's come along way, she thinks, and in her rush of pride for her love, she rubs her stomach again. It's only been ten years yet he's done so much in such a short space of time. He's not the seventeen year old boy controlled by his fear, ruined by his anxieties, but the leader of the world he got to build. Their voices swim in her head, and for a split second, she wonders, what would they have done if they had more time?
For the first time that summer, it rains, and Machina wants to laugh. The rain pelts down but the heat is still unbearable. The office is empty, void of her usual typing, or her soft humming, or the strange songs that she found out of nowhere. His wife hadn't even come into work that morning, and now that he thinks about it, he probably should've joined her at home. He spares a glance to the garden, the flag flying against the rain, the bound knots unbreakable against the elements. He's about to tear himself away from the window when he sees her, hidden amongst trees at the north wall, sitting on the bench, letting the rain hail down on her. With a shake of his head, Machina grabs their coats, and heads outside to join her.
"She told me, that I couldn't carry." Rem says after a few moments silence on the bench, red eyes looking straight ahead, towards the bushes lined at the south side. "I knew, but I still," she pauses to take a breath "I still tried, and it happened."
It did happen. The child that didn't live past a thought in their future. Her teenage illness had never really gone away, she still coughed and hid the tissues from him, she still got weak headed and had to lie down. Constant doctor's appointments could never save her. As a teenager, she never cared about starting a family or being a mother. She was never expected to live past eighteen, and that was her plan, to pass valiantly in the battle field where no one would notice nor care.
"I know Rem," Machina's voice is soft, his hand brushes against hers, and he debates holding it or not. He doesn't know if he should leave her alone or pull her into him. And in reality, the latter is the only thing Machina thinks he himself needs right now. "We tried, and we failed, but we're alive, and that's enough, isn't it?"
He hates how he asks her in their garden, the garden of their friends who fought for their future. The rain slows in front of him, and he feels like his life is turning back to another time, on the same bench in the same garden. They're smiles still haunt him like ghosts would to their old lives, wandering lost in the familiarity and feeling like intruders in the one place they called home. Was academia a home to them? Did the Twelve Children of Class Zero walk the halls like he did, feeling more at home than any desolate village ravaged by disease and ruin. Did they smile as the scent of sea air clouded above them, and did they find the gurgling fountain at the gates a comfort after missions? Was the ready room a place of celebration after a battle, and was the graveyard nothing more than a garden of forgotten memories. Part of him wishes he couldn't remember them, like they flitted away like birds beyond the walls and onto a new world. They did go onto a new world, the other side of their world. Its only in this garden can Machina take a glimpse to the other side. Ace leads his siblings in a chorus on the other side, his brother is on the other side, he's with their mother on the other side, Kurasame watches on the other side.
"I know," She says. Her voice is pained, but Rem Tokimiya Kunagiri has never been someone to give up, not even when war was at her door, and death hung above her. "We can be enough."
The rain begins to let up.
"Class Zero were terrorists!"
"Class Zero were heroes in the eyes of our new state, and how dare you disgrace their sacrifice." Machina spits back, and the Concordian minister for finance scoffs with an eye roll.
"Do you not remember who were the ones who conquered Ingram and Mahamari ten years ago? Who probably killed hundreds, possibly thousands in their wake during the war?" The minister retorts and Machina balls his fists. How dare he make a mockery of the people who made it possible that he may stand there, live and breathe and rule?
"Class Zero were manipulated by the Rubrum government to defend their home. When Milites and Concordia, none the less, came after their home, they acted in defence as anyone would. It wasn't until the final hours of that war did they know that they had been used for global destruction, planned by members of all nations of Orience." Machina fires, and stops himself, breathing deeply on his podium "If you are to blame Class Zero, then I hope you can bring Lady Celestia through the mud with them, or perhaps disgrace Lord Gilgamesh while you're at it!"
"You're biased; we all know you were once one of them." Ambitiosior Stultus Ventus lets disgust seep into his voice, and Machina has to fight down the urge to yell across the hall at him. "And you once thought the same too!"
"Enough."
The minister for health and social care cuts across the two arguing, voice even. She causes an earthquake with just one word, leaving both men to suffer in the tremors.
"To bring in a national day of remembrance in honour of those who gave their lives for the future we now live in, is something long overdue for this government to establish, is it not?" Rem says on her own podium, hands resting firmly on either side.
"Yes, to an extent, Class Zero were terrorists, both before and after me and the Taoiseach's arrival there. They were bred to be war machines for the sake of Rubrum, and had little control over what they could do in that world they once lived." She pauses "They held a desensitised view of death in their minds, and it wasn't until the death of Izana Kunagiri -another hero worth remembering on the 7th- did one of the children had their first confrontation with death, and the crystal's unforgiving power to reap the memories of the dead.
"As stated before by both myself and the Taoiseach, the children of Class Zero were controlled and manipulated by the corrupt Rubrum government. Still today, reports of the unlawful dealings of the Consortium of Eight are being exposed, and we, as the new Orience government, are learning from their mistakes. But however way we look at the situation of Class Zero, they cannot be held accountable for their actions during a time of war. Like another soldier, they were given their work and time to do, and had it not been for them and their sacrifice, we would not be here." Rem finishes her speech by firmly locking eyes with her opposition. Applause rings out around the hall, and her husband has a look of smug pride across his features.
The minister for finance shuffles his papers, thoroughly embarrassed. "And- what date did the counsel have in mind?"
They spend the seventh in their garden, under bare trees and wilting winter flowers. The counsel calls the day the Day of Agito, in remembrance to all those who lost their lives in the war. The only real, remaining legacies those people have in this life, the only imprint to carry over from the old world.
This garden was their legacy, the only place where Machina and Rem's memories were clear enough to remember them. The garden, the class room, the concept of Class Zero, were the only things left of them. The new world of Orience either knew them as terrorists, or just as a fleeting memory in a world moving on. They left their mark as heroes, yet everyone forgot them, destroying their name. No one even knew their names.
And maybe that's why in the years after Rem tries so hard to tell their story. Tell Orience about their saviours who chose the freedom of others over another endless cycle where they too would live. The saviours of Orience who in the face of life chose death in order to turn the gears back, and make their own history. She tells their story to all who listen, to anyone willing enough to find inspiration in the story of twelve children who, on the 7th of December, travelled to face their judgement on behalf of a world they could soon create.
And that's probably why the first private orphanage established in Rubrum is named in honour of them. She is sixty-eight at the time, and she has been through the end of the world, and the twelve children who live at her orphanage are in the first generations of children to not live with influence of the crystal or the endless cycles. And someday, they'll come of age with the young world of Orience. Class Zero died for their futures, and in their eyes, she sees them in the children.
And when Rem's time is up, and the garden flourishes, she knows the hundreds of children she's raised in the orphanage will carry on her own legacy, of remembering the twelve children who changed their world.