A/N: Written for the Crusades into the Celestial Realm Challenge, 1.1 vs. Scout (N) – area boss.
Past of a Blank Slate
He didn't care too much about his past, except when it didn't leave him alone. In his opinion, it was fine to let bygones be bygones. He had no regrets about his current life, and he wouldn't mind at all if it continued like that until his adventures got him killed one day.
After all, he got other people killed enough. Not that he cared too much about that either. If they had the same mentality as him, they'd understand. Everything was a blank slate in the end. Tied to nothing.
Except some people seemed determined to hold on to the past, and tie him up with it. So they left him with no choice. He had to find that past…if only to cut his ties with it and be free from it, so he could go back to his blank slate life and just run along and have fun until he died.
So he searched. And it took a bit. He made allies: things he'd never had in memory before. Except he had. Though he'd had enemies. Lots of those, and even more he picked up along the way.
And then, finally, he did find out the truth. Who he was – and he was fine cutting ties from them because he was wild, slippery, but not a monster on puppet strings. The he of now didn't take orders from anybody, and he didn't want to go back to the he of the past that did.
The Colonel seemed relieved to hear that. Maybe he'd been secretly rooting for Zen, instead of Zero. And the girl as well, now dead for the sin of trying to find freedom in him.
But he was freedom. He was Zen that just went with life and made the best of it, as though the next seconds would slip away from him. He wasn't a covert operative who killed when the order was given, whose mind was so weak as to be so easily controlled…
He'd found his past, and he didn't care too much for it.