Title: Miliardo
Rating: PG
Warnings: Death, angst, and a happy ending.
Pairings: none
Notes: Written from the perspective of Zechs Marquise.
I had a dream last night.
I dreamed of the day the Earth Force Alliance stormed the palace.
The smoke was the same, and the concussions the shells of the attackers' guns made. The way the plaster knocked loose from the walls blanketed the garden like the first snow of winter, and the way the flames ate the lilacs painted around the ornamental molding on the ceiling on my mother's room.
This dream was different though, because I was me now, Zechs Marquise.
Zechs Marquise, the living weapon. Long legs, and long hair, and long patience. Eyes guarded behind panels of shatter-proof glass. Past guarded by more lies than I cared to remember.
I dashed through the corridors of the upper floor and for every door I passed, I remembered a name, or a moment. Then I was on the stairs, racing upwards towards the place where it all had ended, in the turret of my parents' bedroom.
When I reached the door, I pushed it inwards, and it swung open on it's two intact hinges with a disturbing, loose-jointed ease. It had already happened, then...
I was too late to save them, and too shell-shocked to do anything but run-
-No.
That was how I usually felt in dreams like this one, but on this occasion, the fear didn't come.
Nothing at all came, until I looked into the room, and saw that it was not empty.
He knelt on the floor of the chamber, frozen between defeat and defiance, his back to the far wall. A child, no more than six or so, with ivory hair and eyes like the stones in paste jewelry.
Sound stopped then. There was only he and I, in that ruined turret room, drifting unattached on a vast, dark sea of silent dreams.
With us in that room, spread across the patterned rug between us like a great white bird, was my father.
He'd been shot four times, and the dark reflection on the carpet was still spreading. I walked forward stiffly, the soles of my boots sinking into the pile of the rug with each step, and coming away red. I walked around the body of the king, and stood before the child. He looked up at me, then stood up, left foot then right, without breaking eye contact.
I saw something flicker in the boy's eyes, and in that instant I grabbed him and held him high off the reddening carpet, cradled solidly against my chest. He threw his small arms around my neck tightly, and buried his face in the white scarf at the neck of my red uniform jacket.
For that moment, I don't think we even breathed.
"I knew you would come back for me someday," the boy whispered.
I nodded.
"What's your name?" he twisted around a little in my grasp until he could see my face, half hidden as it was by the silver mask.
"Zechs Marquise," I told him.
"I'm Miliardo Peacecraft," he informed me, formally.
"I know," I almost smiled, at that.
"Can we go home now?"
I swallowed, then answered.
"...Yeah," the moment froze in time. I stood, feet shoulder-width apart in my own father's blood, with the past held safe in my arms...
And then I woke up.
-end-