Title: What They Don't Know
Fandom: Gundam Wing
Theme: #9 Footprints
Pairing: Zechs Marquise/Treize Kushrenada
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I do not own the Gundam Wing universe or characters, and I mean no harm nor do I make any money from this. Please don't sue.
Author's Note: This took on a life of it's own, and kinda went a bit long...
Summery: Following the fall of Sanc, Treize and OZ go in search of the erstwhile Prince.

Treize didn't like it here anymore. There was nowhere peaceful left in the Sanc Palace, and wherever he wandered there was rubble. Sometimes the soldier escorting the young noble to his father forgot that Treize was only a boy of 10 and would move on ahead, leaving the boy to take in the horror at his leisure. Sometimes all that would show what had happened would be a splatter of scarlet against the expensive walls and in others – in others the bodies had been piled in the corridors with only a sheet to hide them from the eyes of the living if soldiers weren't checking their faces. At one point the guiding soldier looked over his shoulder at the nauseous boy and gave him a sympathetic smile.

"Sorry. You forget there are civilians about the place."

"Wha- what are they doing that for?"

"They want to account for everyone. Rumour is that some of the Royal Family is unaccounted for."

He frowned deeply, ignoring the indulgent grin of the soldier. He'd liked the Queen, a lovely lady who'd given him his first rose plant last year for his birthday. The thought that she could be one of these lifeless corpses was one that horrified him deeply. And what about the King, or the Princess, or Mirialldo? Treize hadn't thought about that earlier when he'd watched the sack with his mother on the TV. Somehow he'd assumed that all the friendly people in the palace were hiding, safe somewhere. He'd never imagined such a scene as this ever in his young life.

"Treize!" Cornel Kushrenada called, snapping his son out of his increasingly morbid thoughts. "You made it. Thank you Captain."

The young soldier bowed and retreated, soon lost in the hubbub of activity that the Peacecraft portrait gallery had become. Orders were given, and there seemed to be a constant stream of uniformed people in and out of the double doors. If this were anywhere else, Treize would have been excited at being included.

"Treize," His father pulled him over to a relatively quiet corner where a woman in a yellow dress that did nothing for her figure peered nosily down at them with the Peacecraft blue eyes from a huge canvas above. "Are you ok? Course you're not."

"Father, why did you call me here? Mother went purple when you sent for me, it's all over the TV…"

Treize's father sighed softly.

"We can't find the Prince. We think he's hiding somewhere on the grounds but… Listen to me Treize, it's imperative that 'we' find him. Do you understand me?"

Of course Treize understood him. The new organisation known as OZ had been his obsession ever since he'd been told about it. He knew which of the Alliance's leading officers were members of OZ, and which would be violently opposed to it. He knew that they only let the best join, and he knew that his father was somewhere in the upper echelons of that society. That thought made him proud whenever he cared to linger on it and he'd think to himself 'One day I'll be an OZ soldier too.'

So, Treize nodded his red head in understanding. His father smiled a little in relief.

"You know where he might be, so I want you to look for him. I'll be putting two men with you to help. Do you accept?"

Treize smiled once more and nodded again.

"Yes Sir."

A week passed, and still they hadn't found the Prince. Sometimes, in the very early hours of the morning he thought that he could hear bare feet running past the fencing room where the soldiers that were left bedded down. Somehow Treize knew he wasn't imagining things and would lie there painting foolishly romantic pictures in his mind of the tragic young prince stumbling through the ruined corridors of his old home, desperately searching for a friendly face in the rubble that had so recently cradled those horrific corpses…

On the eighth afternoon after the attack, when they had been outside burying the Royal Family on the grounds, a soldier was found dead in the corridor with half his face blown off.

In the commotion of the discovery, the adults failed to notice half a footprint on the edge of the spreading blood, gleaming wetly against the stone floor. Treize saw it though, and took off in the direction it went. No one took any notice, assuming that the sight of a man with his brains decorating the hall had sent him running. This was no place for a child to be anyway.

The noise of the adults receeded behind him as he chased after the fading footprint until both the noise and the prints were gone and disappointment stung his chest. He'd been so close to finding him, so very close. There was no doubt in the boy's mind that it had been Mirialldo there; that perhaps he'd even done the shooting. A hard thing to imagine of the six year old, but who else could it have been?

"Miri!" He called out, hoping that the boy was still close and that their friendship still held. Behind him he heard the click he'd come to know as a gun's safety.

"Don't shout, Treize. No shouting or running in the corridors." Said a very familiar voice.

Very slowly he turned on the spot, his booted feet making soft clapping sounds in the otherwise silent hallway. The boy facing him looked very different from the tragically romantic figure Treize had imagined. Yes, his once fine clothes were virtually rags and his blonde curls were a knotted, matted mess darkened with blood and soot. But not once in his imagination had he looked at his friend with such anger and betrayal. And he'd absolutely never had a gun trained clumsily on Treize's chest.

"What are you doing?" Treize whispered, studying the gun and the way it dwarfed Mirialldo's hands.

"Getting them back." The Prince told him, with the bottomless self-centred hurt of a child. "For Mama and Dad."

"Are you going to hurt me too? I thought we were friends Mirialldo?"

"I didn't hurt that man. He did it himself." Mirialdo said defensively, his hands starting to tremble. "He left me a note saying sorry for making my parents go away."

Treize looked at Mirialldo, a sudden wave of pity coming over him. He stepped forward slowly, knowing that if he frightened him, the younger boy might hurt him.

"Sorry, Miri. I've been trying to find you. My father wants to hide you somewhere safe."

"No. You want to make me go away too. I heard them."

"Not my father. He wants to hide you so you can get them. So we can both get them."

Mirialldo looked up at him with the big blue eyes that his nannies had cooed over. He wanted to believe him, he didn't like this new world where there was no one to go to when he had bad dreams, and he had to find his own food.

"Cross your heart?" He asked in a small voice, starting to lower the gun.

"And hope to die, stick a needle in my eye." Treize said earnestly, doing the actions hastily. Silence for a moment, both boys utterly still. Caught in a bizarre tableau of trust before the smaller boy lowered the gun.

Treize immediately moved forward, wrapping his arms around the boy's slender shoulders in a fiercely protective hug, which shocked it's recipient enough that the gun was dropped to the floor. Mirialdo returned the hug very briefly before snaking out of his grip.

"Umm…" The prince said, awkwardly wrapping his arms around himself. "Shouldn't we go see your Dad?"

"Yeah…" Biting his lip briefly Treize shifted from one foot to another before heading down the corridor. "This way, before things calm down…"

Mirialldo fell into step beside Treize, a silent companion on the road to where they had to go.

FIN