Darling on the run

Chapter 1

Hiro staggered forward, the wind rushed past his face, rushing in his ears and eating away at any warmth in his body. The soft crunch of snow beneath him was barely audible as he nestled his face under his collar, hoping to keep his gaunt and bloodied face out of the freezing gale. His legs were in pain, his joints ached, his muscled burned with such warmth that the cold could not be felt. However he could not feel his toes, his feet were so blistered he felt as if he was walking on hot coals, he could feel his raw skin die as it froze in the knee high snowdrift. As each step peels off another layer he felt as if he would collapse. Nevertheless he pushed on; with his bride on his back he smiled bitterly.

"Aren't we supposed to do this after the wedding" he thought, his mind swirling back to memories of the past…

A silence hung over the house, the gardens, the lake, the home of squad 13. But the silence of hiro's world was broken by the soft sobbing of zero-two, whose tears of both heartbreak and primal rage stopped him from drifting into catatonic state of depression. He looked out the window, through the broken dome into the dark sky, a mixture of dust and cloud prevented him from observing the starry night sky as he had always done. No streaks of hope came into his view, he felt so powerless. Kokoro and mitsuru were gone, and it was his fault. Or at least he believed it was, he pushed for the wedding, and he got everyone on board.

He punched the window, causing cracks to race across the pane, like a spider's web, intertwining and connecting until they reached the wooden edge. The loud crack caused zero to give out a small yelp. Her face pale and mouth open. As if she had seen some kind of ghost. Hiro looked down to his clenched fingers, small shards of glass embedded into his skin like small diamonds on a necklace, the familiar crimson liquid flowed and dripped onto the floor, with and erratic pacing, but there was no pain, he clenched his fist tighter, to feel something, to prove to himself this was real, not some fever dream or horrible nightmare. He felt nothing. He hurled his fist at another pane on the window, crying out as he did, again the panes cracked, but then it shattered. The noise bounced from wall to wall then back to him. As he raised him fist to the next pane, it was suddenly stopped by a fierce grab followed by his legs being swept from underneath him and he fell onto his back with a colossal thud and several floorboards cracking.

Zero twos face hung over his, in her usual dominant manner, before she collapsed onto him in a ball of tears. As he tried to regain his breath she breathed deeply, her tears faded and her breathing once again reached its familiar pattern.

"D-darling?" she pleaded worryingly to her partner

"zero-two, please get off" he stated coldly his mind already too focused on his guilt that clawed at the back of his mind, as if trying to escape

She slapped him, hard…

In return he pushed her off and stood back up swivelling on his feet he then stared at the door, the claw marks etched into it and the eerie silence that lay beyond. While his love sat on the cold hard wood that made up the floor to their bedroom, she felt utterly powerless, her hands covering her eyes and her legs sprawled out, and half crossed in front of her.

Finally he turned around and crouched down to her level, he held his hand out, palm open offering his hand to her.

"Zero-two, when we first went to the city together you asked me to run away with you, do you remember?" he asked.

Her eyes peeked through the gaps between her fingers at him, and she nodded slowly.

"Well I want to offer the same question to you… let's leave together, we can take Strelizia and return to the ocean, we could live out the rest of our lives in peace, no more heartbreak, no more betrayal…"

Slowly her hands left her face, her eyes sparkled and she took his hand as they both stood up and embraced.

"Darling!" she exclaimed in joy "but what about the others..?"

"no…no we might put them in danger, we want them to be safe" he stated "they will have to stay here, so no one may know about out plan ok?"

She gave a small nod, knowing what this meant and she kissed him, as they both nuzzled their horns together, both cried silently at the prospect of abandoning everyone, but both believed it was for the best.

The next day passed with an almost unsettling smoothness, as everyone acted on autopilot, using work to push the bad memories out, to ignore the horror they had just been through, but both Hiro and Zero-two tried to make amends as subtlety as they could, and as the sky turned from a bright mixture of brown and grey, to a shade of pink and streaks of orange from the sky that cast long shadows of the ruined plantation, standing upright, like a wounded soldier standing at attention, barely keeping himself up to do his duty.

"Duty" the word encapsulated Hiro; his life was all duties to someone, to his friends, his peers, his leaders and now his love. He clutched her on his back, her blossom pink hair stuck to his coat, frozen on by the sleet and snow that lashed at them, from all sides. The blizzard had left them isolated from landmarks, shelter and rest. Hiro cursed himself for his own weakness as he fell into the snows soft embrace, his foot caught on some unseen hazard. As he dragged himself to his feet he thought about the night he escaped his duty and he clenched his teeth at how foolish he was, he once again pushed on tightly gripping Zero-two on his back

"No" he reasoned "no this was for the best, the best for zero-two and myself, we are free, free…"

He looked down at his feet, engulfed in white and leaving deep trenched that scarred the land behind him. He kept trying to justify their exodus, he kept telling himself it was in their best interests. And as the tears rolling down his cheek froze, he raised his head and kept plodding toward the eternal blankness that surrounded him. The iced winds knifed him, blasted away at him face, the powdery snowflakes, turning to water and small balls of ice that forced him to see through squinted eyes. Although he could now barely see through his eyelashes, he struggled on, his other half's shallow breaths warming his icy neck, her unconscious murmurs filling with hope, only to wrench it away as she fell back into her slumber.

As the wind finally settled for a brief window, he was able to spot a grey monolith, it towered above him. Like the lad in the garden, but it was more uniform, and square. He stumbled his way forward, using every last ounce of his soul to reach it. But it felt as if he would never make it the more he shuffled toward it the further away it got. He could only focus on the small entrance, a hole in the wall, the rest of the world faded to an obscurity, one foot after another, one step at a time. He reaches the hole and fell to his knees, an icy glaze fell into his view, and he pounded against the glass. Screaming and writhing in front of it. Bitter laughter escaped from his lips, followed by a insane cackle, he couldn't stop laughing.

"Hahahaha…OPEN YOU PIECE OF SHIT!" he then suddenly screamed at the window, but he figured the window wouldn't hear even if it could, his shout was drowned out by the howling wind.

He sighed; he was going to die…. This was it, he would die, alone. He had failed everyone, his friends, himself and his soul mate. He dragged himself and Zero-two into the window frame, at least it was out the wind… and then he curled up around her, covering her body with his own.

And his eyes closed plunging his world into the dreaded darkness, and he tried to think back that first day they were free. And the warmth of the sun.

As the day after the fateful wedding ended and night crept over the ruined plantation and surrounding desert. The squad returned to their rooms, and most of them tried to escape to their dreams and innocent sleep. In the couples room however no such comforts could be afforded to them as they prepared for their excursion across the continent to the beach. They checked their list, and checked it again. They would only have one chance to do this and they had to do it right. Zero-two remained calm and composed whereas Hiros hands trembled, he was prepared to do what he had to do to escape this glorified prison that he had lived in for the what felt like years of his life though he believed it could not have been over a year. He sighed and finally spoke

"Ready?" he asked with a raised eyebrow

He got no answer just the smirk he had grown so used to. And with that they crept put the room, holding only two pieces of paper, a list and a letter. As they reached the bottom floor he walked into the dining room and placed the letter on a table, its cover simply reading "goodbye" and with that out the way he worked his way through the kitchen, taking as many ration packs as he could. Any food, any flavour, but he kept a eye out for honey, being able to collect fifty packets of the stuff. He then laid the food on a table and counted it up. A hundred all day meals gave them around fifty days of food rationed.

While he did this zero-two worked on collecting the clothes they would need: spare change of clothes, night wear, coats. She hovered over her old uniform, ripped and worn. She stuffed it in the bag and kept going. Finally Hiro had finally counted out each meal and packed it away in two bags, one for each of them. They met up by the lift, in an eerie silence; they were both not allowed to talk to one another, in case of the others noticing, but they embraced, passionately pulling in for a kiss before parting and going back to their tasks, as they were not out the woods yet. Zero-two opened the wall by the elevator to reveal a simple control panel of sorts, she then waved her id card at it and blinked green, before the heavy iron doors shuddered open and the two stepped on the platform.

They held hands as the lift fell story after the story, the dim orange glow of lights raced paced them, like small fires embedded in the walls, their amber glow being the only light available as the one large and foreboding city had been reduced to rubble. Hiro gulped quietly as the lift came to a halt and the doors slid open to reveal the immaculate and glistening white hallway, at the end of which their freedom lay ahead; however zero two had to change, into her suit. So reluctantly he waited in the pristine hallway, clutching at two bags. He kept glancing at the end of the hallway, that door, what would lay behind it, we wondered. He dropped the bags and leant against the wall. He tapped his leg with his hand, and his chest felt light and breaths were shallow and shaky. Finally Zero-two returned and the weight left his shoulders, she stood in her red spandex and she gave her toothy grin as she always did.

"Quit staring darling, you perv..." she teased

Hiro laughed warmly and picked up the bags, he started to stride down the hall. He and Zero-two threw open the door at the end of the hall, it opened to the enormous hanger that they had been in so many times. Yet this time it was different. He was not ready to fight; he was not ready to die. As the fuel piped into the Franxx, alarms blared and the room became a dim red. Everything faded into the background as he could not tear his eyes off her. As she hopped around the exterior of the mech with all her usual grace and ease, fitting tubes together and wrenching off support beams. All with a grin on her face that almost stretched ear to ear.

Together they entered the metal giant, reminding Hiro of that fateful day, a day he should have been forgotten, to a day he started to feel alive. And as they broke through the steel walls that encapsulated the hanger, stepping out into the barren desert that the world had become, he felt finally like he was living. They glided over the rocky and heat blasted landscape for the rest of the night, the stars and moon slowly retreated beyond the horizon, letting them stop, and step outside to feel the sun's rays beat down on them, announcing the start of a new day.