Author's Notes
Happily-Ever-After
This is a much smaller Valentine's Day post than I was hoping for, but it really couldn't have been helped. Been struggling to keep my head above the water and still sleep, what with the kids and my classes. I've been taking naps past 9 pm so that I can get that last bit of energy to finish up things needed those nights—and I've still slept all the way until 6 am after that. During the school day, there's so much going on that your body doesn't really get tired: there's not enough time to feel sleepy. Except in meetings. I have to tap my feet a bit to keep myself from nodding off in IEPs. The interest is there, honest, but when I don't have an active role to play, my body wants to catch up on sleep.
But, anyways, enough about me. This is a Zero/Aleda (for those who don't know, Canon/OC) that I've had sitting on my computer since November. I kind of wanted to wait a bit, because technically it has spoilers for Little Wing, but when I really thought about it, it wasn't anything that readers weren't expecting, anyways. Here's my Valentine's Day contribution: a remembrance of the hard times and the little genuine responses between lovers that makes all the difference between lasting love and mere infatuation. I wanted to do a more lighthearted Shute/Rele one, too, but the ideas weren't coming to me, sorry Maybe next time.
Happy Valentine's Day!
-Penelopi
Disclaimer
SD Gundam Force is produced by Sunrise and Bandai. Aleda is my OC.
Happily-Ever-After
The nights after they married weren't quite like what Aleda had imagined. Not to say that they were bad. She quite liked most of them. But, not all were as blissful as had been hoped. Sometimes—frequently, at first, though with increasing rarity as time passed—Zero would wake or thrash in his sleep, gasping and struggling against foes and fears long since gone.
"No..."
The Lady Gundamess awoke and turned over in bed, shifting silky blue sheets, to see her precious knight shaking and whimpering, his unhelmeted and unmasked face twisted in pain. "No... No! Don't! Stop!" His cries rose to heartwrenching wails. "Please! Please, no!"
"Zero!" Aleda quickly pulled herself to lean over and gently shake him. "Zero, wake up!"
His blue eyes jolted online.
"Zero." Aleda grasped her panting husband's face. "It's okay, I'm here," she soothed while stroking his cheeks.
Zero, still wide-eyed, grabbed her around the shoulders and pulled her close against him, gasping. "Aleda..." He stroked her golden imitation hair mindlessly as he mantraed her name.
Aleda nuzzled him beneath his chin. "We're home, Zero. Shh. It's okay," she whispered. She gently rubbed the wide scar next to his GunSoul. "Shh. I'm safe. We're both safe."
Zero's breaths slowed. His quivering lessened. "Aleda?" he finally whispered, lucidity entering his voice. "Was I dreaming?"
"Yeah."
He squeezed her. "I'm sorry—"
"Shh," Aleda instantly hushed him, reaching her arms up around his neck and rubbing the back of his head. She gazed into his eyes, locking window-to-window and soul-to-soul. "Don't say that. There's nothing for you to be sorry for."
Zero's eyes misted. "I love you so much," he said, sliding a hand behind her head in order to pull their faces closer.
"I love you, too." Their lips met, and the touch of Zero's wife drowned out the screams of his nightmares.
Sometimes the nights were for sleep, sometimes they were for romance, and sometimes they were for tears. Aleda occasionally had her nightmares, too. But, whatever the night would bring, or the day that came after; in spite of—no, rather because of the struggles, neither would say that it wasn't still their happily-ever-after.
