Bel Niente nella Guerra
"Beautiful Nothing in the War"
A/N: Thus begins chapter two. I'm in my next to last quarter of graduate school and we just got past midterms. Yay me. Please enjoy the chapter.
AC 192, July 7
Lake Victoria Specials Academy
Northwestern Tanzania
Early morning drills, Lucrezia found, were the best part of the military day. Studying and exams were one thing, a good part of the required year of accelerated preparatory education prerequisite to enlisting in the Alliance Special Forces Training was spent taking a cram course in pre-collegiate higher level education courses, but she was glad that finally, at sixteen, she was allowed to let go of that sort of boring thought. It suited her temperament to be up before dawn and working out her anger through drills and sparring.
The boys couldn't complain about her getting special treatment. She was twice as often bruised and less in the infirmary. She was good at sparring – she had fire and she had speed because of her small size – but she was out of her league when she was paired with some of the larger cadets. At first, she had complained about it, silently, to one or two of the cadets she was friendly with, but then one of her friends, a more quiet, thoughtful one, said something to change her mind on the subject.
AC 192, May 3
"Vostov is twice my size," Lucrezia said as they sat in cafeteria with their first aid manuals open. She flipped a page in her manual with vehemence. The hand she flipped the page with had bruises on the knuckles and connected to a swollen wrist.
Lucrezia sat at a table with three of her other members of her unit, quizzing one another on the upcoming First Aid evaluation. To her left sat Hadrian Affe, a good-natured young man with a sharp sarcastic streak in him. Across from him sat Peter Stangel, a quiet, studious young man with a mop of reddish orange hair. Aside form Lucrezia, he spent the most time with his books of the four of them. Beside Peter, and across from Lucrezia sat Giustino Savoy, another Italian, a duca who had been given his father's title on the man's death some months earlier. It engendered the two of them to one another, and despite the lack of time for socializing, their common land and their common loss was enough to make them as decent of friends as was possible in the regimented environment.
It was Savoy who asked her, quite honestly, and without looking up from his book when he spoke, "Why do you expect special treatment when it comes to sparring, when you seem to roll with the rest of the punches uncomplainingly?" At the end of his question, he finally looked up at her. His brown eyes met hers evenly, unassuming. He was curious.
She sputtered and fumbled for an answer. Her reward for that was a grin from the young Duca.
"Don't you think it's the least bit unfair?" Hadrian asked, taking some notes down from his manual on how to set a bone break properly. "It would be like putting Stangel into a match with an elephant."
Affe was very careful not to say what he had once, which was that, She is just a girl, afterall. The reaction to that had been uncomfortable for the small knot of early friends, and it ended even less comfortably. Lucrezia had turned and given him a black eye. It had resulted in a fist fight, Hadrian not one to take being hit by anyone, let alone another cadet, and both had black eyes and split lips before anyone interrupted them. That was the attitude that Lucrezia adopted towards anyone who saw the gender instead of the uniform she wore. It worked, for the most part. It had certainly worked with Stangel and Savoy.
Savoy…
"None of us are sparring with elephants," Savoy said. "Besides, in combat, no one worries about being evenly matched with their opponents. In war," he paused a moment on that word, emphasizing it for his friends, "not being evenly matched is what wins the day. More guns, better equipment, hope and heart… I envy you, Noin."
It was strange hearing herself called by her last name and having it pronounced properly, after so much time hearing it butchered. Duca Savoy was another native of Italy, and so his accent was impeccable in regards to that. They were somewhat closer friends than she was with either Affe or Stangel, because of it.
"Envy me?" she looked at him with the deadpan of disbelief on her face. "Why the hell would you do that?"
Savoy smiled at her. "You get into fights that are harder… you get the chance to toughen up."
"You mean she gets laid flat more often than we do," Stangel said, surprising his compatriots by speaking from between the pages of the book he seemed to have grafted onto the lower half of his face.
Affe chuckled, and Lucrezia made a face. "Glasses has a point," Affe offered amiably. "You get the crap knocked out of you, but you just get up and go tearing back into them."
"What, am I supposed to lay there and take it?" she quipped back, snapping the tip of her pencil on the paper pad she was taking notes on.
"No," Savoy said. "But it does illustrate what you are made of most affectively. And I envy you that sort of tenacity."
"And the marks," Stangel said with a sigh.
"Well I don't envy the sore she's got to be at the end of the day," Affe said. "Are we going to study or chatter?"
AC 192, July 7
Lucrezia wolfed down her breakfast with the rest of them, her boy cropped hair and slender, muscle knotted figure letting her blend in, for the most part. Her superior marks in targeting practice and all the field examinations were ignored as they moved past the boot camp part of their training and into the true reason for joining the Specials.
The true 'glory of Oz'.
She snorted as she stacked her tray with the other cadets', bending to pick up her notebooks with her swollen hands. The mobile suit. She filed along with the rest of the students, moving into her first session with the advanced military personnel. Savoy filed in behind her, followed by Stangel and Affe. The four C Company cadets brought up the first of the cadets to head into the lecture hall.
Special Training Orientation. The first officer involved in her Oz training. Master Sergeant… something…
"I'm going to start this by telling you brats that if you were glad to graduate PT training, you should turn right around and go back. There's nothing you will ever learn about after PT that is any more important than what you should have learned about yourself through it."
Another hardass. Lucrezia did her best not to show her boredom at being reminded of the inner strength that all the discipline of PT must have instilled upon them. It didn't hurt the officer's case that this evening was the first of her free nights, and instead of going over homework, she was required to move into the barracks and attend a function at her brother's side.
'Antoni, can't you just leave me alone?'
"Duty roster for this rotation," the officer snapped. "Alpha – Mobile Suit Basics, Beta – Field Tactics, Charlie – Hand Weaponry, Delta – Field Medicine. Cadets!"
Along with every other seated and sprawling student in the class, and a second ahead of most, Noin sprang to her feet, back straight, and snapped a salute.
"DISMISSED!"
Checking her notes, she made a face. 'At least it's not field medicine again,' she rolled her eyes as she shuffled out the door with the other cadets pushing on all sides of her. 'What will I ever use that for?'
In the hall, she heard the boys laughing with one another. Affe and Stangel drifted away from her in the press of cadets, but Savoy followed at her side silently. She didn't respond to his presence, and let the words of the other cadets flow around her without interacting with them.
"Lieutenant Colonel Sprigs can be so full of himself. Did you hear his PT sermon?"
"Yeah, I heard from one of the upper classmen that he gives that to the pleabs at the start of every rotation."
The voices of the other cadets echoed in the hallway around her, and were nearly impossible to drown out. She tried. "I can't wait until I'm not a pleab anymore. Less of this shouting crap and more getting saluted to!" She failed.
"Children," Savoy muttered. Lucrezia turned her eyes to him for a moment, and he shrugged. "I am headed to the library to do some reading up on the manuals, would you like to join me?"
She slowed her footsteps and let the boys push past her. It was a good moment to roll the ball of her ankle and try to get some feeling back into it from sitting for so long. She turned it during her beloved PT that morning, but time did not permit her to get any aspirin before morning ranks.
As she stretched, her dark eyes regarded Savoy for a moment, as though she were trying to figure something about him out. He was handsome enough, she figured. Too handsome. She wasn't at Lake Victoria for handsome countrymen, she was here for revenge. He watched her, and when she took too long to answer, he shrugged and headed off, waving as he got a distance away.
Too caught up in her thoughts to pay attention to his departure, she missed the guarded look he threw in the direction of someone standing past her.
Finally, she started walking towards a door at the other end of the hall. She shook her head and muttered aloud, "Boys."
"I was always led to believe that it was customary for girls to be more interested in their male counterparts."
Turning, Lucrezia was surprised to find Zechs walking at about her pace down the hallway. She closed her eyes a moment to gain composure before she spoke, "Most girls don't decide to join the Specials," she replied evenly.
Discussions with Zechs, she found, were stimulating and dangerous. Unlike Savoy, who she felt akin to, Zechs she felt challenged by. He had seen her unguarded, hurt… He had seen her when she was weak. There were things that neither of them could say in the cramped Lake Victoria Specials Academy. It had never been cramped before he came. She had been an oddball, but there had been no one to think she was other than someone who shared a name with a formerly prominent family. Most of the other cadets at the academy were not of a mindset to care about nobility, or who had what to their names. Even Savoy, whose name suggested more than just a duchy in his future, seemed to care less for his title and more for his drills. But there were few at the Academy who were 'of the blood' or of any blood to speak of.
She wondered about Zechs, however.
"True enough."
The two walked side by side in silence for a moment. Neither touched the other, even despite the press of bodies. The crowded hallway passed away behind them as they made their way into the outdoors. Lucrezia held any even moderately personal conversation until they reached the outside of the building, and then she began a brusque, "Thank you, for before…"
"Consider it a service to a friend," he replied, continuing to walk beside her.
Lucrezia turned to look at him. He spoke with the same silver smooth tongue as her brother did when he was speaking to someone important. "Just because Treize and my brother are friends means nothing. I don't expect special treatment from you."
"I'm a cadet, just like you," Zechs replied, holding a hand up in attempt to placate her rebuttal and forestall her anger. "There's nothing to get so worked up about. You may be a soldier, but it doesn't mean you can't be a lady as well."
Lucrezia let out a growl. "What would you know about it?" she demanded, stalking off towards where her bicycle was to return to her small apartment. On top of having her first day off of PT duties and her brother's invitation, she was also being required to move into the normal barracks.
His Excellency, Adalwulf Kushrenada, did not permit his future Oz soldiers to be indulged in anything, even separate housing for female cadets. It 'built character', as the letter she had received informed her, to house the female students in the environment they would be expected to excel in after graduation.
'Assuming we graduate,' Lucrezia had grudgingly retorted in her mind as she spent the dawn hours packing her belongings to move back into the barracks. At least she would not be expected to shower 'with her unit', but only to be present 'with her unit' at all times, for all inspections. And if she was, well, she was certain Antoni would throw an even bigger fit.
The only thing she hadn't packed was what she needed to ready herself for the evening. Her brother's gift of the 'proper attire' was welcome, mostly, and chiefly, because of the gloves included with the ball gown. She didn't even care what color it was, so long as it disguised, as she was sure it would, her overly muscled body and battered fingers.
His words on the phone had been very stern. Be present at your front gate promptly at six o'clock, you are not the only person who will be traveling in the limousine, if you are the last to arrive I will be more than cross with you, Luc. Farsi bella[1, hai capito[2
'That name,' she sighed. Her brother insisted on dressing her as a girl when he had made it abundantly clear that she was turning out to be more of a boy. He insisted that until she got this 'nonsense' of being a soldier out of her head, he would address her, privately, as the boy she seemed to desire to be.
He didn't understand. Antoni grew up at their father's elbow, learning politics and proper etiquette. He could play piano, he had learned to waltz, he could even diffuse a dangerous conversation. As the youngest of four children, Lucrezia had grown up in her older siblings' shadows. Antoni's was longest. She had not Ermete's talent for words or music, and she was not half as beautiful as the darling Ines. Her features were not soft, and her manners were not dainty. Had she been a son, she would have rivaled Antoni, but as she was a daughter… she only felt that others found her behavior unacceptable. She felt scorn, because she wasn't the family's son, but their youngest daughter.
Her father, Ottaviano, had agreed with her when she came, crying, one day to his study and argued that she should have been born a boy, to save him the trouble. He was a kind man, and he had indulged her little joke with herself. 'Well then, Luc,' and he had said it ever so much more endearingly than Antoni ever did, 'I shall count you as one as long as you like.'
And so she had learned to fire pistols and get into fistfights. She could ride a horse both astride and sidesaddle (her father's precaution lest they be forced to entertain foreign nobility), and she had been allowed to lend a hand to the farmers when they were at work in the fields. Her brother and sisters detested her wildness, but her father and mother adored it.
Her mother had even learned to play along, though she never stopped forcing the same lessons on her as she had her sisters. Over the many years, the six that had passed between her father's indulgence and his demise, she had learned, in secret of them all, how to be a lady. She waltzed with the stable hands, she played piano at the restaurant.
Her swollen fingers turned the locks on the door, and pulled the curtains over the kitchen sink.
Those days were over, and all that was left of them was the tomboy that had grown out among the weeds of the fields. The proper young lady, always kept in hidden away in darkness, seemed to have traded darkness for a coffin. The lady was dead.
Lucrezia headed into the shower and scrubbed the scent of the base from her skin, raking a comb through her hair. All she could think of as she moved through the motions of getting dressed and done up for the festivities that evening was that she had better not be late for the next morning's class… and…
She had to laugh as she fastened the ball gown on. And, she thought privately, that Antoni would never forgive what she had them do to her hair.
Italian Phrasebook for Chapter 2:
[1 Farsi bella – Italian "make yourself pretty / doll yourself up"
[2 hai capito? – Understand?