See Prologue for notes.
xXx
(Early February 189 – Day 0 + 18 weeks)
A wave of tension ripples down his spine, and he exhales sharply as he presses into her one last time. It's a hard and lingering push, one that makes her fingertips dig into his back with a small cry.
Treize was the one who started it that night, which is neither unusual nor by any means the rule. It was while they were doing dishes together after dinner, which Leia insisted on doing alone until he slid up next to her and bumped her over with the nudge of his elbow. She told him then that there was no way he knew anything about doing dishes, that he had scores of servants to wipe his nose and God knows what else, a challenge he met by dousing the sponge liberally with dish soap and aggressively scrubbing several grease and food-caked pans until the dishwater turned brown. Leia then conceded that, maybe, he might have done dishes once or twice before.
The dress she wore that evening was sleeveless, fitted, a nice outfit even for her. It hugged her hips, her small waist, her rear, and contrasted in deep maroon with the fall of her flaxen hair. From his height, Treize could easily see down the low cut of the front, the dark, narrow gap between breasts lifted by an expensive and padded bra. His interest was received with a fast splash of water that splattered a dirty streak across his white shirt. There was a light scuffle, fueled by feigned offense and childish payback, which ended somewhat predictably with them up against the counter, her arms and legs wrapped around him, his hands all over her, kissing and clutching. They left a trail of clothes to his room.
Treize lets his head dip to the crook of her shoulder, where he stays as his breathing slowly returns to normal. Leia's hand is in his hair, on his neck, warm and caring in a way that no one's been with him before. Resting in her arms like this, there's nothing on his mind, just a fuzzy sense of wellbeing and calm.
He winces as he slides out of her, sensitive and careful, and straightens his arms to hover over her small body. In the light from the nightstand lamp, her cheeks are pink, her lips full and colored with smeared lipstick. Leia looks very pretty the way she is now, soft and alive, blue eyes bright and searching. He hopes that he's satisfied her. She rises up and kisses him, her fingers ghosting over the firm angle of his jaw, holding him as though he was something delicate.
Pulling back, she presses her palm to her nose, sniffs deeply, and makes a face as she holds it up to him. The tip of his tongue darts out and touches the center of her hand, which smells like lemon dish soap. With a jingling laugh, she wipes her palm dramatically against the mattress as though hopelessly contaminated. Treize presses himself up and completely off of her and falls back on the narrow part of the too-wide mattress that he typically occupies at night. She rolls on her side and scoots in close, hugging herself to his profile.
"You don't have any siblings, do you?" The question comes out like a statement as Leia props her head in her hand, baby fine waves of blonde swallowing her forearm to midway.
One copper eyebrow arches. "Is that what you have been thinking about this whole time?"
"No!" she's quick to correct. "No, but the question did cross my mind. Yesterday. When you were going through your mails. I wondered if any of them were from a brother or sister."
"What do you think?"
"I think…" She pauses to consider. "...not. I think you're the only one." Her finger drifts across his closest shoulder, freckle-dusted from childhood summers spend outdoors, blissfully free, dutiful only to his imagination and a sense of infinite possibility.
"What makes you say that?"
"I don't know," she says, though the brief avoidance of his steady attention suggests that she really does.
"You're right, partially. My cousin grew up with me after his parents died."
"How old is he?"
"Thirteen."
"Do you get on well?"
Treize's gaze, distant but reflective, tracks across the ceiling. Do they get on well? He's asked himself many times why a boy five years his junior is more interesting to him than all the peers and adults he's rubbed elbows with. Perhaps because even the most charming and mysterious ones are secretly boring under the fluff and might. Zechs is a boy now, Treize thinks, but so close to crossing the dimly articulated line between being a child and the thing that comes next. It's an impressionable place that Treize has over the years tried to make himself a part of, not because he feels a responsibility (though he does), but because he wants to be something for Milliardo Peacecraft and whatever else he is swiftly becoming. The Why is actually quite uncomplicated. A smile quirks up one side of his mouth.
"He's my best friend."
"That's sweet," Leia tells him with a full smile that holds a measure of pleasant surprise. "He must be very mature, to be your best friend."
"Too mature. Sometimes. He's graduating from Lake Victoria Specials Academy next month."
The cheer drains from her face as she sifts through what he's not telling her. "Then he must have started at… How long is the program?"
"Three years."
In a wide beat of silence, her uneasy comprehension twists into severe incredulity. "That's horrible!"
"What?" he asks, expression tensing defensively at her outburst.
"'What?'" She puts a hand to Treize's chest and pushes. "You see nothing ethically perverted about letting a ten-year-old sign a military contract?"
"You seem astonished, and yet, how do you think I became a grade-three officer at the age of seventeen?" Treize's fingertips brush her chin in a placating gesture. "That's not the typical enrollment age. All of the other Specials academies and officer training programs have a minimum restriction of sixteen. But Lake Victoria is highly specialized. Elite. Small. Very focused, personal training for future officers of the highest caliber. The intellectual and physical capability thresholds alone weed out over 99.3 percent of applicants, and that's before the proctored battery of aptitude tests."
Leia grabs his wrist and pulls his hand away from her face with a hard scowl. "Being mature and brilliant and fast and strong doesn't automatically afford the faculties to make such life determinations."
"Their parents or guardians must authorize their admittance." Treize tries to explain the logic of it, which in his mind is quite perfect. And he has thought of the ethics of it, dozens of competent, educated adults have, including his uncle and even the mistrustful Field Marshal Noventa. "We're not kidnapping them."
"What kind of mother would send her child to military school at ten?"
"Mine."
"And after everything that's happened to you, she let your cousin go, too?" She shakes her head, disgusted. "Some mother."
"You are hardly the authority on what constitutes proper parenting."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
What it really means, and what Treize won't say, is that Leia's father called him into his office the week before under the condition that Leia not know. It means that Dekim Barton told him that he is a fine young man, a true paragon of what the Federation should be, a sympathetic person who's seen what the Earth is doing to the colonies, a hero who stands in a position to make a real difference in the course of the future. It means he told Treize that the colony needs help from soldiers like him, a reiteration of his prior statement spoken with a penetrating stare so lightless and chilling that Treize acutely remembered his own father, a man who always said far less than he meant, trusting his face and body language to adequately supplement. Treize read Dekim, clear as thin ice, for he's been eager for a reason that the rebels have consistently had money to buy weapons that Federation forensics said were about as black market as trafficked humans. It means that Leia and her father aren't so close as she believes.
"It means do not insult my mother again."
"You think this is all so normal, don't you?" Leia's voice has dropped to a hushed, observational tone, one not without a touch of what Treize thinks might be condescension. "And also that there's nothing morally corrupt about sending children into battle."
"I suppose you're going to tell me that, at eighteen, all confusion burns away and that one's purpose and sense of responsibility reach an instantaneous state of clarity."
"Don't warp this argument," she counters sharply, leaning over him with a confrontational crease between her eyebrows. "You know well that there's an immense difference between the state of mind of a ten or thirteen-year-old and an eighteen-year-old. Don't confuse this. Don't turn this into something it's not."
Treize resigns the conversation to one of insurmountable misunderstanding. He won't convince her of anything, he knows this, so he spares the effort and proceeds in his explanation in a clinically professorial way. "Not all Victoria cadets are ten. That's the minimum age of entry. Most are fourteen or fifteen. Some are as old as eighteen. But the program is designed to engender skills at an early age. It's very similar to athletic training, in that respect."
"With weapons and life-threatening missions. Murder and death." Silence again beds between them, and in it, Leia studies him, confounded, because she's now pressed up naked next to someone she barely recognizes. "All of those cadets that came here with you could have died. One very nearly did," she reminds him. "You very nearly did."
"I am certainly old enough to decide risks for myself," he volleys, partially restrained and growing frustrated. "And you must trust me when I say that the cadets I've trained are well aware of the danger, of the implications of their actions. And if what they come to understand about the occupation is unacceptable to them, they're free to quit at any time. That's the caveat for Victoria students. They can quit any time they want before they turn eighteen. And do you know what the average retention rate is?"
Leia shakes her head and rolls slowly onto her back.
"More than eighty-seven percent."
"You're too young to be what you are, Treize. It makes me so sad."
xXx
(Late February 189 – Day 0 + 22 weeks)
"I want to forget everything that's happened today. All of it," Leia tells him, shoving her hands into the deep pockets of her wool coat.
Treize looks down at her and they stop walking, paused at the crosswalk of the busiest intersection in town, though it barely qualifies as a miniature of what he's seen in New York or Tokyo. His own hands are numbing to the chill, beyond the point of being cold – if one could call the dry colonial version of winter 'cold.' It's nothing compared to what he's missing in Eastern Europe, wet cold, the kind that sticks to you even when you've come in from it and can only be properly eliminated by a handmade fire. "Bad day?"
"It was horrible. I haven't seen that much blood in so long. Mimi was joking, saying she felt like Lady Macbeth. It wasn't funny."
"Was there an accident?"
The light turns green for them and they walk, still cautious of notoriously reckless Triple-Nine drivers that seem to believe traffic signals to be nonchalant suggestions rather than legal mandates.
"Can't you guess?" Leia asks softly.
Treize grabs her elbow and pulls her toward him while some cyclist bucking more colonial civil recommendation sweeps razor-close past them. He glares at the guy, who upon closer scrutiny is a girl, and gets it back just as hard.
"Who was it this time?" he questions, releasing her arm because, if anything, it should be Leia holding his arm. If anything.
"More of your friends. A bombed patrol vehicle. There was nothing left of the two inside, but it went off outside the pedestrian mall in Sector 5. Most of the casualties were civilian."
"I'm sorry," Treize says perfunctorily, though not for any lack of sympathy for her and everyone else on Triple-Nine. It's the sixth deadly attack in a month when it's suddenly become commonplace to hear the ratta-tatta of automatic rifle fire in the distance, even from the richest sectors.
"Don't be sorry for me," she tells him, words subdued by a gravity that over the past few weeks has steadily leeched the effervescence from her like a slow internal bleed. She buries her chin in the high collar of her coat. "Be sorry for those soldiers... for all those innocent people. I might have to go back in later. Let's go here. I want a drink."
Leia stops abruptly in front of a pair of heavy wooden doors with thick, twisted iron handles. Treize doesn't even catch the name of the place because she's disappeared into it so quickly - except for a limp hand that holds one side of the entrance open for him.
The place is a pub in every stereotypical sense of the word, dark and warm with wooden booths purposefully or incidentally tarnished, Treize can't tell. Very English. The barkeep who greets them has an accent different from many of the colonists, thick cockney that sounds exotically East End. There are a few like him who've emigrated to Triple-Nine, young mostly, with glittering dreams of space capital on rotating wheels. It's an adventure that continues to fascinate Earthers even though the era is nearly two-hundred years old. Some make it, though he's told that most don't. The colony appears deceptively ripe for opportunity.
"What would you like?" Leia asks as they step up to the bar, regarding him apologetically, as though she should feel ashamed for being affected.
Treize touches the small of her back, just a touch, there and gone. "Whatever you are having is fine."
After ordering, they slide across from each other in a wide booth that swallows Leia almost armpit-deep. She plants her forearms on the table to prove that she's not so effortlessly consumed. A TV on the wall plays colonial news, a British broadcast, remote and stoic.
Leia holds her hands in front of her mouth and lightly rubs them together as she speaks. "I always think it can't get worse, and I'm always wrong. And I think the worst part is that I don't understand it."
The barkeep swings by with two draught beers and cork coasters. He says a few mostly-scrutable words about daily food specials, which both politely refuse. He leaves menus anyway, as well as a small basket of overcooked, salted crisps.
"What part of it don't you understand?" Treize asks, focus unconsciously trailing the barkeep as he circulates empty tables to give them the extra wipe that just might bring more customers.
"I don't understand what everyone is blaming the Federation for."
"Honestly?" Treize presses, keeping his surprise in check only because he's reserving the option that she may be exhibiting unprecedented levels of sarcasm.
"The Federation is moving in the right direction. They don't want to have soldiers stationed here, because it's a waste of manpower and money. The supply route in itself must cost millions." Leia pauses to suck the head off of her ale. "And they wouldn't need to be here if everybody would trust my father to make the right decisions."
"The Federation is using the colonies in the most literal sense of the word. The relationship is quite simple to them: the colonies refine mineral and ore for the Earth to use. That is it. Everybody else here is incidental – and now becoming hugely problematic."
"It's business. We have a product, and we sell it to Earth to make a living."
"At an unfair price."
She takes a slow, contemplative drink, her stare all the while unrelentingly pinned on her companion's face.
"I wasn't aware that you were intimately familiar with the books of every mining company in space," she stabs quietly.
"Even giving the Federation the benefit of the doubt in terms of pricing, which I am only willing to do for the sake of this argument, there is the entirely separate matter of using military occupation in response to civil dissent and the fair business practice of refusing a Federation contract." He's suddenly hot, and he loosens his charcoal-colored scarf and lets it hang around his neck like a priest's stole.
"This colony is part of the United Earth Sphere Alliance," Leia drops handily, pressing the tip of her index finger firmly to the tabletop. "It would not have been built without Federation mandate and funding. They virtually own it."
"And do you enjoy being a piece of Federation property?" Treize asks bluntly. "Because your fellow colonists do not."
Leia's head tilts sharply to the side, cornflower eyes wide and flashing. It's a moment of extreme familiarity to Treize, because it's a look that keenly reminds him of Zechs. Hard, angry disbelief.
He's never seen this side of her before, and he thinks with an entirely different stroke of heat that he finds something intensely sexy about it. He takes a sip of beer, his first, and wishes for the warm burn of something stronger down his throat.
"Regardless of how they feel," she concedes wearily, "there's no excuse for stooping so low that they could be mistaken for the people they're fighting so hard to destroy."
The pub door swings open, hinges screaming loudly. A young man strides up to the bar, steps firm and heavily clacking in that unmistakable way that dress boots clack when worn by a man. He slides easily onto a bar stool and exchanges quick and low words with the proprietor.
"I know him," Treize says under his breath.
"The soldier?" Her tone is at once magnitudes brighter, something he admires about her, that ability to quickly drop an argument like a hot rock when it becomes too bothersome for sport. "He doesn't look Federation."
"That is because he's in the Specials." He smiles in spite of himself. "Excuse me for a moment."
Leia nods shallowly in the middle of a thirsty pull off her drink and makes an open-handed gesture towards the bar. Crossing the room, there's a drag in Treize's step that has nothing to do with injury. The weight of hesitation. It's been so long since he's talked to one of his peers face-to-face, a genuine peer who has no control over his career and doesn't expect him to impart wisdom or guidance, or even be a decent role model. It hits home that he's nervous. Actually nervous.
"Zepeda."
The young soldier turns leisurely from the glass of soda he's just begun nursing. His brown eyes are large but slightly drooping, and there is not one iota of amazement on his face except for the modest inclination of his head. "Treize," he drawls. "Or maybe I should say 'sir'?"
"Not yet," Treize tosses out a bit too excitedly. "What brings you here?"
Zepeda swivels around and drapes an arm loosely over the back of the chair beside him. "I'm the assistant inspector general for Third Brigade. Fact-finding."
Something in Treize clicks hard in that moment, like a broken bone snapped perfectly into place. His stance shifts noticeably, tightens and centers, at once starkly professional and intently interested. "For whom?"
"The man himself."
"I never thought you would be happy as a desk jockey," Treize admits grimly, as though discussing something perverse and publicly unspeakable.
Because that's what desk duty is to a member of a Corps built around the mighty mobile suit and everything gritty and glamorous about it. Paperwork is an obvious component of command, but there are so few designated desk jobs in the organization that it's usually difficult for a Specials officer to conjure the name of a fellow soldier assigned to such a position. It's only now that Treize can say he knows of one personally.
"Who says I'm happy?" A slender, olive-toned hand itches momentarily beneath dark, curly hair that, while short, is substantially longer than any Federation soldier would dare. One of the many distinctions that the Specials enjoy by rule of brute force rather than by regulatory allowance. "I'd rather be canned-up and guarding some embassy in the desert. But can't fly with a busted shoulder. Can't even sneeze the wrong way or they rip the badge right off your chest."
"What's going on?"
Zepeda hangs his head, looking over Treize's civilian clothes on the way down, and then spots the blonde woman alone across the room with two drinks in front of her. She's got her phone pressed to her ear, and as she listens on the other end, she pushes her mostly-finished beer to the side with a frown.
"That your girlfriend?"
Treize quickly glances over his shoulder. "No."
"She's cute."
"Why don't you come join us?" Treize invites, genuinely – vehemently – hoping that his offer is accepted. He's missed this so badly, the thrill of fraternal kinship, the intrigue and pride that characterizes the Specials Corps more than any other military or paramilitary entity. It's only when directly faced with what he's purposefully kept himself from that Treize feels the gaping hole that his career dismissal has carved out in his chest.
Zepeda twists the rank on the high collar of his dark green uniform jacket as he considers. He then nods to the eavesdropping barkeep, pointing a finger to Treize's table, and accepts with a lax "Sure."
Leia's off the phone by the time the two men reach the booth. She looks first at Treize, mood indecipherable, and then at the stranger who seems to have her house guest quite taken.
"Leia, this is Captain Zepeda. And this is Leia Barton."
"Danny," Zepeda corrects as he holds out his hand to shake hers. He manages a smile, a charmingly crooked one that transforms him from the man mothers lock their daughters away from to the boy that every mother shamelessly wants as a son-in-law.
"I'm sorry," Leia apologizes, "but I have to go back to work."
"Right now?" Treize tries to sound disappointed, which works only because he really didn't believe the situation was bad enough to warrant her return to the hospital after a fourteen-hour shift.
"Unfortunately." She slides out of the booth and wraps her coat tightly around herself. "It was nice meeting you, Danny." She then addresses Treize. "I'll call you if I'm later than midnight."
"Please do."
The young men wave her off, watch her go until she's completely out the door and has passed by all windows pointed street-side. Treize feels bad. It's been a terrible week for her and everyone else on-colony who gives a damn about anything. The whole place is tense and afraid, taut to the point of near-ripping into a riot. It rests especially hard on Leia, who sees the worst of it in vivid, horrific color every day. He wonders if she wouldn't come to Earth with him. To get away. It's a rogue thought that shakes him the moment he thinks it.
They slide into the booth. Zepeda takes Leia's place, a far more substantial presence than her, straight-backed and broad-shouldered if only because the cut, cloth, and design of the dress uniform encourages such a silhouette.
"Hanging with the Bartons now?"
Treize leans forward and cups his mug between his hands. "What do you know about them?"
Zepeda snorts out a laugh. "Not as much as I'd like. Maybe you can help me with that."
"Unlikely. I've only met him once."
"Got you beat there. But he doesn't talk. Not about anything relevant. Posturing, Federation pandering. Like I give a crap."
Though he claims to loathe the position, there are few soldiers Treize thinks would make a better IG than Daniel Zepeda. He's Victoria stock, but that's typically the only indication to anybody that he's got something sophisticated going on upstairs. Only a very small fraction of what occurs in his head ever comes out of his mouth, and when it does, it's truncated into slow, flowerless points of fact. He has the look and speech of a slag addict, which makes everyone believe that he is – a dangerous assumption for the many who try to put one by him.
"How long have you been here?" Treize asks.
"Three weeks. Though after today, I'd say another three more. These chuckleheads think they're on TV or something with all the extra nonsense they pad their standard procedures with. They're as good as saying they don't know what the hell they're doing." The barkeep swings by again, this time to drop a basket of chips in front of Zepeda, which he accepts with a long 'Thank you, man.' "Cat's pressing me to get to the bottom of it, but this thing is bottomless. Could use a hand."
"Leads?"
"Car bombers don't plant in public. Not like that. Takes time." He picks up a chip and taps it a few times in the air while he explains. "And that rig is behind gates or it's moving. So we look behind the gates. I look behind the gates."
"I could contact him," Treize offers at length, blue eyes fixed and serious. "Ask him to send somebody to assist you."
"I don't need your favors," Zepeda dismisses flatly. "He should send someone because I formally request someone, not because his nephew calls him out of the valley and says he saw poor Dan moping over a cola and fries. On Triple-Nine." He eats a couple of chips and takes a drink, the straw disappearing into the far corner of his mouth like a kid. "So how's the leg?"
"Swiftly returning to full functionality." Treize relaxes back in the booth with a tiny smirk. He plainly forgot to bring his cane with him one day a few weeks back and didn't even notice until he'd been out for three hours. He hasn't touched it since. An anticlimactic transition, really.
"Yeah, you barely limp at all." There's a break in which Zepeda's demeanor sharpens critically. "So what are you doing here?"
It throws Treize off, this piercing clarity, this brief glimpse at the true color of Zepeda's mind that few have ever seen. "Pardon?"
"Why are you still here? You hanging out or something?"
Below the table, Treize fingers the hem of his coat. "I wouldn't precisely call it 'hanging out.'"
"Why aren't you back at your unit?"
"I am still recovering."
"A company without a CO isn't much of anything." Zepeda punches it home, right in the gut, before rounding it off with a pleasantly chummy inquiry. "Hear about Victoria?"
"What about it?" Treize returns distractedly, still stuck in the thistles of Zepeda's abrasive examination.
"Treize Khushrenada no longer holds the title for highest final exam score."
"No?"
"Missy cadet of the universe beat it first, then your cousin beat it even worse."
That wrenches Treize's attention right back into place. "Zechs?"
"Everyone's having a fit. Different units are sending reps out to court them. Totally unheard of." Zepeda shakes his head with a smile stuck somewhere between amused and annoyed. "Hilarious."
"Hilarious. Do you want a drink?"
"Nope."
The sound from the TV swells between them. Treize turns his head and catches a few manic camera shots of demonstrations, pools of people larger and rowdier than he's seen in broadcasts before. It's a montage, the worst of the worst, a veritable top ten of pandemonium. Somebody throws something from the crowd, a rock or an empty bottle, it's hard to tell. Probably a bottle, because ironically there aren't a great many rocks to be found on-colony. Below the shots scroll the words "...Organised unrest on X-18999; tolls for calendar year: 23 dead, 37 wounded; Federation negotiations with colonial representatives on verge of collapse..." The news reads like Zepeda talks.
"What do you think would happen if the Federation left this colony?" Treize asks candidly, crossing his arms over his chest as a cheerfully frustrated woman in khaki pedal pushers tells him about how difficult it can be to get grass stains out of her kids' clothes. Completely inappropriate.
Zepeda doesn't even lift his head from his dinner, nor does he refrain from answering with a full mouth. "They won't. They say they will, but they won't. Not unless somebody bigger forces them. And there's nobody bigger." He dunks another chip in mayonnaise with unusual consideration. "Not yet."
"And if there were somebody bigger?" Treize presses.
"They'd have to be enormous. Situation still presents itself. Long as there are guns that can be pointed up, it'll never settle. Anyway, it's too late, now the colonists got the idea in their heads."
Retaliation. They're not afraid to push back anymore, because they've discovered that every time the Federation puts down an assembly with force, there are even more people at the next demonstration - cameras and protesters. The news gives them countless hours of air time, and whether that news makes it off-colony or not, the interest in the cause is everywhere and growing exponentially. They speak of injustice openly now, like a black family secret that's only now come out of the closet after decades of denial.
Treize puts his elbow on the table and holds his chin in his hand. He regards Zepeda for a stretch of silent curiosity before mentally shrugging and letting the question drop.
"What do you think would happen if Earth put down its weapons?"
"We'd find different weapons." There's a sharp crackling sound as Zepeda sucks the last of his soda from the bottom of his glass, loud enough to call the TV-hooked barkeep over to the table with a refill. "Economic. Political. Gotta kill the intent."
Exactly, Treize thinks. Absolutely exactly, and how refreshing, how uplifting to know that others can conclude the same thing he already has. It was last Thursday when it dawned rather plainly on him while sitting on his bench in his usual thinking place. Such a simple, ideologically elegant solution, one that won't work unless others are willing to buy into the possibility that it's a tenable option – even if it seems like practical and tactical insanity. It will require a leap of faith, a great offering of trust, and a plan more foolishly audacious than perhaps any in recent history. It might be impossible, and yet, it can't really be. Because people cannot continue this way, and there has to be another option. There must be. Because if there isn't, or if people resign to the belief that there isn't, then what's the point of anything that any of them do...?
When the proprietor comes by with Zepeda's cola, Treize turns in his beer mug and, after asking and determining that their vodka selection is undrinkable at best, he orders it with tonic to dull the predictable isopropyl aftertaste.
"Well then," Treize tells Zepeda with a smile, "we had better get to work on that."
Zepeda's laugh is real this time. "Figure out that one and everyone'll start screaming about the end times."
They order more food and talk into the night. The good company loosens Zepeda's tongue, and he spills to Treize everything he knows about X-18999, specifically about Dekim Barton. It's much more than Treize would have guessed him to know, and he's as impressed as he is disturbed by what's revealed to him. It's 2200 when Zepeda decides to pay a surprise visit to the Federation outpost. Treize picks up the tab and hits the streets, fed and stupid-happy and more than a little drunk.
Walking home, he looks up to what would be the sky on Earth and sees only washed out orange-grey, a reflection of city lights upon artless metal. He pulls his phone out of his pocket when he passes through Barton Plaza, one of the five places on the colony where one can consistently patch a cellular call to the outside. With cold fingers, he dials an extra-colonial code, then an Earth code, then country code, then a number he knows by heart. His chest constrict with anxiety when he hears a ring on the other end. He stops on the lawn, stalled when he reaches voicemail but not foiled. He redials the call and begins to walk in a large circle. Ring. Ring. Ring.
There's a muffle, then a deep, ragged sigh. "Merquise."
The voice stops Treize fast, because it's about an octave lower than he remembers it being. It strikes him then with hurricane force that it's been nearly six months since he's spoken with the person he just admitted to Leia was his closest friend, a final organic processing of something he's known intellectually for some time. What a shameful thing, inexcusable, something so inherently rude and disrespectful that he can barely imagine treating a stranger the way he's recently treated his family. His reasons, once so valid to him, are pale and sickly next to the reality of what they've excused.
"Milliardo..."
Treize regrets the slip the minute it leaves his lips, because his time on-colony has alerted him to the very real possibility that private communications are monitored by the colonists, if not also the Federation. There is a long pause then. Some more muffled sounds, a comforter shifting, perhaps. The click of a bed stand lamp.
"It's one in the morning, Treize."
Treize checks his chronometer. It seems he forgot to add three. "I'm sorry. You probably have to wake up soon."
"Two more hours. It's okay."
Treize draws a long white blank where he swore he once had something important to say. He begins pacing in earnest now, back and forth, breath expelling in visible puffs.
"So, how are you?" Zechs asks plainly, not unlike the way an adult coaxes words from a reticent child.
"I'm well." Treize wades through an awkward moment nagged by the feeling that he should be saying more. "Thank you."
"Are you back?"
"No."
"Are you ever coming back?"
Treize's smile is an uneasy one. "Of course I am."
"Don't scoff at me," Zechs rebounds sleepily. "You've been on that colony for five months. You say you're fine, and yet, you're still there."
"It is difficult to explain."
"Try."
Treize pauses and spins a slow 360 in place to see if the security patrol's got their eye on him yet. There's no one, and it's deathly quiet. But he's never been out this late alone, so he can't say what's normal. It doesn't seem right, though.
"I have been thinking things over," Treize tells him honestly.
"Like what?" Zechs asks, genuine interest budging into his tone.
"My career. What I'm doing, what I need to do."
"You've met somebody."
Treize almost sputters. "What?"
"You love being home, and if you wanted only to think, you would have done it there," Zechs points out gently. "You'd walk around in the woods with your face to the sky, listening to the snow crunch under your feet. So that tells me there's something else. Someone else."
Poetic, Treize thinks, and delightfully, irrefutably correct. He loves that sound as it carries through the crisp winter air on a cloudy day, trees above him climbing miles and miles, it seems, branches evergreen under heavy white. Zechs truly does know him, better than anyone who ever attempted the task. Better than his mother. Better than Leia.
"My staying here means nothing of the sort," Treize weakly volleys, a flat-out lie no matter how hard he tries to talk himself into it. He's not the sort to get caught up with girls at the expense of all else, whatever sort that is, some serial monogamist, bleeding-heart romantic. And while she's not the entire story, there's no skirting the fact that Leia has been the biggest part of his life for nearly half a year.
"What's her name?"
"Leia."
There's another very long pause during which Treize resides in a mild state of disbelief at his own admission, which dropped from his lips like a murder confession through an anonymous grated screen. He thinks perhaps that he should not have had so much to drink before calling. He hears more shifting on Zechs' end and then a sharply breathed laugh.
"Are you going to marry her?" Zechs speaks with an unbothered cool that those familiar with him know is not necessarily a positive sign. It's like a gale warning in that the signal flag itself means very little – and is actually rather nice to look at – unless one knows how to read it.
"Why would you even think that?"
"Well, you're not really giving me anything to go on." Zechs is waking up now, anger sloshing up in that stirringly deep voice of his. When did that happen? How could it possibly have happened so quickly? "What else can I assume?"
Contrary to every response that Treize knows would be appropriate in this situation, for everything he's put Zechs and his family through, he's still getting a little pissed off. "You should stop assuming anything."
"Then talk to me!" Zechs breaks then, and the barrier holding back every tortuously unanswered question drops like dead things spilling down a steep ramp. "What the hell's wrong with you, not calling anybody, not even mailing? We had to watch the news just to know you were okay, like a bunch of strangers. Why couldn't you call? Why couldn't you email? A text. Why not anything? Why are you hiding up there?"
Treize holds his hand palm-out in front of his chest, as though Zechs were standing there to see it. "Please calm down."
"Don't tell me what to do!"
The silence settles in massive space that separates them,tens and tens of thousands of kilometers of deadly vacuum. "I'm sorry," Treize tells him. And he is, because Zechs' justification is iron-clad. Treize hates being on this side of things.
"Don't you know it's because we love you?" Zechs utters between clenched teeth. "Do you think I'd waste my breath and hope if I didn't care about you?"
"No," Treize says truthfully, "I do not think you would."
"Good guess."
The booze, among other things, is making Treize's head swim in the most uncomfortable way, and the only reasonable solution that presents itself is to drop flat on his ass and fall back on the lawn with a small 'umph.' The ground seems to rotate back and forth in small half-circles that are at once interesting and nauseating.
"I heard that you beat my score," Treize murmurs close to the phone's mic. "I called to congratulate you."
"I get my choice of station, straight into platoon leadership, if I want," Zechs states neutrally.
"You absolutely should have your own platoon." Emphasis on the 'absolutely' part. Treize would give him an entire company, if he had the reach, and not because he's particularly confident in his his friend's skills. He's barely seen him in action. But it's a feeling Treize has or, at least, a wish. Because if this is going to be Zechs' life, he wants nothing more than for his friend to have everything. Even if he doubts the proportionality of the cost.
"General Catalonia is going to pin on my rank. Unless I want somebody different to do it."
"It would be a great honor to have him pin you."
"I'd rather it be you." There's a tenderness in the admission that lasts only as long as the sentence before solidifying into something verging on a threat. "But that means you have to be here in four days."
"I'll be there." It's as simple as that.
"If you promise me and you're not, I swear to God, I will never speak to you again."
"I will be there," Treize assures him as his hand passes over his forehead and then into his hairline. "I promise."
"I mean it, Treize. Never."
"I know you mean it."
Treize isn't sure how much longer they talk, but he guesses less than seven or eight minutes. When he hangs up, he moves seamlessly into using his phone to access the shuttle schedule. His eyes blur and cross as he navigates tiny and convoluted menus, but he finally uploads it.
Then he thinks about how he's going to tell Leia.
xXx
It's nearly midnight when Treize unlocks the front door of Leia's flat. He's got his show of control back in place, having spectacularly lost sight of it on the line with Zechs. He slowly turns the handle to preempt any excess noise.
"Have fun?"
He turns, carelessly knocking the door shut with the push of his heel as he does. Leia's sitting at the small table by the window, wearing the small things that pass for her pajamas, with a half-full bottle of wine and an empty glass in front of her. She's smiling at him, a long and finely curved line that lets him know that she's feeling just fine – or else, like him, she's putting on a masterful act.
"I did have fun," he confirms. "It was good to see Danny."
"He seems a little sleepy," Leia says, biting back a lazy grin, "but nice."
"I have something to tell you," he segues tactlessly.
"What, that you're going back to Earth?"
Treize's mouth falls open a little, which he passes off as a yawn that's quite poorly timed but not completely pantomimed. He rests his hands on his hips and tries to figure out what about his entrance gave him away. "How did you know?"
Leia's fingers twist around the stem of her glass. "I've been waiting for you to say something for a while now... but when I saw you with your friend, I had a feeling it would be sooner than later."
"The shuttle leaves tomorrow morning." Treize eyes the clock on the wall. "Rather, in five hours."
Her smile falls, and her lips part as if to sigh through them. She's twirling the glass now, spinning it idly between her thumb and forefingers until it slips from her grasp and drops onto the tabletop. Miraculously, it doesn't break. A deep frown hardens her face.
"You don't belong here anyway," Leia tells him matter-of-factly. "You never could. And you don't understand anything up here, even though you think you do."
Treize walks to where she's sitting and tosses his key onto the table. "You are the one who does not understand," he retorts, sub-zero. "And it is very distressing that you don't, because you are one of the few people in a position to do something about this place."
"Just go pack."
He snorts derisively and heads off to his room to do just that.
He yanks the closet door open and pulls his wadded issue bag from the far back of it. Clothes fall off hangers by quick, furious pulls and are crammed violently into the bottom of his duffel. Treize doesn't care that he's bound to finish the job in about five minutes, going at this rate. He doesn't care at all. He'll go back to the pub until it closes at zero-two and then ruck it to the space port when it opens at zero-three. Then he'll pass out on the shuttle and pretend thereafter that they had a better ending. He'll remember his time in space fondly – most of it really was good, after all. And he'll wake up at full gravity with a blinding headache, but it won't matter because he'll feel the real sun – not a mirror's projection of it – on his face. Even if he pukes the second he steps off the shuttle, because it's been so long since he's landed in one, he'll still be grateful that he's puking on a Belgian tarmac.
Treize spins around to go after the items in his dresser and runs straight into Leia before he can register her. It takes a second for the surprise to subside, only to be redoubled when she rips the bag from him and throws it on the floor.
"You're such a smug bastard," she spits. "Presumptuous, spoiled brat who's too big of a coward to even write his mother a letter."
"Get out of my way," he orders, squaring his jaw and shoulders.
"How dare you tell me what kind of person I should be. You didn't grow up here. You're a poser and a self-righteous interloper. You don't know anything about this colony, and you certainly don't know anything about my family."
"Says the dreamy little girl who can't even see that her father's funding the rebellion – "
Leia backhands him. Hard. Enough to whip his head to the left. Enough for his bangs to fly across his forehead and into his eyes. His mouth gapes open, and this time there's no way to disguise the utter, paralytic shock the expression represents.
Treize then feels he's watching himself, disembodied, as he rights his head and makes a grab for her. Her hands rise automatically in defense, so he takes her skinny forearms in a steel tight grip and pushes her until she falls back on the bed. She gasps, and there's fear in her eyes when he pins her arms above her head and kisses her roughly. A fractured thought rips through his mind, one that asks if he hasn't gone completely too far.
But soon enough she presses up against him, and he knows then that she's not trying to fight him off because she's also shoving her tongue in his mouth. He lets her go to unzip himself, and it's only a matter of ripping off those little shorts before he's fucking her. Because that's what it is – a loud, half-drunken fuck that barely lasts four minutes.
There's no holding when it's over. Treize is off her in one heartbeat and put back together in the next. Leia stays the way she is, lower half still dangling off the edge of the bed, a dim haze clouding her eyes, until he mechanically stoops down, picks up her bottoms, and drops them by her open hand. Turning away, he hears her slowly slide them back on, hears the mattress squeak a bit as she stands. She remains near the bed and blankly watches him make hasty rounds through the bedroom and adjoining bathroom until he's got everything he owns crammed in a bag that can barely fit it all. Treize then clasps it up, tosses it into the hallway like a bloated sack of wheat and, without so much as a comment on the last thirty minutes, pulls Leia into a tight hug.
It takes longer for her to respond to this move than his last, but it's scarcely any time before her arms come around his back with the same clinging desperation. It's also scarcely any time before she begins softly crying. Treize knows it's not only because of his leaving and what he's just done to her. She's crying for the people she couldn't save that day. For the chaos that has turned her home into an unpredictable battleground. For the faint part of her that perhaps almost believes what Treize said about her father.
"You are one strong woman," Treize whispers as he brushes her hair behind her ear, thinking not only of his throbbing face but of everything her character has indicated to him since he's known her. "And wickedly intelligent. I was wrong to suggest otherwise."
"I know what I am," Leia murmurs shakily into his shoulder. "It would take a lot more than you to make me doubt myself."
And that's what he loves about her.
"You may well be right about what I do not know," he admits softly, "but you may not be. All I ask is that you do not close yourself off to both possibilities."
She nods slowly, sniffles, and wipes her nose on his sweater.
"Thanks for that."
"Mmm. My pleasure."
They don't let go of each other for a long time.
