Episode 7 – The scythe has hit a stone.1
xxx
The next morning, Marimaia knocked the door to Treize's room where Zechs, barefoot, in tee and jeans, was sitting on the windowsill. The window was open, and the scent of summer wafted in – baking earth, honeyed meadows, and the roses that framed the window. He was smoking, slowly rubbing his thumb over the engraved wallet. In the light of the shimmering day, his hair seemed to be covered in a layer of ash.
"Hey," she said, standing in the doorway, "I've been looking for you. Can I come in?"
No, nobody should come in here.
He glanced at her, reluctant to reply.
"Was that his room?" she asked, before he could find the resolve.
He breathed out a stream of smoke from his nostrils, then he nodded. "Yes."
Our place. Yours and mine...
She stepped in and sat down on the edge of the bed. "It looks bare."
"It needed painting."
She gave him a slow smile. "Sure, like the rest of the house. Like us."
"Like us?"
"We could do with a fresh coat of paint, couldn't we? A bit of filler to cover up the cracks, some gloss and polish..." She shifted back against the wall. "I should be your enemy."
He closed his fingers around the wallet and leaned against the carved windowframe and let his gaze stray to the distant line of the forest. On his collarbone, he could feel Treize's dogtags, hard and familiar.2 The sun was warm on his face; the smell of damp earth mingled with cigarette smoke. He felt relaxed and pleasant. Sparrows were chirping on the roof, and under the overhanging eaves, swifts were dashing about. Having returned from warmer places, they had started repairing their mudnests, and soon they would be feeding a clutch of young.
"It's weird," Marimaia said. "But I feel nothing. I used to hate you. It helped to hate you."
"I hated him, for a while," Zechs said through a breath of smoke that curled blue and lazy into the hot summer day. "When he got back from L3 and wouldn't talk to me about it."
She smoothed the sheets by her side and put her hands on the soft down cover, and he wondered what she was thinking.
"I've never seen something like this," she said to his back. "Weird, isn't it?"
He narrowed his eyes against the smoke and the gleam of summer. "Don't you want to go back home?"
"Home?"
"To L3."
She shrugged. "That was a joke, right? Anyway, from what I heard, they're not at war at the moment. I don't want to kick off another one."
Zechs rose and squashed the fag out in the fireplace. "This place is too large for one." He didn't wait for the silence to grow but looked at her. "Too cold."
Marimaia stared at him, her face pale, her eyes shaded. "Colonists need visa and residential permits to stay. We need work permits, too, and have to sign support waivers, in case things go wrong. We'll just be shipped back home. We have to pre-pay our return tickets before we arrive on Earth, and we get tagged when we get here. Unless things have changed – have they?"
Zechs sat down next to her. "For someone who isn't allowed books or news, you know a lot."
"Just retelling what my uncle was always raving about."
"We might have moved on."
She laughed, a harsh, unhappy sound. "C'mon."
Zechs made no reply, and she shook her head. "Didn't think so. It still works like that, doesn't it? If we get a visum, we have to report to the Central Preventers Registry every month. We can't own anything on Earth. And I don't even exist. I can't use my name anywhere. They've stripped me of my identity, and I have a registration as a 'hostile element class C, code red'."
"Not suitable for re-integration," he said quietly.
She huffed. "That means life. On Mars." She caught his glance and added, "The shrink let my file lie around. She was busy with one of the engineers when I stepped in."
That's all the therapy some of us need, Zechs thought wryly.
"Now you can carry on feeling sorry for yourself," Marimaia said. "At least you can choose whether you bury yourself alive."
He linked his fingers between his knees. Closing his eyes, he leaned back against the wall. His head hurt, a dull, throbbing ache deep inside his skull as his conscious mind tried to keep Zero at bay.
The truth is, he thought, that we're dead the moment the first time we pull the trigger...
xxx
Interlude 7 – Into the Dark
xxx
Zechs pushed the dressing gown off Treize's shoulders. Slowly, he traced the marks on Treize's body, and then he leaned down to kiss them, one by one. Treize sat still, his eyes half-closed, his chest rising and falling evenly, until Zechs leaned back. "Some of this is new."
Treize said nothing, his expression blank, his gaze trailing into the distance. "It'll heal. It doesn't matter now, anyway."
"I've seen things like that, when Cinq fell," Zechs persisted, his voice flat and taut. "I watched a man being beaten to a pulp. He was one of the palace guards. The men who did it wanted to know where my sister and I were hiding. Tre, why're you not looking at me?"
Treize laid his hand on Zechs' thigh, stroking softly. "Laws, conventions... they're only good if you can enforce them."
"But this is recent. Why would they keep you for a year, then torture you before sending you back? What's behind this?"
"I don't know."
Zechs bit his lip. "Your father... when he grabbed me, I could smell blood. Blood and burned flesh... I tried to scream but he put his hand over my mouth and nose, and I could barely breathe. Then I realised I'd wet myself, and I had blood on my hands. I couldn't remember... I could never recall how it got there. Once he'd packed me onto the plane, he wiped it off. You know, it didn't bother me, but..."
"It didn't let you sleep." Treize finally met Zechs' gaze. For a moment they looked at each other in silence, until Zechs cleared his throat.
"Can you sleep at night, Tre?"
Another heartbeat, before Treize said, "Can we talk about something else?"
Zechs' took a sharp, deep breath. "Fine. I have news." He pulled a letter from his trouser pocket. The letter was printed on cheap, headed paper, worn thin at the folded edges. Zechs held it out to Treize. "I've been invited to sit the entrance exam. If I pass, I'll get in with the next intake of cadets."
Treize took the letter and read. Zechs watched his face – apprehension blooming, giving way to an odd mix of panic, anger and incredulity. Ashen pallor giving way to little flecks of red. "You can still withdraw." It sounded like an order, or a plea.
Zechs stared at him. "I thought you'd be proud."
"Proud..." The paper trembled in Treize's grip as he folded it. "It is terrible to feel helpless, but war is not the answer."
Zechs snatched the letter and stuffed it back into his pocket. "Then tell me that it's possible to live without fighting, and I'll go back and do it. I will talk instead, like my father. I'll be polite and ask the tanks to leave, and the guns, and the soldiers. What do you say, Tre, will they just go? Will they even let me finish?"
Treize bit his lip. Between them, silence grew until Zechs shook his head. "I will have the power to enforce my laws."
"This... this war will turn you into someone you don't want to know."
"No. I'll just be myself. I'll defend what's mine."
xxx
NOTES:
1 Нашла́ коса́ на ка́мень.
2 See LA Starshine
