30 Ways to Conquer Mars
#009 ダッシュ & #017 kHz (reprisal)
A.C. 197, May 3, 22:12pm 「Until— ?」
Gundam Wing © SOTSU AGENCY - SUNRISE - ANB
This is a work of derivative Fanfiction. No claims are made towards the ownership of intellectual rights pertaining to the metaseries.
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An average medium-security door is programmed to wait for 6 seconds before initiating its 'close' cycle, unless otherwise instructed. Low security doors tended to stay open until they are closed, and high security doors maintained strict routines between .25 and .8 of a second.
These were the kind of thoughts Noin recited under her breath to keep her pulse steady as she waited in the halls for Zechs. She'd tried star vectors after the names of constellations, and given up on both when they didn't put her in the right frame of mind. Not that she was sure what the "right" frame of mind to use when confronting the most important person in her life was. Every time she'd received anything from him he had closed himself off and gone away, a situation she had grown quite frustrated with.
The acceptable response standard for a security team aboard the Marsprojekt is 18 minutes, which was pretty demanding for a vessel of its size. He had challenged her, earlier that afternoon, to cross the longest distance within the ship in that time, an unfamiliar route that took them from the main observation deck to a janitorial locker at the bottom of the engine room. It had taken 16 minutes, with him less than a minute ahead of her, and only 9 when they'd ran the course back upstairs as a team. There was no denying that they were better together, and she didn't want to lose that.
But she couldn't go on living in a constant spin-about with him, either.
He was her reason, for far too many years to ignore. Religiously monitoring his flaws and progress, watching his back in plain sight and behind his back, they've become a habit she couldn't shake. He was her rival, sometimes her friend, and the only connection she had to her true history. Zechs was family, that much could never be changed.
She'd believed she'd loved him at fifteen, for all of four months until she'd realised the problem was in her hormones. Dating Michelangelo fixed that. She had thought he loved her at eighteen, and then sensibly put it out of mind when news of his victories with the ladies trickled in amongst her students again. She doesn't even know what to think of the thing he'd left her last year, while he was supposed to be dead. She wasn't his type. Milliardo Peacecraft's girls did not drink like fish or spend their spare moments tinkering around heavy machinery. They were delicate and pretty, better than he was in the kitchen, and appreciated his affair with cryptic messages and flowers, and symbols. Noin, for all her fairly respectable knowledge and understanding in these literary matters, preferred presentations that were much more straightforward.
She was proud of the fierce love she held for the Prince, the one her mother had called 'loyalty'. She was not so certain about the truth of her feelings. How does one know if they are properly in love anyway? She had not been given the proper protocol on falling in love with her liege-lord, although she was reasonably confident that it would be frowned upon. She wished often for the advice of her family, even her socialite sister. Mamma would know what was right to do. Marchese Attilio, as he had always insisted to be known to his children, would take her by the hand— she was too old to sit on his knee at twenty as she had at age nine— and ask her her heart. Letizia, wherever she might be, could probably tell her all the things that being in love was not, after she was done teasing her littlest she-brother.
And Luciano and Isadora, what would they say?
The maximum delay on a klaxon alarm is 2.4 seconds from activation and 1.2 seconds for a silent alarm. The initialisation period on an average security camera is 12 seconds from power-on. Even the best monitors available only transmit 180 of the 240 images taken at any particular second.
Of all the things Zechs had not been expecting, Noin hanging around his quarters two hours into her date was listed somewhere in the thirties, after being assigned a private bathroom, among other little things too much to hope for. Admittedly, there was also the point that she had left her keycard with him, so he had to wonder what had gone wrong with Donn.
This quickly changed to item number twelve on his list of situations he'd hoped would not come up until he was on his deathbed, which had included having to marry Relena off to Treize, when he saw her scowl and the dead thing in her hand that was once a pure white blossom. He kicked himself so hard that he actually winced.
He'd forgotten about the flower he'd picked in the bushes near her Preventer dorm back in February. It was to be the only personal thing from Earth that he was going to bring to the new life Lady Une had so kindly aborted, besides his books; something to remember her by.
The look on her face said everything.
"I don't suppose you'd believe I just like gardenias," he sighed.
"Not after the third one."
"Noin…"
His relationship to her was… complicated. He is the prodigal heir of a dead Kingdom to whom she had pledged absolute allegiance, and he was doomed to forever fail the vassal that she was. She had made his desires her cause whenever he'd let her, and his troubles her pain when he wouldn't. Sword and Shield, as best she could, the way she was taught. She is the best wingman he has ever known and secretly his equal, besides. He saw her as the light that was his shadow, his anchor and his escape. She was, for many years, his best and only friend. She was the person at whose hands he dreams his death. Somehow, they had managed to hold it all together through the years, and it was all of it too precious to risk.
"How long do we have to keep dancing around this until you explain yourself?" She demanded calmly.
Zechs' ears buzzed at 1000 hertz, under the pressure of 833.33 alternate realities being created in that single, thundering, heartbeat. In some of them, he kisses her. In others, she kissed him. Clumsy, green kisses; uncertain, longing kisses; passionate kisses of unspoken love; world-shaking kisses that have felled nations and civilisations. Sometimes they go to sleep next to each other and wake up finding nothing, or everything, had changed. In most of them, they say nothing and he lets her go, or she lets him go. The difference is ultimately negligible.
He uses all of his millisecond window to reach out and brush her cheek.
"Noin, you've been on my side since I can remember, and I don't dare to ruin that. More than the heartache, I'm sure you're the only person in the universe actually capable of destroying me, based purely on skills and tactical combat abilities. I mean, you kept up with the Gundams in a Taurus! Imagine what you could have done if we'd put you in a custom G-class of your own…"
"Peacecraft," she interrupted gently, "you're rambling."
He paused, feeling lost in the distance between them.
"Mon coeur, you are the kite string of my existence and I can think of no one better… but I am not your prince yet. Right now, I am just some guy who fell from the stars."
"I won't wait for you," she whispered, close to tears.
"I know." Zechs brought her fingers to his face, and turning his head ever so slightly, planted a firm, dry kiss in the palm of her left hand. "Live the way you want. Love the way you want. And I will fight anything that might stand between me and your hand when I'm ready, even you." He smiled wryly into her deep purple stare. "So for now, it's okay, Lucrezia. You have to fit some things in your life for yourself."
"I've been trying to remember who'd first said that to me," she closed her eyes against the intense Nile blue of his, changing the subject.
He obliged and let go of her hands. "It was I, the winter of 191."
"Really?" She was surprised to realise he was right. She could think of no one else who would have asked, ordered, her to be selfish. "That's right," she chuckled at his nod. "It was your argument for me to take the junior Instructor offer instead of join up with your flight squadron."
"You wouldn't have been happy as a pilot."
"I," she prodded him accusatorily in the chest, "would have beat you for squad leader."
"Yes," Zechs laughed, "that too."
...
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Glossary:
Mon coeur – French. "My heart"
A/N:
The Marsprojekt is named in honour of Wernher von Braun, the first man to detail a Mars expedition way back in 1946. The Megmillion Mars Expedition's mothership is named after his ship. It isn't anyone's fault but his own that he'd only as much romance in his soul to name the vessel Marsprojekt.
I've always wanted to use "world-shaking" in something other than SailorUranus' attack.